A year ago Algoriddim introduced djay Pro to Mac, the professional version of the company’s highly popular DJ software that ever beginners can love, and today djay Pro is coming to iPad. It’s a whole new app for the tablet with a super clean look, loads of new features, and a highly responsive design. That means features like Split View and Slide Over totally work, letting you mix in djay Pro and actually use a second app alongside it. And while djay Pro is one of the first pro class apps to hit the iPad Pro where it really shines, it’s fully available on newer iPads as well. Check it out:
The all-new djay Pro was built with the iPad Pro in mind with impressive support for iOS 9 multitasking through Split View and Slide Over in both landscape and portrait. Like all side-by-side apps, this works best on the iPad Pro’s 12.9″ display but also works on the 9.7″ iPad Air 2 and 7.9″ iPad mini 4. This lets you put djay Pro next to Safari, Tweetbot, or even Crossy Road for some mixing while weaving through traffic. It’s unclear if GarageBand will support Split View and Slide Over when it updates for iPad Pro, but ideally djay Pro and GarageBand running side-by-side would be killer and Algoriddim is ready.
Adding to the desktop level features, djay Pro supports more than 70 keyboard shortcuts for hardware keyboards including Smart Keyboard and Bluetooth keyboards. That’s more keyboard shortcuts supported by any single app I’ve seen yet that the shortcut list that pops up when you hold the Command key is paginated across multiple sheets. Compare to these to see for yourself.
This should be huge especially for DJs moving from the Mac to the iPad. djay Pro also features hardware integration with DJ controllers like Reloop Beatpad, Reloop Beatpad 2, Pioneer DDJWeGO, Numark Mixdeck Quad, Numark iDJ Pro, plus more, and multi-channel USB audio interface support.
Plus djay Pro now supports up to four audio tracks at the same time on the iPad, and up to two 4K video streams at 6o frames per second. You’ll also discover highly impressive video effects that mix right with the music including transitions, titles, and overlays.
There’s also Spotify integration for subscribers so you can have their massive streaming catalog right within djay Pro, of you can use your own music or a mix of both. And Cue Points, beat grid edits, metadata, and FX purchases sync now between Mac and iOS so you can access these on both platforms.
You can grab djay Pro for iPad at a launch price of $19.99 from the App Store today so both new customers and upgraders pick it up before it goes to its regular $29.99 price, competitively priced against the $50 djay Pro for Mac. Marking the djay Pro for iPad launch, djay for iPhone and Apple Watch is free for a limited time.
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Glad to hear that.
I have been a largely UNHAPPY user of TRAKTOR DJ for iOS and I’ll definitely be trying this later today.
I wonder why Native Instruments still keeps the Traktor DJ for iOS in its list of products, when they don’t even bother maintaining it the least bit and making some long-requested improvements to some serious usability issues. NI seems to bother fixing things only when they receive enough flame about it. So, I guess they’re in for another round.
TDJ could have been a brilliant app, had it received the proper attention. It’s a shame.
ok, so I gave it a spin. It’s like with Traktor I was using a toy, comparatively.
My major complaints with Traktor were:
1. syncing of cue points between iOS devices NEVER bl**dy worked! Bought a new iPad and I would now have to re-tag about 7000 songs (same exact library). It also never worked on previous occasions. I’ll do it once more for djay Pro and that’s it
2. no usable way of distinguishing already-played tracks
3. coupled with a messed up way to differentiate between sessions
4. no track preview on the drawer. You have to load, play, repeat
5. a totally useless yet very invasive “Recommended Tracks” list
Of these (1) remains to be confirmed, (2) and (3) work admirably, (4) is there and (5) gladly is not. Plus djay has tons more feature that make our life much easier. Spotify is nice to have (I guess Apple Music is on the way), AutoMix is there, access to files outside your library is there (Synology DS File, Google Drive, Dropbox are there), Sampler, just to name a few. Overall the app is MUCH better thought out. I’ll plug it in on my console over the weekend and see how it behaves there – though I expect it to be just fine.
There’s one thing both apps share that I find mildly annoying: I have structured playlists, yet I see them as one flat list of playlists in both apps. So I have to name my playlists accordingly. It would be nice if either app somehow respected this structure, sorting the list-of-playlists by parent folder and hinting at the structure. Otherwise, it’s nice that we see one flat list of playlists.
Things I’d like to see improved:
– one thing Traktor does better is how you can reset/adjust the rhythm markers. Both apps generally miss the “1” (though djay seems MUCH better at it, I admit I haven’t tested this enough). Traktor has a very useful and intuitive “Tap mode” (perhaps because they know their rhythm-guessing isn’t “there”). Djay lacks this, as far as I’ve seen, and the alternatives aren’t quite useful. Especially the grid shift is way too slow.
– automatic processing of the whole library in the background. I’d love to press a button and leave my iPad ripping through the library, pre-processing all its tracks one morning (or two, or three ;) )
– on an iPad mini the waveform preview often jumps. Guys, we can do with a less fancy waveform preview that eats less CPU cycles.
All in all, djay Pro is lightyears ahead of Traktor. With Traktor, NI seems to have made a good start, released something vey respectable to begin with, but never bothered putting the resources afterwards and making this the app it should have been. It’s a shame, because the engineering behind the app is “there” and it shows (I speak as a software engineer with an expertise in user interfaces. This is my day job, but I like to dj on occasion – old job back at the uni years).
Unless I mis-understand your goal, you CAN process your tracks in the background. Open up the window to select a new track, go to the “tracks” tab at the bottom, scroll to top, hit “More…” and then select “Analyze songs.”
hope that helps!
Have they figured out how to use the headphone jack for precueing and the lightning port for audio output? It really isn’t usable otherwise.
I’ve used DJ since day one – it’s always supported pre-cueing via the headphone socket – inexpensive headphone splitter does the trick. Back before lighting, my audio breakout cable attached to the base gave audio out, only difference now is my adapted from lightning to the old style connector for my audio out. It works great :)
Back before lightning*…
Some of these features are interesting, but what I really need is an application where I can undo an action, or rollback to some point in a show, to start recording from there. Without such a feature, you end-up having to record again a full set from scratch, only because you made a mistake at some point.