NEW: algoriddim djay 2 for iPad and iPhone

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With this post, I can finally emerge from my dark hole of a home office to announce that algoriddim djay 2 for iPad and iPhone is now out of teaser phase and into release phase. Why a dark hole? Well I was contracted to make the teaser, promo and walkthrough videos and am finally no longer a hermit, and deliriously happy to see this get into the hands of you lot.

There’s a lot to get through, so pull up a chair, and prepare to upgrade soon after:

ALGORIDDIM UNVEILS HIGHLY ANTICIPATED DJAY 2 APP
FOR iPHONE AND iPAD

Winner Of The 2011 Apple Design Award, djay, Has Been Redesigned From The Ground Up Featuring
Full Color HD Waveforms™, Enhanced Turntables, A Built-In Drum Machine, And A Host of Cutting Edge Performance Tools

(Munich, Germany) – July 25, 2013 – Today, the creators of the world’s best-selling iOS DJ software, Algoriddim, release djay 2, the next generation of their highly acclaimed djay app for iPhone and iPad, on the App Store.  Downloaded by millions of Mac and iOS users, djay allows anyone to easily mix and scratch music from their iTunes library or enable “Automix” mode to let djay automatically create a seamless mix of their favorite songs.

djay 2 introduces a groundbreaking new user interface that utilizes sliding layers to combine turntables, HD Waveforms™ and a drum machine into an intuitive, yet powerful all-in-one DJ system.

“djay 2 represents the very heart of what we do,” says Karim Morsy, CEO of Algoriddim.  “We put years of experience and input from millions of fans into every detail to create the best possible DJ experience on iPad and iPhone. We are thrilled to bring djay 2 to market and can’t wait to see how our fans will utilize the new app.”

Retaining the simplicity of the traditional DJ turntable look-and-feel, djay 2 adds a stunning new waveform layer, which allows users to touch and interact with their music at an unprecedented level of detail and clarity. HD Waveforms provide users with precise visual cues that highlight similar sounds with similar colors, leveraging the full resolution of the Retina display on iPad and iPhone.

The all-new built-in sampler adds another dimension of creativity that allows users to trigger sounds and create drumbeats on top of their music. In addition to djay’s extensive pre-bundled content ranging from “Sound FX” to “Dubstep”, users can sample their music from iTunes on the fly to create and save their own sample banks that can be quickly loaded during a performance.

The all-new music browser makes finding and queuing songs in the iTunes library easier than ever before. With intuitive swipe gestures, users can now quickly build playlists based on song requests and upcoming tracks on the spot.  It also includes a history playlist that automatically tracks played songs. This allows users to see what has already been played during their session, making it easy to recreate a great mix.

At the heart of djay 2’s features is a cutting edge new analysis technology that associates musical patterns and sounds with color. This allows users to visually identify the chorus, verse and similar sounding parts within a song. Moreover, it accurately detects BPM, beat grids, loudness, frequency, and other information about the audio, which lays the foundation for Perfect Sync™ – a function that allows users to seamlessly blend songs together with the tap of a button and ensures they always stay beat-synchronized for a perfect transition or mash-up.

Additionally, djay 2’s turntable interface now offers virtual grooves, which are individually mapped and rendered for every song on djay’s virtual records. The unique peaks and valleys are visible just like on traditional vinyl, which allows users to quickly identify breaks within a song.

djay 2 is now available on the App Store for a one-week special introductory price of $0.99 on iPhone and $4.99 on iPad.

djay 2 for iPhone supports iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch 4^th and 5^th generation running iOS 6 or later.

djay 2 for iPad supports iPad mini, iPad 2, iPad 3 and the new iPad 4 running iOS 6 or later.

NEW FEATURES:

• All-new user interface:
  • Turntable view: Hyper-realistic “two turntables and a mixer” DJ setup for intuitive mixing and scratching
  • HD Waveforms view: New layer featuring scrolling parallel waveforms with advanced performance capabilities
  • Single deck view in portrait orientation: Single deck view allows focus on an individual deck and provides larger controls
  • Sampler view: Allows the user to add sounds to their live performance, comes with high-quality pre-bundled content
• All-new music library:
  • Queue: Perfect for upcoming songs and requests
  • History: Offers a catalog of previously played songs with auto-saved playlists
  • Light/dark mode: Adjust to a bright day-light setting or a dark-club lighting
  • Expandable full-screen view: Dynamically switch from popover to full-screen view
  • Advanced sorting: Easily browse music by BPM, Title, Artist, Time
  • Instant preview: Quickly preview a track in the library before loading it to the deck
  • Analyze library: Pre-analyze entire iTunes music library (BPM, Beat Grids, Gain, Color, etc)
• Built-in Sampler:
  • Pre-bundled content: Comes with built-in sample packs (Essentials, Sound FX, and Dubstep Pack)
  • Color-coded drum pads: Assign a color to each pad for easy identification of samples
  • Live sampling: Create custom samples recorded live from the two decks
  • Custom sample banks: Reassign samples to buttons and save as custom presets
• HD Waveforms:
  • Parallel Scrolling Waveforms View: Touch and interact with two tracks side-by-side
  • Beat Grids: Visualizes the beats and bars of a song
  • Spectral Timeline: In overview mode this shows the structure of the song (e.g. verse, chorus).  In detail mode it allows the user to distinguish bass drums, snare drums, hi-hats, etc. by color
  • Slice Mode: Slices waveform into four-beat bars and allows the user to trigger each beat individually for stunning live remixing
• Enhanced Performance Modes:
  • Slip Mode: Scratch without interrupting the flow as the music snaps back in time seamlessly
  • Loop-FX: Beat-matched looping with simultaneous XY-style filtering
• Enhanced Audio Analysis:
  • Full color waveforms: Identifies similar musical patterns within a song and associates them with color
  • Beat grids: Editable and shared via iCloud across Mac, iPad, and iPhone
  • Real Vinyl: Virtual grooves are individually mapped and rendered for every track on djay’s virtual records. It allows to quickly identify breaks within a song, as if the vinyl was fresh off the press
  • Perfect Sync: Keeps songs perfectly in sync by time-stretching their beat-grids in real-time
• Enhanced Support for DJ Hardware Controllers and Multi-Channel Audio Interfaces:
  • Improved MIDI integration: Enhanced djay’s officially supported hardware controllers with new pro-level features: Vestax Spin 2, Numark iDJ Pro, Numark Mixdeck Quad, Numark iDJ Live, Numark iDJ Live II, iDJ 2 Go, Pioneer DDJ-WeGo, and Pioneer DDJ-Ergo
  • All-new portrait interface: Optimized for Numark iDJ Pro

Wow — quite a lot to wade through, but rather than giving you a full money shot review here and now, instead I’ll bullet point the cool new and improved stuff.

It’s still djay
Opening the app gives you a familiar look and feel that made djay the much loved app that it is today. There are subtle improvements to the deck view such as coloured overview waveforms and matching vinyl grooves, but essentially it the good old djay that we’ve come to love, but with a portrait mode on all iDevices.

Better library
This has become much more usable, with portrait, full screen and club lighting mode, as well as having options to sort. 2 cool new features are a queue mode — swipe tracks into a the queue window to compile a request list, you can also assign that to automix as well. History gets a look in as well, so you can refer to that killer set that brought the house down that night you were drunk and can barely remembered what you played.

Waveforms
Hitting the little wave icon brings up the real goodies, and something that people have been begging for since djay first landed — full scrolling waveforms. These are ridiculously high resolution and fill the screen with their multi-coloured loveliness. They accurately reflect the “heat” of the music so you can quickly pick out bass beats from snares.

Slice ‘n’ Slip
Filtering through from other products in the industry are the slicer and slip mode. Slicer works much like everyone else’s, but just on 4 beats in the viewable window. Slip works exactly the same as every other implementation, but can also be used together.

See Also

The Apple Watch — any good for DJs?

Beat grids and better sync
Because of the advance analysis, tracks now get a beat grid, one that gives older live tracks a better chance of staying in sync.

Sample Mode
First seen in the David Guetta iPhone edition, samples have finally made it to all versions. It works as you might expect — load full packs or individual samples into the pads as you wish, and define pad colour too. You can even record from each deck, and share these sounds out to other audio apps and I believe Dropbox too. And you can save your own sample packs out too.

Loop fx
Take loop rolling and filters, thrown them at the XY pad and that’s the loop FX pad. It’s really nice.

There’s also this 6 minute walkthrough to get a more hands-on feel for what djay 2 can do.

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That’s the nutshell version of djay 2. As you might be able to tell, I have eaten, slept and breathed djay 2 for the best part of 2 weeks while making 3 videos for algoriddim. My overall impression of djay 2 is outstanding. The original djay tried to bring a more traditional feel to a modern format, and did it incredibly well. But having to respond to competition who are showing them a thing or 2 about how this could be done, djay 2 has  addressed the missing features in style, but done them in a very djay way.

Both Traktor DJ and DJ Player do things in a way that takes some getting used to. Traktor DJ is utterly depends on sync, thus has no pitch controls. DJ Player through traditional interfaces out of the window to offer a very modern touch based take on DJing. Djay 2 however keeps true to its roots and doesn’t try to rock the boat too much. It’s considerably more accessible than the others and beginners won’t be daunted by it at all. But what it does offer you is choice of how you operate.

It’s important to remember that this is not an update, but is a serious upgrade. For the next week, everyone can grab djay 2 for iPad and iPhone for $4.99 and $0.99 respectively. I’m sure people will moan about that just because they can, but it’s nothing, absolute peanuts in fact for what you get and what you can do with it.

So djay is right back in the game, with a lot going on to turn your head. I’m looking forward to future versions as this foundation is solid. It’ll be interesting to see how they all stack up against each other, as each one  does its own thing and evolves.