Music
5 of the best digital DJ tools – for beginners and professionals
These days, you don’t need expensive record decks to thrill a crowd – this cutting-edge software will help you mix and blend with the best of them.
Until recently, digital DJing was a fairly wide-open field, and you might find DJs hitting the club with a mix of gear that might include laptops, soundcards, controllers, or bulging CD wallets. But over the past few years, things have changed. Pioneer’s rapid development of rekordbox – along with important updates and additions to their latest range of CDJs, including USB integration, improved looping and quantisation – means that a USB stick and a pair of headphones is all most DJs need to to bring.
While the ubiquity of Pioneer CDJs has meant this approach has become something of an industry standard, it’s by no means a solution that works for everyone. In this article we’ll take a look at some of the other options available to both professional and amateur DJs alike.
Five recommended digital DJ tools
- Native Instruments Traktor Pro 3 (approx RRP: £89)
- Serato DJ Pro (approx RRP: £119)
- Pioneer rekordbox DJ (approx RRP: £100)
- Atomix Productions Virtual DJ (approx RRP: from £40)
- Ableton Live 10 (approx RRP: from £80)
Naive Instruments Traktor
Native Instruments were one of the earliest companies to embrace digital DJing, releasing the first version of their Traktor software back in 2000. Partnering with Stanton in 2003, they developed Traktor Final Scratch – a Digital Vinyl System (DVS) which allowed DJs to play and mix digital files from their computers using special timecode vinyl.
While DVS is still a part of Traktor’s make-up (having been officially incorporated into the latest version, Pro 3), its the software features and integration with dedicated hardware controllers that drew in the majority of its users. Its Deck FX section runs deep, allowing for complex and unique permutations mappable to multiple controls, while the new Mixer FX streamlines things down to single, per-channel controls for increased playability. The tight, four-deck, mixing, looping and beat-jumping capabilities make it perfect for DJs looking to layer and blend multiple sound sources, creating new rhythms and tracks in real-time, incorporating their own productions and blurring the lines between live performance and DJ sets.
Serato DJ Pro
For those looking to keep things simple, you can’t really do better than DJ Pro from Serato. Trusted by scratch DJs and turntablists the world over, its rock-solid stability and no-nonsense interface makes it the perfect choice for those who demand tight, accurate control or just want to mix tracks with minimum fuss. The hardware, produced in conjunction with Rane, has, in recent years, expanded out from plug-and-play boxes to a range of dedicated mixers and even a motorised, digital-specific turntable-style controller, while Serato certified mixers and controllers from the likes of Denon, Roland and Numark mean that however you choose to play, there’s a way to do it that will suit you.
rekordbox DJ
Mashing together some of the best bits of Traktor and DJ Pro is rekordbox DJ. A late add-on built on the existing rekordbox infrastructure, its familiar interface means that for DJs who want a single program for both mixing at home and preparing sets for the club, it’s a solution that makes a lot of sense. While it’s not quite as stable as DJ Pro or as deep as Traktor, it’s a comparatively much younger piece of software, and with a company as large as Pioneer behind it, you can bet they’ll be catching up with the competition pretty swiftly.
Atomix Productions Virtual DJ
Consistently underrated and yet the most used DJ software in the world, VirtualDJ by Atomix Productions has features that similar software from bigger manufacturers has neglected for years. Key sync, streaming integration and smart playlists are a few things that some of the larger players are only just now starting to shout about, but these are things that have been built into VirtualDJ for years. It’s also a very open piece of software, working right out the box with the vast majority of controllers currently on the market, and is customisable far beyond what’s possible with the other major players.
Ableton Live
Finally, there’s Ableton Live. While designed initially as a live performance tool, it was quickly adopted by those looking for an alternative way to DJ. Freed from the constraints of manual beatmatching, users are able to instead incorporate live performance tools, effects and approaches into their sets, allowing for fluid, amorphous constructions that can often redefine the concept of DJing itself. Your own works in progress, unreleased tracks and individual stems can sit alongside finished and released music, bringing a unique flavour to your sets that can often be harder to achieve through other means.
There are more choices facing a DJ today than ever before, and while this can be liberating, it can also be crippling. But how you play is individual to you, and there’s no doubt an ideal software solution to match. Considerations such as whether you’d like to get into vinyl or have aspirations for live performance should of course be taken into account – but the best option is still to head to a store or a friend’s house and try them out for yourself. You’ll know which works for you.