DJCity Pool app review

Another app review, this time an app which might be a trailblazer in terms of DJ Pools.  The full review can be read here.  Kudos has to go to DJCity who have had the foresight to branch out into mobile apps as a method of previewing tracks on the move and quickly.

The app is free - to use all the features you need to be a member of DJCity;

...and also available on the Android Market place too;



DJ Player 4.5 submitted to Apple with new price.

For those that have been eagerly waiting for the new features in DJ Player 4.5 to hit the app store, it wont be long!

If you're one of the few who haven't purchased the app yet, the price will go up with the new version - the new prices will be;

$47.99 / 37.99 EUR / £33.99

Currently DJ Player is priced at $37.99 / 29.99 EUR / £26.99 - so grab it now before the price rise!

DJ Player - new developments

It's always exciting when the next round of beta testing starts on DJ Player, because you just know the functionality is going to be impressive and rock solid.  This time round it's no exception and you'll be glad to hear that bespoke Key Lock code has made it in!  NB: We had some discussion a while back about timestretch/Key Lock functionality in iOS.  Here's the detail direct from the development team;

New Features:

• Key-lock (time-stretching) in the ±16% range.
• If key-lock is off, pitch bend still has it (in the ±16% range).
• Live camera background option (iPad 2 only).
• Louder headphone output.
• Pre-listening is now "balanced" between cue and master.
• A little bit faster track analyzing.
• Thanks to the drastical CPU savings, effects don't turn off when the app goes background.
• Slip on/off for reverse.
• If you save a bpm with the "save" button on the FX screen, beat-grid is re-calculated.
• Sync is more "intelligent" if mis-detected double or half bpms are matched.

"The camera background is so much fun! But the big thing we are very proud of is: time stretching. Here is the story behind.

We develop everything in-house, we don't license or use any third-party component, plugin or other thing. We started to work on this functionality 18 months ago! But hiqh-quality time stretching is super hard to compute, and the processing power in mobile devices is much, much weaker than your desktop or laptop. Don't look the GHz, it means much less than you think today.

There are basically two ways to perform time stretching, one is calculated in the "time domain", the other is in the "frequency domain". Explaining those in plain english would be too complex, but not necessary.

"Time domain" requires much much less processing power than "frequency domain", but it's most audible artifacts for dance music are the so-called "doubling kicks" and "missing kicks". As the music plays, one or two kicks in the next 8 bass drums will sound always strange, sometimes the kick is missing from the beginning of the bass drum, sometimes it's doubled. This effect is also very audible for high-hats. You can find this time stretching method in many mobile DJing softwares, because it's much easier to compute. But those artifacts are below our quality standards (would you like to have strange bass kicks in the club?), so we had to look for the another method.

Popular DVS softwares like Traktor or Serato, and the high quality desktop players (like Pioneer) is using the "frequency domain" way. It's audible artifact is "phasiness", but if it's implemented properly, most people will not hear it. Unfortunately this method is very complex and requires a lot of horsepower to calculate. So much power is needed, that doing it real-time on mobile devices is almost impossible. Only one another mobile DJing software is having this, but they could deliver it to the double-core iPad 2 only, and with reduced quality (blurry baselines).

So to implement a proper high-quality "frequency domain" time stretching, which also runs good on mobile devices is impossible? Not anymore. 18 months of hard work, a lot of investment and cutting edge innovation is arrived into your hands, something which did not exist in the world before.

And it runs on single core iOS devices (except the iPhone 3GS) with two decks continuously playing, without any reduced quality!"

It will be a while until these features hit the app store, but worth keeping a look out.  No doubt once they've made it onto DJ Player officially, it wont be long until they get onto the Red Bull BPM DJ app too.

DJ Player is currently priced at $37.99;

DJ Nihal's NYE mix...

Just noticed that Nihal's excellent NYE mix from 31.12.2011 in London is now on Soundcloud;

FIREWORKSMIX2012 BY DJ NIHAL by DJ Nihal

...in fact, it's been up there ages!

Happy Valentine's Day

It must have been a brave advertising company that suggested a scratch routine anything sex related!

5 Mobile Apps That Turn Listener Into DJ

Another of my articles is available over at the DigitalDJTips website, this time discussing how apps are being used by the industry to distribute audio content in a more immersive and interactive manner.  The article covers;

• Mashbox by Beatport
• Remiix Dubfire by Liine
• Synse & Synse THAG
• Toast by Moldover (on RJDJ)
• Biophilia by Bjork

It was just a little something to do whilst not using targeted DJ apps...which I'm getting back to shortly!

Record Store Day Guide app

Here's a free and useful universal app to supplement the forthcoming Record Store Day (April 21st).  It's a streamlined version of the website and gives you details of their twitter and facebook feeds as well as using GPS to locate nearby participating stores.

Maybe the most useful feature for me will be the guide to products available on the day - handy when queueing outside shops at 7am!

DJTT - Key Detection Comparison - Update for 2012

DJTechTools have re-done their earlier Key Detection comparison from 2009 with MixedInKey, BeaTunes and RapidEvolution.  The full article is here.

What's interesting is that the best software results still only offers around 42% accuracy (based on the very small sample of tracks picked by DJTT - I think the sample set was 50).  Also the difference in results noticed between the paid software of MixedInKey and the free RapidEvolution appear to be only the time taken.  BeaTunes still appears to be lagging behind in their tests.

Having studied Maths with Statistics many many years ago (in the days when everyone was using vinyl), a sample group of 50 tracks seems a paltry target source to release success figures.  While the article was interesting, the stats do need to be taken with a degree of caution.

I've just tried running RapidEvolution 3 on my Windows 7 64bit laptop and there seem to be some issues, it is still in Beta mode though so perhaps these will get ironed out over time.

Note to self: Get track metadata sorted BEFORE moving tracks onto iPad / iPod Touch!