The evolution of iPhone and iPad DJing continues. Having seem Numark entomb an iPad inside the belly of the iDJ Pro, I’ve been pondering how this can be scaled down into a more compact format, and asked someone to prototype for me. In the meantime, this just popped up in my Twitter feed courtesy of DJ Neil Armstrong. A nice piece of lateral thinking from DJ Dragon sees the Frisk Fader daisy chained onto the headphone port for one deck scratching.
Digging around the net and trying (and failing badly) to make sense of Japanese, it seems that there is a standalone version on a keyring, as well as cased versions for iPhone 4 and iPhone 5. There also seems to be different versions for iOS split output and regular 2 channel (which I assume is for pre-iOS6 users). In theory however, the keyring version should be usable with any device with a headphone socket – a larger tablet for example.
The key ring is obviously cool and compact, but the case version makes the most sense from a stability perspective. I certainly wouldn’t be expecting DMC level performance from any of them though – I see this as strictly for fun. But one idea that I kicked around ages ago was ditching the tiny jog wheel style display for scratching and using a linear track style one. In this instance, given the cramped space used to display a whole deck, you might get much better response from simply moving your finger back and forth over the full length of the display rather than trying to turn a 2″ wheel.
The prices seem to be 4000 yen (around £28/$45) for any version, and the key ring versions comes in a variety of colours. The one above is a special edition that obviously appeals to me the most.
BTW remember this fun image from my iDJ Pro review back in September? Seems we were thinking on the same track. ;)