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Dirtywave's Next Box Is a Battery-Powered Performance Mixer Built Around Punch-In Effects

The MX pairs hall-effect faders and a crossfader with eight effect slots, a 24-second stereo looper and a full MIDI matrix. It's aimed at the M8, but not limited to it, and it's still a 2027 product.

3 min read

The Dirtywave M8 earned a cult following by putting a full tracker in a pocket-sized aluminum box. Last week it got an official iOS app. Now Dirtywave has previewed what’s next in hardware: the MX, a battery-powered performance mixer. It was first shown in the company’s Sept 11 Discord meetup and demoed on its own on Sept 14.

It’s clearly designed around the M8, but Dirtywave pitches it for “any other electronic music gear.” It’s not shipping soon: the MX is planned for 2027, and price and availability are TBA.

The hardware

  • 8-channel internal mixer, with 3 stereo inputs, 3 stereo outputs and a headphone jack. Every connector is a 3.5mm mini jack.
  • USB audio carries all eight M8 tracks over one cable, so a single M8 can be mixed track by track.
  • Two contactless hall-effect faders with LED indicators, plus a crossfader
  • Ten buttons, six assignable knobs, two encoders
  • Battery power, charged or powered over USB, in an aluminum case like the M8’s

The hall-effect faders are the detail performers will notice. Without a physical wiper, there’s nothing to wear out or turn scratchy after a few hundred shows. That’s worth a lot on a mixer designed to be thrown in a bag.

The effects are the point

The MX has eight effect slots with presets: a looper, filters, modulation (flanger, comb), amp and distortion, delay, and reverb. Two design choices make it an instrument rather than a utility mixer:

  • Punch-in triggering. Effects fire while you hold a button, the way DJ mixers and Pioneer-style performance units work, rather than being set and left on.
  • Auto beat detection that syncs to the M8’s tempo, plus three assignable LFOs whose shapes you can draw.

The looper holds up to 24 seconds of stereo audio. That answers the question Dirtywave says it heard most after the first reveal: can the MX mix a single device? The Sept 14 demo uses nothing but a Game Boy Advance running the FM synth ForsFM FMS, looping and layering it live.

MIDI

Two TRS MIDI in/out ports, USB host MIDI, and a full MIDI matrix for routing. That means the MX can sit at the center of a small setup as a clock and control hub, not just an audio mixer.

Worth the wait?

A 2027 date with no price is a long way off, and specs can change before then. But this category (small, battery-powered, effects-first mixers for groovebox players) has few good options. Most people either use a mixer designed for DJs or skip mixing entirely. If the MX is as well built as the M8, it’ll probably have a waitlist.

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