Crossfade — Dual-Mix Audio Mixer for Linux

One mix for you.
One for your stream.

Gleem Crossfade routes every microphone and app into two independent mixes — what you hear in your headphones, and what your audience hears in OBS, Discord or Zoom. Inspired by Elgato Wave Link, but free, open source, and without any special hardware.

Apache 2.0 licensed

No special hardware needed

Built on PipeWire

A studio mixer, minus the studio

Crossfade sits between your audio sources and the apps that record them, so you control exactly who hears what.

Two mixes, one app

Up to eight channels — mic, game, music, voice chat — each with independent Monitor and Stream faders. Blast music in your headphones while your audience hears it quietly — or not at all.

DMCA-safe VODs

Enable the optional VOD Mix for a third mix with its own virtual microphone. Record it as a separate track in OBS: music stays live on stream and never reaches the VOD.

VST & LV2 effects

Chain noise suppression, gates, compressors and EQs per channel — with live sliders in Crossfade or the plugin’s own editor window. Plugins run out-of-process, so a crash never takes your audio down.

Real faders, real knobs

Right-click any fader, move a knob on your MIDI controller, done. Binding profiles, LED feedback and fader pickup turn an APC mini or Launchpad into a mixing desk — and bindings survive replugging.

Plays nice with everything

The stream mix shows up as a normal microphone, and channels can appear as system output devices. OBS, Discord and Zoom just work — no plugins needed.

Scriptable with D-Bus

Toggle mutes and set volumes from Stream Deck software, desktop shortcuts or shell scripts. A cough button is one command away.

Self-healing routing

Crossfade re-attaches streams and re-applies volumes if the session manager moves them, waits for slow USB mics at login, and cleans up after crashed sessions. Set it up once — it stays set up.

Studio-grade meters

True dBFS peak meters with ballistics tuned to feel like OBS’s fast meter — green up to −20 dB, yellow to −9, red when you clip. Stereo on every channel and every mix.

Lives in the background

Close the window and your mixes keep running. Start Crossfade at login, and let the built-in audio setup assistant check your routing and fix it with one click.

Live in four steps

Install Crossfade

Grab the package on Fedora or Arch, or build from source. All you need is PipeWire — the default on modern distros.

Assign your channels

Point channels at your mic, browser, game and music apps. Colors and templates keep everything readable at a glance.

Point your apps at it

Select "Crossfade Stream Mix" as the microphone in OBS or Discord, and your headphones as the monitor output.

Mix live

Ride the faders while you stream — from the app, your MIDI controller or a Stream Deck. Crossfade keeps the routing healthy.

Pick your distro

Crossfade needs PipeWire with pipewire-pulse — the default audio stack on Fedora, Ubuntu 22.10+ and most modern distributions.

Fedora

sudo dnf copr enable gleem/crossfade
sudo dnf install gleem-crossfade

Arch Linux

yay -S gleem-crossfade

From source

git clone https://github.com/gleem-gg/crossfade
cd crossfade && make && make install

Optional extras: LV2 plugins like RNNoise for noise suppression, and Carla for VST2/VST3 hosting. Full instructions in the README on GitHub.

Frequently asked questions

Is Gleem Crossfade really free?

Yes. Crossfade is open source under the Apache 2.0 license and free to download and use. It is part of the Gleem streaming tools and lives on GitHub.

Do I need an Elgato Wave XLR or other special hardware?

No. Crossfade was inspired by Elgato Wave Link but works with any microphone and audio interface. If you do own a Wave XLR, Crossfade ships dedicated support that works around known firmware quirks.

Which Linux distributions are supported?

Anything running PipeWire — the default on Fedora, Ubuntu 22.10+ and most current distros. Packages exist for Fedora (COPR) and Arch (AUR), and building from source works everywhere else.

Does it work with OBS, Discord and Zoom?

Yes. The stream mix appears as a regular virtual microphone called "Crossfade Stream Mix" that any app can record, and channels can appear as system output devices. No plugins required.

How do channels capture audio?

Three ways: a channel can capture a device directly (your mic or line-in), follow an application by name so its audio is pulled in automatically (Spotify, your browser, a game), or appear system-wide as its own output device named "Crossfade: <channel>" that you point any app at.

What about Windows or macOS?

Crossfade is a native Linux app built on PipeWire and GTK4, so it is Linux-only. On Windows, Elgato Wave Link covers this ground; on macOS, tools like Loopback do.

One mix for you. One for your stream.