DJ Player Teaser (1)
News

TEASER: Something new from DJ Player

Late on Friday evening, I was sent a rather cryptic video from our buddy Gábor Szántó, the rather clever maker of iOS app DJ Player. It arrived with little more than a single line:

“I know you like frame-by-frame analyzation. :-)”

DJ Player Teaser (1)

So frame by frame it I did, and came up with a few observations of my own. I bounced them off of Gábor, who is being very coy about exactly what we’re looking at. But It’s quite exciting for an iOS app.

So we figured that it would be fun to just turn it over to you lot for comment and general sleuthing. Obviously Gábor will be watching and will comment as he sees fit. Or maybe not.

DJ Player Teaser (2)

No clues, or hints — just dig in, speculate, and say what you see. More news is coming very soon.

Tags
Mark Settle
The Old Owner
I was the editor around these parts for the first two decades of the DJWORX journey. I’m on a creative journey at The Worxlab, and drop in occasionally here. Expect the odd article from me every now and again.
Related
whathifi technics turntable prototype IFA 2015
Previous Brace yourselves — Technics teases new turntable at IFA 2015
Pioneer DJ HDJ-700 headphones BPM 2015 (1)
Next BPM 2015: HDJ-700 headphones from Pioneer DJ

33 Comments

        1. Unfortunately the Audio 4 is an older design, it’s not fully USB Audio Class Compliant. That means it doesn’t work with iOS devices, it requires a driver which you can not install on iOS.
          The latest Audio 6 works well.

          1. Thank you! I’ll just use a little USB DAC for one of the outputs then. By the way, I’m really impressed with the integration with the Numark iDJ Pro – I’ve ditched DJay ;)

  7. I doubt it’s stems, since NI haven’t been too forthcoming in sharing any details on how to deal with them outside of their own hardware.

    DJ Player already has the ability to display a single track as 4 waveforms, so you can see various peaks & troughs for different frequencies.

    The super-sized waveforms could indicate a progression for DJ Player – particularly for controller / DVS use, where you may not need most of the controls replicated onscreen.

    Whatever it is, you can guarantee Gabor has put a huge amount of effort in and it will ooze quality.

    Exciting, it’s about time some of the other apps start refreshing their functionality & UI…they’re all quite a way behind in feature lists.

      1. Only the full version can be opened in software without particular stems support, not individual stems. Given that the stems format specifies some compressor/limiter functionality, stems support is not as straightforward as it seems. Especially without developer docs (although i reverse-engineered the format already).

          1. 1/8: @DJWORX:disqus , @happydan:disqus and @szantog:disqus , I’m not sure if linking directly to competing websites is allowed, but Ean Golden has written a comprehensive article with accompanying video on DJTechTools entitled, ‘Hacking Stems: How To Extract Parts From Stem Files’.

            2/8: As well as support for Stems, I’d also like to see support for the Native Instruments D2 controller.

            3/8: Support for Tuna Knobs would be nice, too.

            ** The following questions are longer! **

            4/8: I notice that Apple Music support has been suggested but ruled out due to the lack of a developer API, and Szanto’s discussions with Spotify have been less successful that those of Algoriddim / Djay Pro. It also seems as though Deezer Elite 16-bit/44.1kHz streams are still limited to Sonos devices, although Kaz Hirai namechecked them at Sony’s IFA 2015 press conference so perhaps that may be changing.

            5/8: Even if iOS 9.1 still downsamples to 16-bit/44.1kHz (does it?) and therefore offers no benefit to certain ClassicsOnline HD LL streams, Deezer Elite and Qobuz’s native 16-bit/44.1kHz streams could still benefit.

            6/8: What about support for TIDAL streaming and Meridian MQA, particularly when the two are combined late this year or early next?

            7/8: In the absence of the kind of combined / adopted storage or USB OTG support that will be seen natively in Android 6.0 Marshmallow with microSDXC cards and external hard drives such as a 2.5″ 9.5mm 2TB Samsung/Seagate M9T in a trayless, tool-free, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) enclosure such as one based on the ASMedia ASM1351 chipset: StarTech’s S251BPU31C3 (USB Type-C to USB Type-C) or S251BPU313 (USB Type-A to USB 3.1 Type Micro-B), I suggested connecting the enclosed drive to one of the 5W powered USB Type-A ports on HyperDrive’s iUSBport 2 standalone unit and then browsing its contents wirelessly in DJplayer via the WebDAV protocol. Szanto said he was working on supporting this – has there been any progress?

            8/8: I echo the tvOS suggestions for Apple TV 4th Gen, but it would also be nice to see basic AirPlay support for using an Apple TV 3rd Gen as a video sink. Szanto mentioned that regular Android 5.0 Lollipop still wasn’t suitable, but Android TV support for taking advantage of the 4K resolution of the NVIDIA SHIELD when it is updated to Android 6.0 Marshmallow would be good if that shows an improvement. Regardless, perhaps iOS Google Cast support could still be implemented alongside AirPlay?

            1. Hi Nicholas,

              thank you for your detailed list.

              1/8:

              While extracting individual stems from the file is relatively easy, the stems format requires the use of a stems-optimized compressor and limiter by Native Instruments. Stems creators can adjust the settings of the compressor and the limiter, and the resulting sound is an important part of the format.

              I’m working on a Superpowered compressor and limiter with the same sound characteristic, but super high performance.

              2/8:

              Native Instruments doesn’t make midi controllers. Every controller by Native Instruments communicates with a custom closed protocol. The driver of these devices can create a virtual midi device, so third party applications can see the controller.

              But you can not install drivers on iOS. Controllers by Native Instruments are invisible for apps on iOS. Except NI’s Traktor DJ, which can communicate with them via a special MFi interface, which is strictly bound to Traktor DJ.

              3/8:

              I would not like to redesign this beautiful new interface for Tuna Knobs. Furthermore, how would you browse the library with the knobs in place?

              5/8:

              iOS doesn’t downsample anything at all, never did this. DJ Player operates with the native samplerate, which is 48 kHz usually.

              6/8:

              There is no open API or common API for streaming services. Every service needs a custom deal, and a custom API. Tidal doesn’t have an API at all, it’s popularity and availability is quite low.

              7/8:

              I had no time so far to deal with WebDAV, sorry.

              8/8:

              What’s the benefit of this?

              1. @szantog:disqus , thank you for your swift reply.

                Thanks for the corrections on the Native Instruments controllers and native iOS sample rate.

                I would still recommend looking into MQA decoding as my understanding is that it will be used by digital download sites as well as streaming sites.

                Even if you don’t have any interest in VJIng, or even visualisations, my suggestions of support for AirPlay and Google Cast were so that an individual window within the application – the X-Y pad or the waveforms, for instance – could be broadcast so that there could be some level of visual stimulation for the audience.

        3. Interesting, couldn’t you just specify for your software to read the specific stream (Stream #0:0 through Stream #0:4) for each stem piece in the mp4 container? I’ve pulled a bunch of individual stems out of tracks using ffmpeg and they don’t sound bad at all.

  9. Gabor, while I’ve been a critic of your UI design, I love where this is going and how you are pushing the dj envelope with iOS. I’m really looking forward to trying this release with controllers and DVS.

  10. There are some key indicators on the waveforms. Are we seeing key mixing taken to a new level? Being able to match and possibly sync keys from different track using waveform matching perhaps?

    Gabor really good teaser as you got me!

    Looking forward to finding out more.

  11. Oh oh my guess is midi pattern! Next guess is that a synth with presets can be made to match the playing notes of the track. This is something I do in Ableton, take a beat usually the percussive hats and snares convert to a drum pattern and then just insert my favorite synth, it works almost flawlessly and creates the same rhythm and velocity. The midi notes do look more like a melody though.
    Well maybe not. But I think I’m close.
    It must generate the notes though because, drawing them in for each use would be hell.
    Quite confused with the part that looks like stems. But the other clue is the word “roll”.
    “Piano roll”?

  12. I’m wondering whether it’s a timeline feature to allow playback & tweaking of transitions/parameters of previously recorded mixes…for those mixtape perfectionists!

    1. I don’t think the increased screen space of the iPad Pro needs a specific app. As the current DJ Player displays a slightly different UI on smaller and larger screens, this approach can work for the iPad Pro as well to show more controls.

      I don’t know how the new Apple TV can be useful for DJing. Please note that Apple TV apps have quite serious limitations, such as the inability to store any files locally. Do you have any ideas for the new Apple TV?

      1. I don’t know about API and framework limitations on tvOS but as simple view I imagine the new appletv the best platform for vjing complement to a regular ipad/mac. Also, even if it didn’t support midi, it could be “hackable” trhought gamekit…
        About the pro, I wasn’t asking about screen size which is a good point… My question was more focused in the powerhouse cappabilities and extras such force touch and pencil sdk to hack some kind of glove with sensivity ;)

        1. I’m not interested in vjing, sorry. You can not pass through midi with gamekit, what do you mean?

          Even the power of the first iPad Air is more than enough for most DJing stuff with 4 decks and effects. The increased CPU power of the iPad Pro will be great to see super quick track analyzations.

          Force touch has 3 “levels” (normal touch, peak and pop). 3 levels are not enough for effects, but will be good for some alternate functions (no need for shift in some cases).

          The pencil… can you imagine a DJ in a club performing fx with the pencil?

          1. I should look into vidibox for vjing. With midi out from djplayer it will work.

            i’m not sure if coremidi is or will be implemented in future tvOS but I could imagine an HID bluetooth controller from NI working with gamekit in the same way their non class compliant controllers “talk” HID nowadays… Another solution could be boxes like bomebox which could script “midi2hid” commands to make it compatible. Not perfect solution but almost possible.

            About horsepower for track analization I will love to see some melodyne stems (as I pointed in other comment) extracting from stereo mix 4 tracks with bass, drums, synth and vocals. Some smartmixing for frequencies and sidechain compression (like djm2000) could be interesting too.

            Force touch seems limited but useful as you pointed. About pencil I was wondering the possibility to implement the sdk into another bt device such a glove to make possible touch more accurate or even velocity for pads and keys.

            I hope it makes some sense to anyone.
            Thank you so much Gábor to be so open minded and shar your thoughts with us.

  14. Last week I bought this app, DJ PLAYER. It is amazing…works perfectly on my ipad air 2 with the audio 10 dj.
    One of the impruvements in horizontal waves, could be to put off the first column in external mode (key, slip, %….) that it is not necessary, or at least, give the oportunity to the user to put it or not. In this way the waves would be increased in order to get more control with the pitch bend.

    But, the app is seriously good. I’m fascinated.