Mixing in Monero is instantaneous.
Sure, there's a learning curve that goes with using the command line/terminal - but it's time well spent it if it saves you from having to wait hours every time you need to mix. And then you know how to use a command line/terminal!
Dash separated transaction mixing back in the summer of '14.
Initially it required mixing while sending, where you'd wait for others to mix and send.
Post-summer '14, it works with
premixing the coins (when you don't want to transact) so that when you want to transact later => it's instant / you are sending pre-mixed funds. It's a nice workaround.
That's a neat trick, shifting the mixing time from the sender to the recipient. When you receive coins, you now have to mix them which means you haven't really received them for X amount of time.
The other thing that is going on that makes Darksend even remotely usable is "liquidity providers" which is paying people to Sybil attack the system. That's even worse than trusting masternodes.