PureDJ is a novel proposition from iMect, the makers of DJ Player. Their plan is to get back to basics and create a new iOS app that strips away the bells, whistles and general frippery that has infected improved DJ software. And they’d like your help to get the balance right.
There no arguing that the core requirement of DJing is incredibly simple — 2 decks with volume, EQ, and pitch control. That’s it — anything else in the art and skill of DJing can be considered an extra. In the digital age however, you need a few more controls to represent decks in a useable form.
If you check out the list created for PureDJ, they’ve actually been a bit more generous that I would have been to more accurately represent a basic setup, but perhaps this list is more in line with CDJ use. What it does lack however is a great slice of what the Seratos and Traktors (and DJ Players) or this world bring to the table.
How pure should PureDJ be?
Over to you. How far back would you strip PureDJ? If you can imagine emulating vinyl use, where you probably only had a couple of bags to flick through, organised in no particular order, you’d have to find your track and manually put it on the platter, and then manually beatmatch the tracks. Should the track library be manually sorted by dragging tracks into order? Should you have to drag the tracks to the decks rather than pressing a simple “Load A” button press? Remember, this is about taking away features to get to a bare minimum, instead of adding cool new things.
What will be fun is seeing how quickly people realise just how much they have come to take for granted and depend on the features constantly pushed before them. When you think that you might have to do without loops, cues and sync, suddenly you realise that your definition of keeping it real is quite some way from reality.
Anyway, kick this around, see what you all consider to be pure DJ features, and discuss how this can be implemented in an iPad app.
I wouldn’t worry so much about the mechanics of it, (as far as how to load decks and such)
I think you got the list pretty right though, 2 decks, pitch control, EQ and faders. I’d possibly consider looping.
While we can certainly do away with the visual representation of vinyl and turntables and emulating the entire array of gestures involved, the possibility of flicking through track artwork from a touchable, coverflow like view (in addition to a more usual list with folders and a search box of course) has been my number one wish in a dj program for years.
Many known djs who have gone digital and back have mentioned how they feel cut off from their music just looking at a list as opposed to looking at the sleeves and label art, so I can’t help but think this would rock. Just adding a small column with a picture to the usual list, while most appreciable, isn’t enough in that respect.
The other relic that needs to stay is some crude stripe view of the whole track with a position marker, obviously. Modern CDJ-level is a good starting point, higher res, welcome, spectrum coded unecessary…
Scrolling waveform unnecessary in dvs mode – the stripe and looking at a mark on the record label is enough in pratcice.
I agree with your comments especially the “crate view” idea, I’ve often thought with widesceen laptops couldn’t a coverart/list be placed either side of the screen, left and right decks being independent. The addition of touch opens this up to almost crate flicking gestures …….. I’ve actually gone back to a mostly vinyl set recently, i missed flicking through a box of tunes … so that sort of digital file management would be appreciated here.
Cool! I really like this idea. I would also be tempted to include simple looping (in, out and reloop). Pioneers old CDJ-700s would be a good reference player. I would also try to include full kill EQ’s (full turn to the left silences EQ bands), a lot of digital DJ’s want that ‘basic pro’ feature, and are continuously outraged when it’s not there. Mono headphones is a good idea too. I think a crossfader might be necessary too, you might ‘freak’ a few people out if that’s not there. It’s synonymous with DJing and I would have thought it would be part of a basic DJ setup.
Yes, we plan to have full kill EQs, as they don’t increase the UI’s complexity at all.
Mono headphones: it’s in the list that we’d have both stereo and split pre-listening, similar to DJ Player.
Personally i think looping is too much, as actually leaving out looping can ADD to the performance, requiring DJs to do it manually with DVS.
Fair enough. I hope you get enough interest to develop this app.
Filters please! They make mixing so much easier on ios apps
Did you read PureDJ’s page? http://imect.com/puredj Filters are in the YES list.
Thank you Mark for the great cover image, really cute! Please let us know what would you remove from the YES list to not look like an older CDJ unit.
We’d keep the music library browser of DJ Player, because it’s the fastest way to quickly find and load your music. We believe putting a new layer (crates) between your library and you makes things harder to use, despite of the nostalgic feeling. There are some apps doing this, try it.
One more word: if you’re interested in this project, please subscribe on the bottom of the page ( http://imect.com/puredj ), because we must have some numbers to go further with development. We’ll not use your e-mail address for other purposes, like selling it to somebody or else.
the one thing i want more than anything would be the ability to zoom in on a single deck so that the platter would take most of the screen, and then have the ability to read the waveform off the simulated vinyl. like if you think about it, a 12″ is in itself was a waveform display long before waveform displays. would be funny to simulate that with a retina display
This is what we did in the first 3 years of DJ Player. It displayed the track structure with an identical representation to the grooves of a vinyl, almost full width of the iPad’s display. But it wasn’t enough for many users, so we combined it with the overall waveform display, coloured with the grooves. The one deck mode of DJ Player shows you this.
If I were designing this I would have a cross fader (no channel faders), gain, bass, treble, 2 virtual turntables with play pause, power off and LONG faders; nearly all pitch faders on iPad apps make beat matching a thankless chore. the rest would be needless extras in my opinion (although a pitch range selector might be handy)
Thank you for your opinion. Our company will never design touch screen virtual turntables for pro DJs, sorry. We don’t think “simulated”, “virtual” physical objects work the best.
i think a Mixmeister/The One style of waveform matching would be quite interesting on a touch screen. To be honest I personally have no interest in beat matching 2 tracks on an Ipad. Id much rather use a traditional setup. However being able to create studio mixes and prepare your setlists in this format would be quite useful to me and I think a touch screen lends itself to this sort of programming. Add effect, volume and EQ automation and I reckon your onto a winner!
MixMeister had an iOS app, branded to Numark iDJ as well.
PureDJ’s target is the classic mixing DJ, sorry.
I’m going to chime in and suggest the basic that I would personally like to see from a Pure DJ program.
1. No On-screen Mixer (or at least the ability to turn off completely)
2. No On-screen Waveforms (are they really needed if you know your music?)
3. Screen will only show Cover art of whats playing / time elapsed/remaining.
4. Midi and DVS functionality with (suggest reasonably priced) 4×4 sound card used with timecode Vinyl or CD’s
5. 2x stereo outputs
6. Cue/Play/Loop functions (again with the ability to turn off completely on-screen)
7. Coverflow track browsing
Basically an A>B 2 deck + mixer app which does not clog up the screen unnecessarily if I (like many others) already have turntables/mixer or Midi controller which already have visual representations of everything I need to see.
1. It’s in the YES list (if turned to external mixer mode).
2. One more vote to have no waveforms.
3. I prefer to display more, not every controller has all features.
4-5. These features are already in, as DJ Player supports them too.
6. I feel removing looping can ADD to the DJ’s performance.
7. That’s a proven fail on touchscreen DJ use.
You can view the full screen track browser all the time if you wouldn’t like to see other controls. We’ll display time elapsed/remaining there as well.
3. Virtually every DJ orientated DJ controller has Jogs/Bass/Mid/Treble/Gain/xfader/LineFader/Browse Knob/few extras unassigned.
Thought this was an exercise is cutting the fat ;)
7. Cannot for the life of me see why it would be fail or where its been implemented (or even attempted in a DJ soft before).
In my mind I visualize playing tracks on screen left/right with big images the covers. Click Playing cover enters coverflow… So Flick through your tracks tap to load. Done – lists are just too “detached” for my tastes.
I’m gonna throw something else out there as well:
Settings screen available only in the iPad settings screen, not from within the active app whatsoever – might seem petty, but I really are all for a completely bare – bones app with literally zero chances of hitting something by accident (hence the no transport controls).
However – and just a thought… looking at the bigger picture (being that obviously it has to be financially beneficial) and I cant see (with the exception of old-school DJ’s and scratchers) the target market. Being that in the unfortunate times we live in, that kids want features over function.
Why not simply go with a more customizable GUI on DJplayer which gives the option to strip out the unnecessary on-screen fat so its just one-app to work on and one price. I’m sure thats been mulled over as well but would seem to make sense :-s
7. Try the apps “DJ with Mixr” or “DJ Mixer” and you’ll see. Using coverflow you can see much less and overlooking the library is harder, as well as sorting.
We don’t know about the target market as well, this is one reason why we ask and monitor the demand first. There are always some loud voices telling DJ Player has too much features, and the classic old voices with no sync, etc. Let’s see, if it’s worth to deliver something for them.
A customizable UI is too complex for most users, it’s a known fact that most will not even touch any settings, not to design their own interface. People like plug and play, easy things.
This is a brilliant idea! I use DJ Player to play around with music on the ipad at home and I must admit I use very few features…
As an experiment last night I turned off everything and tried manual beatmatching in the DJ Player interface. While it’s definitely doable, I find it a much slower process than using hardware. I find fine crossfader adjustments on the touchscreen really difficult. I wonder whether there’s any room to refine that UI somehow to make it easier to do those fine adjustments. Just toying with ideas here but in Apple’s music app you can drag out of the scratcher to make finer adjustments. Maybe something similar would work here?
Other than that, the only thing missing from your list which I think would be great is auto gain so that music files all default to more or less the same volume.
DJ Player is a fantastic app, Gabor. So far ahead of the competition and it’s amazing to think it’s all driven by one guy when there’s some big businesses playing in the space.
*Ahem*… I mean “pitch slider” when I said crossfader.
Fine touchscreen tempo adjustments are done on the waveform. It’s shift + bend.
Ha ha, I didn’t know that was there! Had a play last night…. I still think manual beatmatching is harder than on hardware. I guess I tend to “ride the pitch fader” to beatmatch.
My suggestion would be to allow finer adjustments by adding a “hidden” fine adjustment slider that’s parallel to the visible slider. It would be accessed by dragging a finger off the visible slider, much like the fine scrubber in the music app on IOS. Sorry, I didn’t explain that very well in my OP.
Look at CrossDJ free for iPhone… thats all you really need… pure and simple. ;)
In terms of latency, sound quality, battery life and DVS support the only thing i can say: LOL?
Why DVS? In need of a very easy 2-decks DJ app… this is all what is needed. ;)
We have our DVS solution, it’s easy to build in. It adds no complexity to the interface (reduces actually), works great, looks great. Please note PureDJ and DJ Player are targeted for the pro audience, and DVS is quite popular there.
It needs the functionality of CD DJ scratch decks. Three deck layout. Cue. Play. Pause. Hot cues. Loops. They can lose the BPM readout. The waveform should be vertical and similar to the way vinyl looks. Pitch. Key lock. Key hold. Independent key change. Independent pitch range per fader. EQ, faders/rotary graphic option, gain. Doesn’t really need samplers. Optional autogain for normalizing. Good MIDI programmability. Needs to sound at least as good as Deckadance 1 or 2 (sound different, but both very good) to set itself above the fray. Traktor’s getting worse sound. VDJ has improved slightly. Can’t tell about Serato as the Serato DJ wasn’t stable on my system.
Thanks for your opinion. This project was already canceled due not enough interest, but many of the feedback is incorporated into DJ Player 7.0.
Actually, your feature list fully covers DJ Player.