.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Create musical joystick mash-ups with the StikAx
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY This could have been such a great product. If you’re a fan of TV, you’re probably familiar with "Saturday Night Live" and the show’s Not Ready for Prime Time Players. While the StikAx has an enormous amount of potential, it too isn’t ready for prime time. For our review of this very interesting, yet flawed device, read this review.
.OTHER
This could have been such a great product. If you’re a fan of TV, you’re probably familiar with "Saturday Night Live" and the show’s Not Ready for Prime Time Players. While the StikAx has an enormous amount of potential, sadly, it’s not quite ready for prime time.
The StikAx, shown in Figure A, is, for all intents and purposes, a handheld DJ mixer.
.FIGPAIR A The handheld StikAx mixes video and music.
The idea is slick. DJing and mixing isn’t just spinning records any more. With digital media, there’s the opportunity to mash together different tunes on the fly, from a huge library of records, loops, and clips.
The way StikAx works is simple. It has eight buttons labeled A, B, C, and D, and 1, 2, 3, and 4. You use the accompanying TrakAx mixing program to assign a given clip to each button. Then, by dynamically pressing the buttons, the various clips play, all the while recording what you’ve pressed.
If you hooked eight musical notes to the eight StikAx buttons, you’d instantly create a new kind of digital instrument. If you hook four video clips and four musical tracks, you’re able to dynamically mix music videos.
.BREAK_EMAIL To learn how this thing works, tap here.
The whole sequencing process is controlled by TrakAx, shown in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B TrakAx is the device’s virtual mixing board.
On the left of the screen is the media library. On the right of the screen is a series of control blocks corresponding to each of the StikAx’s buttons. Pressing a button can trigger media, but you can customize the buttons so pressing them turns off the media play and provides other options and effects. There’s also a set of trigger buttons on the device that can add additional effects. On the bottom of the screen is a track preview window that lets you cut and edit your tracks.
If you’re mixing video with audio, you’ll also see your video in a side window, as shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C You can mix your video with audio on the fly.
Once you turn on the device, you can play your clips instantly, simply by pressing buttons. The sequences are stored in the software. You can edit the sequences and once satisfied, you can "render" out those sequences in a variety of common audio and video formats.
I love the concept behind this product. And for $129, it’s a great deal. If only it worked reliably.
.H1 The flaws
I don’t like beating on products in reviews. I’d much rather just recommend you go out and buy the gear. But sometimes, it’s important to tell you what’s good and bad with a product, and — hopefully — tell the manufacturer how the product can be improved.
Because StikAx is so cool, I’m really hoping the Ministry of Sound (the brand behind StikAx) reads this review and makes some changes.
There’s a trend with media programs to try to help the users just a bit too much. One of the most common approaches is for a media program or media library to decide it’s going to scan your computer for all media files, so you don’t have to tell the program what media to work on. TrakAx does this as well.
In fact, TrakAx insists on scanning your computer each time it launches, unless you turn off the option. Once the scan starts, you can’t stop it without aborting the program. And that means, the first time you launch the program, TrakAx is going to do a scan.
My desktop computer has over 2 terabytes of drive storage. Once I finally decided to let TrakAx do its thing, it took hours and hours to do the scan. Then, of course, when I quit the program, I didn’t expect it to do a rescan. It did. And when I tried to quit the program, the settings got corrupted.
I finally uninstalled and reinstalled the product, allowed TrakAx to do a complete scan the first time all over again, and then turned off that feature.
The problem is, I suspect TrakAx keeps the data from the scan in memory. Rather than simply letting me tell it where my loops were located, I had to dig through all of TrakAx’s discoveries. After using ProTools, Acid Pro and Vegas Video, this was frustrating.
My guess is my file system overwhelmed the program. As Figure D shows, TrakAx spent a lot of time showing me blank screen areas and missing menus (see the inserts).
.FIGPAIR D TrakAx lost its way.
Frankly, although I was able to create a small mix, the program spent the bulk of its time generating 100% CPU utilization and providing me with those blank screens and menus. It was virtually unusable. And that’s a shame.
.H1 The opportunity
This is a product that just screams with promise. It’s got nice packaging, a very clean set of Flash tutorials (I wish all devices and products had the quality of training materials StikAx comes with), and a great concept.
Were it to work reliably, this would be a really special addition to a composer’s toolkit or a DJ’s bag. In fact, I’d like to see the product evolve into a professional tool.
Today, the StikAx device connects to the computer via USB. But the device could well act as an instrument and is crying out for a Bluetooth interface. If any device needs Bluetooth, this is it. I can definitely see a musician out on stage jamming with a wireless StikAx.
The StikAx is also a device calling out for an API (Application Programming Interface). There’s no reason this device couldn’t work with professional mixing programs, many of which support plug-ins. This device should not be reliant on home-grown mixing software like TrakAx, when there’s such phenomenally good software in professional use.
Lastly, the StikAx is an input device. I can see its use in gaming as well as music. You could program each button to kick off a macro or a key sequence. We reviewed the Nostromo SpeedPad N52 back in June, and the StikAx could play in this same category as well.
.H1 Our rating
So, how do we rate the product? The biggest flaw seems to be with the TrakAx software, rather than the device itself. It’s got a good tutorial, a nice media library, and solid intentions, but TrakAx bit the big one on my system. Admittedly, though, my system is a professional’s machine (I have well over 250GB just for the loops I use in composing my music) and StikAx is currently marketed to consumers.
Because the product is innovative, well priced, cleanly documented and is flawed solely with a problem we think is repairable in a future upgrade, I’d honestly like to rate it a 3 out of 5. Unfortunately, our reviewer guidelines are very specific, "A product rated a 3 is a good, solid, well-working product." This product didn’t pass the "well-working" test here in the Computing Unplugged labs.
By contrast, our review guidelines for a 2-rating fit more closely:
.QUOTE A product rated a 2 is somewhat problematic. It might be a product that crashes from time to time, one that sometimes works, is missing important features, or is just poorly thought out. It’s the sort of product a reader should buy only if the specific combination of features is explicitly needed.
Should you buy it? Definitely — as long as you’re buying from someplace with a return policy, so if you experience the same problems I did, you can get your money back.
.RATING 2
Stay tuned. We’re going to watch this product and hopefully it’ll evolve into the hit we hope it becomes.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on StikAx, visit http://www.stikax.com.
For our review of the Nostromo SpeedPad N52, visit http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200506/00001551001.html.
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