Djay, the groundbreaking Mac app from Algoriddim featured in a recent iPad commercial, just became available on both sides of the iOS platform and also got a significant update to its iPad version. The $9.99 app turns your iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS into a pair of mixing decks. Load up songs from your iTunes music library, and you can beat sync, scratch and transition between songs like a pro. You can also record your genius mix and export it as a high-quality AIFF file. Both the iPhone and the iPad versions of djay are surprisingly similar to the $49.99 desktop version of the software, used by professional and amateur DJs. One important feature that both iOS versions lack, however: the ability to lock in the key of a song.
Match the BPMs of songs at vastly different tempos, and the one you’re queuing up will start to sound either warbly or a bit baritone. When djay for the Mac automatically beat-matches songs, it is able to do so without changing the key of either tune. It’s a magical feature that can, in this writer’s experience, make DJ-ing a party almost scarily easy. Algoriddim’s head of product development, Frederik Seiffert, says that key-locked beat matching is almost impossible on the current iPhone and first-generation iPad’s hardware. “But we might consider doing it for the iPad 2 when we see one,” says Seiffert. Algoriddim is headquartered in Munich, Germany, where the iPad 2 will not be available until the end of the month.
In the meantime, the company has been no slouch on the iPad front. At the same time as it launched its iPhone app, it also released a free upgrade to the $20 iPad app, with enough new features that it might as well be labeled djay 1.5. Scratch the spinning disk with two fingers rather than one, and djay will make sure your scratch lasts for a precise number of beats. And at the tap of a few fingers, the app will loop a single measure of the track over and over. Again, it understands the rhythm and will make sure the loop is precise, so you don’t have to (unless you want to). Call it the T-Pain app for DJs.
Gone are the “low memory” messages that plagued the iPad app in its original iteration. The iPad 2, where it runs faster than ever and gives the Mac version a serious run for its money. You can even pre-cue, ie. Listen to your next song without disturbing the party, with the help of a couple of connectors from Radio Shack. Once it adds the ability to lock in keys for songs, there’ll be little that the iPad version lacks. Same goes for the iPhone version though will probably have to wait until iPhone 5 or 6 for the hardware to allow it. Still, the iPhone app is best in its class, even without those new iPad features. In short, there’s no excuse for road trips to be badly DJ’d ever again.
In the meantime, the company has been no slouch on the iPad front. At the same time as it launched its iPhone app, it also released a free upgrade to the $20 iPad app, with enough new features that it might as well be labeled djay 1.5. Scratch the spinning disk with two fingers rather than one, and djay will make sure your scratch lasts for a precise number of beats. And at the tap of a few fingers, the app will loop a single measure of the track over and over. Again, it understands the rhythm and will make sure the loop is precise, so you don’t have to (unless you want to). Call it the T-Pain app for DJs.
Gone are the “low memory” messages that plagued the iPad app in its original iteration. The iPad 2, where it runs faster than ever and gives the Mac version a serious run for its money. You can even pre-cue, ie. Listen to your next song without disturbing the party, with the help of a couple of connectors from Radio Shack. Once it adds the ability to lock in keys for songs, there’ll be little that the iPad version lacks. Same goes for the iPhone version though will probably have to wait until iPhone 5 or 6 for the hardware to allow it. Still, the iPhone app is best in its class, even without those new iPad features. In short, there’s no excuse for road trips to be badly DJ’d ever again.