Digital DJing – modern day jungle
Loads of DJ choices. Pic: Øyvind Bye Skille.
It’s a jungle out there. A jungle of different digital DJing platforms, controllers, sound cards and all.
Being a “traditional DJ” is much easier. If you play vinyl (like we all did back in the good old days) you had couple of choices, and in 99% of the cases it was a Technics turntable.
Couple of years forward, in the new millennium playing CDs got easier and Pioneer CDJ-1000 became an industry standard.
Now you can play music from your laptop with a digital DJing system, control the music with CDs, turntables or a controller. And that is just why it’s so damn complicated.
There are too many options.
Personally I think digital DJing with CD/vinyl control is just a short phase before everyone is starting to mix within the software with their dedicated controllers. The problem at the moment preventing that is that there isn’t a industry standard like in playing cd or vinyl.
Who’s there?
Ableton Live can be used for DJing, but is in better use when used for live performances or studio production. Serato Scratch Live is one of the best programs out there when it comes to controlling digital music with a turntable.
Their collaboration, The Bridge, gives an artist an advantage to use the best of both programs DJ wise, if you own both the products (and if you got into the public beta, as it’s still not commercially released). Here’s a post about it at Innotune.
If you didn’t understand the previous, don’t blame yourself, the situation is just as complicated as was the sentence.
Oh, Serato also has a program / concept called ITCH. That is pretty much a version Scratch adapted to be used only with the dedicated controllers. More info and a full list of ITCH controllers can be found from their site.
There is a software called Virtual DJ, version 7 soon to be released. It’s affordable, and can be used with controllers and all.
There is Native Instruments Traktor. Native Instruments are known for their virtual studio plugins, synths and recently DJing software. They have slowly but steadily expanded towards hardware industry too, there’s audio interfaces mainly for DJ use. They are steadily releasing dedicated controllers for their Traktor DJ software that takes the playing and performance to the next level.
Their latest performance system is now introduced, yet awaiting for the release date to public. It’s called Traktor Kontrol S4.
Conclusion, concussion, confusion?
I don’t know why, but I feel Native Instruments and Traktor at the moment are taking the role of the industry leader. It might be the software, it might be the controllers under their own name. It might be the german engineering combined with US marketing. It might be the clever use of big-name-artists and social media. It might be the fact that they’ve done a lot of work simplifying the digital DJ platforms easier to understand.
At the moment I could go out there and buy a gigantic amount of different software, controllers, audio interfaces and all – trying to find the right combination just for me. But instead I rather wait for the commercial release of that Kontrol S4 and just burn CDs before that – like I’ve done for the past 7 years.
If you are working for some of the DJ software companies and you are reading this text, please take this little piece of advice or request: Please make it easier to choose your software. Please make it easier to choose the controller to play the music.
Compare the situation to mobile phones. Apple releases one new phone model a year. Just one. Nokia releases, well… Nokia releases several phones a quarter, most of which I’ve never even hear of.
Today, when I’m writing this, Native Instruments is the Apple of DJ Software industry. The others are not.
Make it simpler. Survive.
5 Responses to “Digital DJing – modern day jungle”
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Totally agree with this. Ever since I ditched my 1210′s to go digital I’ve just been hopping from CDs to this-and-that…
I am hoping the S4 is the solution!
I don´t agree. It´s not that Traktor is the “best” software, be it regarding technical issues, usage or support issues, Serato, VDJ and Traktor are pretty much on-par. In the end it comes down to personal preference. I could never stand serato, utilizigng a vertically scrolling visual reproduction of the tracks I play.
Traktor, on the other hand, often messes up Beatgrids and is absolutely unusable if you go beyong the 140-150 bpm range. Here, VDJ has an option “Don´t allow beatgrids under xx bpm”…
Then VDJ looks bad and is a horror in setting it up. So in the end, everything has its up and downsides.
It´s pretty much comparable to DJ mixers. There are DJs who prefer DJMs all the way, others rather use Allen & Heath. I think in the end it will not boil down to quality but to succesfull marketing and pricing.
sorry for the double comment, maybe just merge it
it´s also the same with music production software. some say logic is top because of its usability and mix engine. others say they prefer cubase or even ableton, like mr. schossow. in the end, it all boils down to personal preference.
we live in a mostly digital world, music software has evolved a lot in the last years. and in the end it´s not about quality anymore it´s about usability and personal preference.
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