djay and the iDJ Pro
I spent a year using the djay iOS app on an iPad fitted in a Newmark iDJ Pro and loved it. There's this snobby worry that the djay app is a bit of a toy and admittedly previous decks which connected to it we're generally really cheap and toy like. However the iDJ Pro is a great piece of kit and I think perfect for a lot of professional party DJing. The only issues I had with it we're the bloody Apple iOS updates breaking things and repeated problems with iTunes sync'ing my ever increasing playlists properly with the iPad. In hindsight the Apple iOS updates caused more worry than actual problems as I got into the habit of holding off applying iOS updates for a couple of weeks after release so that the djay app had got a couple of updates under its belt to deal with all the new problems. In all my using it the djay app only crashed once live and it was back to life 10 seconds later after forcibly closing it and re-launching it.
After a year I wanted more to play with than the djay app gave me during the sometimes very long parties I play for so I upgraded to a Traktor Pro2 with Kontrol S4 setup, a much more expensive purchase! There are some things I really really miss from the iDJ Pro and the djay app though, especially the new djay 2 I'd recently been using:
The capacitive touch platters on the iDJ Pro are fantastic and far superior to the push down platters on the Traktor S4. Some more hardcore DJ's may well disagree with me, but I really miss the perfection of the capacitive touch on the iDJ Pro.
Beat matching on the idjay 2 app is much better than in Traktor 2. I basically never needed to think about it when using djay 2, it just worked. I play for a lot of parties so play a lot of non-constant BPM older tracks and whenever I'd hit the auto sync button it just worked perfectly on djay. Moving to the Traktor Pro this has been the most major disappointment – its auto beat matching sucks arse on non constant BPM tracks to the point I find of being unusable for many mixes. They really need to fix this as they are being whipped by a £10 app.
The iDJ Pro 'Filter' knob produces a much better and more useful effect than the Traktor 'Filter' knob. On the iDJ Pro / djay app it sounds really good and more interesting as you turn it up to remove the bass going into a mix that will clash bass horribly, on the Traktor it does nothing other than remove the bass and is no different to turning down the bass then mid eq knobs.
What I don't miss
The circular master faders for each deck on the iDJ Pro look flash and work perfectly well, but I much prefer the standard vertical faders on the Traktor S4.
I still use the djay 2 app for mucking around and as my backup decks with a cable ready to go should the Traktor system ever decide to dump on me live.
