First Controller choice for Ipad

Honestly, I think DJing with the iPad is just not there yet.

It is OK for home and bedroom use (and the Wego and Beatpad would be my 2 first choices, depending on your DJing style) but it is just not there yet for use in a club or even mobile.

So if you want to stay in the bedroom go with either controller that fits you more style wise, if you want to go back in the clubs or do a mobile DJing business, then you will want to go with a laptop and a more pro grade controller.

As usual I tend to disagree with Terry (just kidding, but true in this case) :D.

Really, what is  it the iPad can’t do that a PC can. Especially if you are not into 4-deck operation. If, like me, you are a mobile DJ that does loads of various events, including small scale business activities, an iPad-based system makes perfect sense.

Here’s the thing though. Most (actually all but one) controllers for iPad have reserved a spot for the iPad at the back of the controller, often attached by a very shaky, inadequate mounting. Someone comes up to you, leans on the iPad, snap! People dance in front of your set a little too enthusiastic, bang!

The only ones that got it right are Numark with the iDJ Pro. Pretty good jogwheels and such, enough buttons to make it a feasible controller for (semi)-pro work. Rotary channel faders might not appeal to all and I have a few other minor gripes with the unit … but! the way they integrated the iPad so it becomes one with the unit, giving you a full 10″ touch screen that you can actually use since it doesn’t move a hair sitting in it’s doc. The connector is behind a cover lid, so no accidental pulling it out or breaking off because of a drunk dancer.
I have mine in a flight case and take it with me with one bag with two speaker stands and my two Mackie SRM450v2s or Mackie HD1220s. One crate with a few cables, a mic and my trusty HD25-IIs and I am off to the races.

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It truly is a very compact setup. It’s designed to work with DJAY, which is not my favorite DJ app. Since version 6x DJ Player has native support for the iDJ Pro and that is a SWEEEET combination. No visual rotating platters, but nice parallel waveforms right down the middle, good to great integration and on the iPad all the things you can’t do on the iDJ Pro and vice versa.

Ok, so iPads only have 64GB of available memory. Effectively I think you can up to about 50-55 GB of music on there. Which (at 320kbps MP3) means about 5.000 tracks. I am working on a core collection of about 2.000 (max) tracks. For small events that should be way plenty.

So, the iDJ Pro with DJ Player to me is a very real and useful combination. I don’t want to do a high end club night with it, but for anything that requires quick and dirty it will do absolutely fine.

I had a party of my own at which I did not want to play. I put the iDJ Pro there and had some stuff run on autoplay. I have a number of DJ’s in my friends group. So as the night progressed, all of them gathered around the iDJ Pro at some point or another and spun some tunes. Great fun!

From january on I have made a deal with a good friend of mine and his wife. She sings in a quartet doing mostly motown/soul/disco classics. They look nice, sound good and get booked at least once every 2-3 weeks. They perform for two sets of 45 minutes with a 20-minute break. They want to offer their customers a more complete show. So they asked me to come and do 30-45 minutes to warm up the crowd, keep the crowd warm during their break and finally do 30-60 minute as an after-party.

Total playing time under two hours. PA is there. You know I am not gonna bring the full SC-2900/X1600 coffin :_). Even the MC6000 with laptop is overkill. Just the iDJ Pro, tossed on my DJ stand (I timed it, I can set it all up in under 15 mins!), plug two XLR leads into the PA and PARTY!

Packing up is done in less than 10 minutes. I am not gonna be rich of it, but it beats sitting at home practicing and I get to hand out my business cards. Have a nice banner with DJ Vintage on it which is there for all to see all night.

Long story short: It really depends on what you want out of it, but for the afore mentioned reasons, the iPad is plenty powerful enough for DJ-ing purposes.

Greetinx,

Chuck

<EDIT> And yes, one of my gripes is they could have added a USB-port so you can hook it up to a PC as well. The good news though, there is a 32-pin connector to USB adapter that allows you to hook the iDJ Pro up to your MacBook (for example) and use it as a full midi-controller. Vids on youtube as proof of concept. That is not for me, because when I have to bring a laptop I will use either the coffin or my MC6000 setup. But if the iDJ Pro were to be your only controller, that would help you get the best of both worlds.

1) The thing is actually by far the loudest I have! I play with the master at 20-25% most times. Otherwise I can’t use my channel knobs more that 50%. The thing totally blows out amazing output signal (I actually wonder if they are not way above specs).

2) I use DJay 2 on my (finally upgraded) iOS7 iPad 3 (Retina). It works fine. And it has closed a bit of the gap with DJ Player, but not enough to consider switching. My dream scenario is still to have a landscape version of Cross for iPad. That way I’d only have one platform to maintain my tracks. It syncs nicely with RekordBox for club gigs and it would then sync with my iPad app as well. It’s rumored to come, but I am not holding my breath.

Greetinx and thanks for the addition.

Just name the pub!