App Review: edjing for iOS

In the DJ app market there is quite a bit of competition these days. Software developers are pining to find features which will help them position their product above others in the industry. One way this is done is through partnerships with other software developers to add functionality to an existing product.

Edjing has done a great job with these partnerships. They’ve partnered with two large players in the music streaming market to give their users access to a large amount of online music. Their partnerships with both Soundcloud and Deezer give users access to over 50 million songs in addition to the existing music library found on your own device.

Setup

The edjing app is a fairly small download, weighing in at 29 MB, which almost makes it small enough to download without a WIFI network. Edjing features English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish language options, which can be set in the preferences.

First time users will be taken through a brief tutorial, which shows the ins and outs of the app and will be a huge time saver for those new to digital DJing on a mobile device. The short tutorial shows users some of the important features such as its use with Soundcloud and the optional effects that are available.

Music Library

Edjing uses a standard format for its library. You can select from three sources for playback: Local Music, My Mixes or Soundcloud. If you wish to use the My Mixes section, you will first need to create an account with edjing. Once that is done you can upload and access your recorded set through this tab. If you wish to use the Soundcloud feature, you will simply need to log into Soundcloud to access your library. You will have access to your music and the playlists you have created in Soundcloud.

I felt that the library system in edjing fell short in a few areas.  It’s lacking in the inability to sort your music. I play a large amount of genres, so finding a song by BPM is very important to me. Not being able to sort my music by BPM is almost a deal breaker for the type of DJing I do. This feature may not be that important to other DJs.

The Automix feature found in the library section is quite redeeming though. With this feature you can send songs to a special playlist, which will be mixed automatically within the software. This can be very helpful for those who just want to choose a specific playlist and have it play automatically.

Mixing

The mixer functions are very basic in edjing. You will find the standard three-band EQ with gain control on each channel. Volume controls can also be accessed on each channel. I found the volume and crossfade functions were not very responsive to my touch and were a bit difficult to use precisely.

Using the free version, I found the effects section to be very sparse. The only effects for use were a flange and a delay function accessed by an X/Y pad. These effects are not clearly labeled, so it was difficult to know what effect I was using. You can get access to 14 effects, ten skins and other features by upgrading to the full version.

The looping feature of the edjing app is very basic. You are able to set loop sizes as small as a ¼ beat, all the way up to eight bars (32 beats.) The one thing I felt was missing from this section was the inclusion of a “loop roll” feature. This would allow a user to loop their music on the fly, and when the loop was released, the playback would return to its natural placement in the song. This feature is found on the Traktor and djay2 apps.

Additional Features

The interface of edjing is somewhat customizable. With edjing, the user can select from a number of skins to update the look of the interface. With the free version, you can only access one skin, but with the paid upgrade you have access to ten.

Edjing also features basic functions such as sync, record and pitch correction. With the sync feature, it was difficult to fine-tune the beat. The sync is only controlled by one button, which automatically syncs the song to the tempo. You just need to hope it does so correctly, or else you could be making adjustments to be able to beatmatch correctly.

For a free DJ app, edjing provides all the basic functionality to get you started with digital DJing. But stacked up against some of the other apps such as Traktor or djay2, edjing really falls short. Most likely, I would either pay for the full version or use one of the competing products.

Check out edjing’s website, or download from iTunes. Also available in the Google Play store.