App Review: DJ Player for iPhone

I first caught wind of DJ Player while working at Behringer. We used it with our MIDI devices as a way to test the USB/MIDI functionality of our products. DJ Player was perfect for this because of the overwhelming amount of professional functionality added to make it compatible with MIDI devices. With DJ Player, you can connect MIDI devices and create custom mappings, which work seamlessly. This function alone makes it worth every penny of that FREE download.

Although beginners can use DJ Player, their target audiences are those who have a good deal of knowledge about DJing and DJ technology. The pages upon pages of menu options let you configure almost every setting. In addition to its MIDI capability, DJ Player can be used as a Digital Vinyl System much like Serato or Traktor. This feature puts this little app leaps and bounds ahead of all its competitors. As far as I know, this is the only iPhone app to support this feature.

Setup

This app takes almost no time to setup. I am not sure how it was done, but this app is only 2.6MB and can be downloaded without a WIFI network. This truly makes it an on-the-go DJ app. Access your music library by pressing the musical notes found on the top corners of the main screen.

To access the menu settings of DJ Player, double-tap the crossfader. Once this is done, you will have access to the extensive settings menu. From here you can make adjustments to the mixer, output, MIDI, decks or DVS and can also purchase the full version of the app in the store. The full version is only $9.99 and I feel it is completely worth every penny.

Music Library

Accessing your library is simple and can be done by pressing the music notes in the top corners of the app. Once in the library, browse your music by playlist, album, genre, artist or song title. In addition to this, you can get access to millions of songs online through Deezer and Dropbox. This is the first DJ app I have seen with a Dropbox pairing. This is extremely useful for me because a lot of the music projects that my colleagues and I work on, end up in my personal Dropbox folder.

One feature I found very helpful in the library was the search function with which you can search the songs in your various library locations. In addition to the search feature, the history feature is just as helpful. I can’t count how many times I have wondered about which tracks I played the night before, and in which order. This can be very helpful when trying to revisit a mix that worked really well, or for creating a tracklist for the mix you just recorded.

Mixing

The mixer functionality of DJ Player is top notch. The biggest issue when making a DJ app is the lack of space. Too often, developers are trying to cram too many features into a small app, designed for a small screen. With DJ Player they have found a few ways to split up this real estate into sections that make sense.

The layout of the mixer is standard and split onto halves of the screen. This isn’t anything different than what is found in just about every DJ app. What is different is the inclusion of a shift button on the main screen. This button changes the function of every button found on screen. This gives double the features on one screen with the use of one convenient tap. This is used in many other types of apps, as well as a lot of controller hardware, and I am glad to see a DJ software developer using it in an app.

At the top of the interface is a button called “Big.” This is another type of shift button, which gives you a larger control surface for the three effects functions. The included effects in this app sound great, and are very easy to use. Each effect has a dry/wet setting and can be used with other effects. The only shortcoming I found were the small number of effects available in the free app. This is not an issue in the paid version.

Additional Features

Out of all the DJ apps I have ever used, DJ Player has more options than any other app on the market. Its integration of MIDI and DVS put it above all of its competitors. Some of the options I feel are most useful are the inclusion of four decks, split output, audio buffer size, auto-gain and crossfader curve. All of these features are, for now, unique to DJ Player, but you should be looking for other apps to adopt these features into future versions.

I would definitely rank this app up there with Traktor and djay2. There are some features which outrank both programs, and a few that are to be desired. For a free download, it is definitely worth giving it a try to see if it fits in with your workflow. I am really looking forward to future iterations of this wonderful app.