DJ

ClubDJ ProVJ provides tools for mixing audio and visual files like a DJ. With its impressive layout and simple operation, this fun program only suffers from its save-option flaw.

The program's interface demanded we visit the Help file tutorial. Although it looked professionally designed, its command buttons and options were unfamiliar. Fortunately, our confusion was quickly erased, and we were soon building a collection of audio and video files for mixing. The program allows you to drag and drop songs and films between two "Decks" for mixing. The individual decks adjusted the speed, pitch, and volume of … Read more

DJ Mania provides a simple set of tools for recreating the world of the turntable expert. By breaking this elaborate artform down into a few simple functions, it makes the club scene accessible to all, but it's missing a few key ingredients of the actual experience.

DJ Mania's interface took a little work to understand, even thought it's a fairly simple layout. Without a Help file or instructions we were left to explore, but luckily it only took a few minutes to fully grasp the program. The basic function of this program was its ability to recreate … Read more

Music-tech entrepreneur Aviv Eyal, who's behind the excellent Livekick concert-tracking site, has a new project: a DJ app for the iPhone and iPod Touch called DJ Mixer Pro. (It was formerly known as DJ Player Pro, but the name has changed to avoid a conflict with another app.)

The concept is similar to Touch DJ, an Amidio app that I wrote about last month. While the iPhone naturally restricts you to playing one song at a time, these apps function like a virtual DJ booth, letting you play two tracks simultaneously, jump to any point in either track with … Read more

Star 6 is a fun beat-making iPhone and iPod Touch app from Agile Partners--makers of the incredibly useful Guitar Toolkit and Tab Toolkit for guitarists. First introduced last August, Star 6 offers five families of electronic drum beats in categories like Drum and Bass and Electro. You can also download many more free beats from the Star 6 Web site, or upload your own through your Web browser. (Your device has to be on the same wireless network as the computer you're uploading through.)

Once you've picked a family of beats, you can switch among six individual … Read more

Musicians are a paradox when it comes to technology. They have voracious appetites for the latest, greatest gear, but unlike the average tech consumer, they also have a near-religious reverence for all things vintage.

Looking back on what I consider the year's coolest gear for musicians, the thread that ties it all together (well, most of it) is this balance of new and antique. From a guitar pedal that sounds like a tube amplifier from 1959, to USB interfaces that return the look and feel of a pre-Pro Tools era--music tech has a unique way of pushing forward while … Read more

There's never been a better time to get into DJing. Gone are the days when DJs had to break their backs hauling turntables, record crates, and heavy analog mixes. Today, just combine a laptop, a USB DJ control surface, and a hard drive full of MP3s, and get ready to set the roof ablaze.

That said, professional DJ control surfaces aren't exactly cheap. Two of my personal favorites, the Vestax VCI-300 and the Numark NS7, hover around the $1,000 mark.

For those looking to dip their feet into digital DJing, but not quite $1,000 deep, the … Read more

DjVu, pronounced "deja vu," is an advanced image compression technology that simplifies the difficult process of scanning and digitizing paper documents in a format that captures enough detail to be useful but in files small enough to distribute online. Developed by AT&T Labs in 1996, it's since been advanced by an open-source forum of the same name. It's gaining in popularity since it promises to make available tons of books, magazines, and other important stuff that otherwise would come in files much too large to be hosted by anyone but the likes of NASA.… Read more

Amidio makes some heavy-duty musical apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch; I was particularly impressed with StarGuitar, which gives you a virtual guitar with a bunch of preset rhythms, letting songwriters create quick sketches of ideas when they're nowhere near a guitar.

On Tuesday, Apple approved a new Amidio app, called TouchDJ, for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it's both very impressive from a technical standpoint and a heck of a lot of fun. The iPhone can only play one audio track at a time, but TouchDJ essentially fools it into placing two MP3s side by side for simultaneous, real-time manipulation and playback. It's like a two-track digital DJ setup right on your iPhone.

You get a crossfader to control the balance between the two tracks, plus individual controls for each track's volume, pitch/speed (which aren't independent from one another, unfortunately), equalization (three bands), and effects (the built-in real-time effect sounds like a kind of flanger, and there are several lame samples of a low-pitched robot voice, but you can upload your own). Each track is represented by simple waveform images that use a different color for the bass, which helps you match beats more effectively. A tempobend effect, which lets you quickly bend the speed up or down on either track, also helps you get in sync.

The looping functions were most impressive--you can create a cue and loop mark at any point in either track, then return to the cue with the rewind button, move to the loop mark with the fast forward button, or create an endless loop between the two points. All of this is in real time. If you've got an audio splitter, you can even create a separate cue track for your headphones--for example, to set up a loop in your second track while the first one is playing, without exposing your experimentation to your audience--although this requires some serious processing power, and is recommended only for an iPhone 3GS.

There are a couple caveats.… Read more

Native Instruments' Traktor DJ software is an industry standard for legions of digital DJs with laptop-based rigs. Unfortunately, as the company's software has grown increasingly sophisticated, the prospect of using your laptop's trackpad to control it becomes a bit ridiculous.

In an effort to make your laptop's trackpad obsolete, Native Instruments is launching a dedicated USB DJ controller named Traktor Kontrol X1. Due to hit shelves in February of 2010, the Kontrol X1 includes every knob, button, and slider a DJ could desire, and touts a retail price of $229.

A stripped-down version of Traktor DJ software (… Read more