On topic for the OP, Virtual DJ from my perspective as a rookie DJ..
+Easy to use out of the box with the Mixtrack (I have the normal one myself – audio routing was super easy)
+Interface is actually pretty clean, it was very easy to look at it and see what was where and what it did
+The waveforms being on top of each other to me was super helpful for my less than stellar beatmatching
+I’m not a pro coder but I was able to remap my Sync/Stutter buttons to effects with just reading the VDJ faq and some trial and error (Read: Mapping is easy as hell)
+Everything is fairly simple with the program, really can’t stress this enough
-The out of the box effects are miserable and the filter is terrible
-The program itself doesn’t feel as professional as say Traktor
-The general image people have when you say you use VDJ is a mix or horror and laughter
Now to touch on the negatives and give some encouraging words, VDJ to me felt like I was learning on something more meant for mobile DJ’s or something of that nature. But honestly it’s a great program and a lot of the talk about the next installment in the series makes me happy I started with it and learned with it. One of the things they really nailed with this is how easy it is. I tried Traktor and it’s simple in it’s own right but if you simply open up the program with little previous experience you’re going to double take and just close it.
I recently went to a friends and when I told him what I had and what I’ve learned on he made some awful face. He had Traktor 2 Pro and an S4 that he prided himself on. He quickly shut up when I got on the decks and was seamlessly mixing electro house better than he could. Point to be made is that VDJ can and will teach you the stuff you need to know and give you the option to either expand with that program or use any other software. The argument of VDJ v Traktor (Or Serato) is really just fanboyism as at this day and age you can do anything with a computer and a FAQ or wiki. Traktor may excel at one thing while Serato another and VDJ and so on. But they can all be mapped to work with what you want to do. In the end as I’ve always read and experienced first hand, it’s not the soft/hardware it’s the person behind the decks.
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