It took Microsoft long enough; gamers were waiting for a tool to transfer their MP3 and media files to their Xbox hard drive since the release of the Xbox two years ago. Wouldn’t that be a lot easier than ripping every CD you own to your lovely 8-pound champ? Well, the Xbox Music Mixer (XMM) is more than just a gateway to receiving music and picture files; it also features one of the most unique partying activities that man has ever encountered. The human race has had many triumphs in modern history: The moon landing, the Internet, and now, Digital Karaoke. Of course you might not see the correlation between these accomplishments, but I assure you, with the right people, Karaoke can score for a classic evening, making your mediocre party legendary.
I’ll have to admit that Microsoft didn’t do a great job talking this product up. I say “product” because it’s not really a game; I consider it software that makes your PC and Xbox flow together. The addition of Karaoke is indeed cool, but it seems that Microsoft was only talking up this feature, making the Music Mixer their “karaoke” title. To be honest, it really doesn’t have too many useful features, but I will go into that in more detail later on.
Oddly enough, the Music Mixer doesn’t sport a title screen. There is, however, a main screen with task options:
Music Player: As many of you that own an Xbox know, the music player on the Xbox dashboard is a bit lacking. You hate no control over sound options, and the sounds cuts down because of either an overpowering bass, or louder vocals on the track. This is somewhat controlled and tweaked when it comes to the “Music Player” on the XMM. The best I can describe the Music Player is that it’s like having Windows Media Player 9 living and breathing on your beloved console. To some, this will be a bad thing, as some of us naturally hate Windows.
Remember all those sleepless nights you spent naming the tracks you ripped to your Xbox hard drive? Well, XMM automatically searches and finds the track names of the albums or songs you have on your hard drive. It’s a cool feature, and along with this comes more playlist features. You will now be able to add tracks to an already pre-existing soundtrack; this was impossible to do before XMM came along.
As you may expect with more advanced sound options, there are pre-set audio settings that correspond to different types of music (essentially audio equalizers). You can repeat/shuffle tracks (yawn), but a cool feature is that you can click on the “eject” button on the screen to take out the XMM CD and put in a music CD of your choice to listen to; this is a cool feature indeed. However, you will need the game CD to boot it up every time; don’t think you will buy it and then pass this game off to friends. Silly rabbit.
Another feature of the Music Player that is also explored on its Windows counterpart is a visualization option. It certainly creates your own personal touch while listening to music and/or karaoke. The other thing that I was interested in was the ability to create my own dance club. Well, you can, but not really. This can be found in the visualizations option of the Music Player. You only have the choice of a “Club Rave” or “Industrial Rave”. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, as they are both equally boring after 2 minutes. True, as promised you can choose what your dancers will wear, how they are dancing, camera angles, etc., but I was suckered into thinking that it was more fun than it really was.
I do feel that Microsoft put too much stock in announcing “Rave Mode”. This is an option all to itself on the main screen. Microsoft made it seem like Rave Mode was fully interactive and customizable, which sadly, it isn’t. You can create your own grouping of visualizations, as well; this will create a plethora of eye candy, but it’s not that big of a deal for what it’s worth.
Thankfully, I bought the XMM for the Karaoke capability. Is that a good or a bad thing, and what does that mean about me as a person?
There are 15 pre-installed Karaoke tracks with lyrics that will appear on the screen. As for other music that you have in mind for your party, you’re on your own, and that’s what I didn’t like about this. The official karaoke website for the Xbox is www.XboxKaraoke.com. Wait, I just realized how lame this was…..Anyway, it’s here where you can go ahead and buy more karaoke tracks for $2 a song. These, of course, will have full lyrics on-screen so it’s easy to sing along with. However, it just seems that this product drew me in with the promise of a Karaoke mode only to make me buy more songs; this would explain its relatively inexpensive $40 price tag.
The only alternative is to resort to ripped tracks that you may have on your Xbox hard drive. Since I kept hearing so much about their state-of-the-art “vocal stripping” technology, I thought I would give it a try. What I found is that it does a horrible job pulling off this task. It sounded too good to be true, and it was. The best that vocal stripping does is that it tones down the bass on the song a lot, so you hear what sounds like an unplugged electric guitar and some of the tightest snare drum beats ever. Not an enjoyable karaoke experience, if you do it this way, although, depending how the artist records their songs will determine how good or how poor the results of the vocal stripping are. It’s almost like it takes off the top layer of the song, leaving with you little to go with, and the sound quality drops dramatically because of it. It’s a shame too, as this feature is probably one of the biggest reasons why I bought this.
The microphone that comes with this game is just like your standard mic. It is packaged in with the game; use responsibly.
I can confidently say, however, that the XMM saved my sister’s Halloween party this year. My sisters friends are boring, so I decided to boot up some tracks to sing. For those of you that don’t know, my sister has the lamest friends; but once I started singing (poorly), people started to get into it, and thus, upgrading the party status from “lame” to “not-so-lame, but not cool.” I guess that’s an improvement. Also, the memories of my mom singing “I Will Survive” and “Love Shack” will never fail to make me smile. Thanks to the Music Mixer, I saved those “performances” (if you can call them that) onto my Xbox hard drive. I’ll use those accordingly down the road.
Another big feature in the XMM is the ability to download software for your PC that will allow you to easily transfer songs and JPEG image files from your computer onto your Xbox. I have not tried this feature yet, as I am only running Windows 98, and you will need Windows XP to use this feature! You have been warned. From what I have read, however, it is not hard to transfer these files to your Xbox; it’s a pretty painless process.
Speaking of media transfer, another aspect of the XMM is the photo album feature. You can cycle through your pictures of vacationing, lounging around the house, or like I do, showering. (Uh, just keep that one under your hat.) You can create new slide shows easily and even choose what music will be played in the background. Don’t worry, you can have control over what slide comes next. This feature just looks pretty if you don’t use it, but if you’ve got the pictures, why not share them?
As always, the promise of Xbox Live content downloads is always a promising look to the future of the application. New downloadable visualizations and karaoke tracks were promised; all I have to say to Microsoft is, “I’m waiting”. No downloadable content has been released as of yet.
So, overall, I would have to say that I am surprised with how the Xbox Music Mixer turned out. I mean, the karaoke tracks that were pre-made can be fun because of the fully visual lyrics, but beyond that, it can be tedious. The vocal stripping really isn’t state-of-the-art; it’s more like a step back. “Rave Mode” looks cool, but offers little “wow” factor after a few minutes, and the “create-a-club” mode that was supposed to be deep just wasn’t. It just felt like a whole bunch of promises that were never fulfilled. Sadly, it wont be the last time that I get this feeling from a Microsoft product.
