Native Instruments' Audio 2 DJ claims to be 'world's smallest' USB audio interface
By Vlad Savov 
posted July 22nd 2009 11:33AM
posted July 22nd 2009 11:33AM
[Via Macworld]
posted July 22nd 2009 11:33AM
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Do they have an addon you can by that will restore the street cred you'll lose by using this?
Dude, its a SOUND CARD. Get over yourself. Does anyone care now that many DJ's just use laptops for playback, and some don't even use external hardware mixers? Does anyone mind that some rave club DJ's dont use Vinyl scratch discs but electronic turn tables? Its up to their preference man, and somethign that small, no one will even see it. Not sure who a sound card will take away your street cred. Think before you post, don't be like Paul :)
correction: "not sure why*" And also, its a mobile aimed device too, so that's another positive thing.
'Vinyl scratch discs' lol what? Do you mean records?
yes people do especially other REAL DJs....
By "vinyl scratch discs" he means 12" platters with embedded timecode for Traktor scratch or Serratto.
If neither of those things ring a bell, google is that way ------------>
actually, I read that wrong.
ignore my comment
I fail at reading
SERATO FOR EVER!!!!!! USE NI FOR VSTS ONLY.....
imo,
-e
im confused, are you shitting on laptop DJ'ing or are you a technophobe?
you can still hook up CDJs to the laptop directly like in the diagram.
and if you're in the market for this product, being able to afford those CDJ's is a still a stretch.
Sweet. I'm getting into digital DJing, and i've been looking for something affordable like this. Awesome!
As for losing street cred... nahhh. Couple of DJs I know use stuff like Serato Scratch Live and Traktor Pro. They praise the heck out of it.
Blah. Meant for this to be a reply to the above post =P
i love the native instruments software, and at this price i might just be getting some more hardware for my kit :D
Want one, just bought a Behringer mixer and already got NI's Traktor Scratch Pro.
Scary, looked at this thread and straight away got an email from NI telling me about it. Seems Engadget beat NI to telling the world XD
i'd love to play around with this
Agreed. Something small to toss in your bag, with high quality sounds to boot.
That's nice!
Street cred?
You wouldn't know about street cred if it hit you in the face.
Some of the world's top DJs use stuff like this along with their laptops for convenience, son, as it allows them to produce the same quality gigs/music without all the weight of vinyl records and God knows what other equipment.
And that's coming from their mouth too - I've interviewed hundreds of the DJs you might be worshiping over these last few years as part of my editorial gig...
Heh, street cred... what a joker.
You still gotta know how to use the hardware, tools you're given, and have a good sense for music, crowds (for live events), programming and track selection. And on top of all that some creativity that would make you stand out in the sea of wannabe DJs. That's what gives or takes away your street cred son. This Audio2DJ toy can only help you out - make you look even smarter than you are.
DJ = Can't play a fuckin instrument
I have the Audio Kontrol 1 from Native Instruments.
Its about the same size as the Audio 2 but costs about twice as much since it has built in controlers and mic/instrument pre-amps.
NI gear is solid tho
Did anyone else look at the black rin on the surface and think this thing had a built in "touch" scratch pad?
Native Instruements are lying about this claim!
Evidence:
tinyurl.com/usbaudioebay
The alternative is only $3!
Err, how exactly does your thingy compare to the Audio 2 DJ ? Above is a high quality external sound card with 2 outputs. That thing you linked to is some sort of usb to jack convertor, that also has a mic jack input...
Functionally it is the same thing, USB digital to analog audio converter. The difference is in the quality.
Actually that usb crap thingy linked is a whole lot worse than this for dj'ing. The big point about these dj usb audio interfaces is latency. Theres about a .000001% chance that that usb audio adapter actually has low latency asio drivers and actually does anything in hardware. When working in audio this will spike your cpu usage as well as having too much latency to be useful for pro audio applications
As a 30 year veteran musician with several Diamond and Platinum albums to my credit as well as international tours all the way down to weddings and club gigs, one of the funniest things I ever heard was:
After a club gig, I guy came up to me and complimented the band. After kindly thanking him he replied, "I'm a musician!" I said, "Cool! What instrument do you play?" He said, "I'm a DJ."
At one point in time, musicians looked upon DJ's with a certain amount of artistic respect because mixing records manually required a degree of skill. Now the computer handles everything. It can even choose the songs.
Street cred! Describe your job. "I get paid to choose songs that are fun to dance to then I push play on my iPod."
Oh you're a DJ.
"If I'm smart enough, I've pieced all the songs together ahead of time so when I get to work I only push play once. Then I put one headphone to my ear and twiddle this fader that controls nothing and people think I'm awesome!"
"I charge you an unbelievable amount of money for this. I justify it by bringing a lot of cheap sound equipment and a microphone so I can tell the people to say, 'Ho!'"
snob
Agreed with Rudi. And it's nice that you collectively think that all musicians feel the same way that you do. All this comes off as is being bitter that DJs have made your life more difficult to get gigs. I guess it's tough out there.
"Now the computer handles everything. It can even choose the songs."
Ah yes, the biggest cliche of digital DJing. Reality -- the computer doesn't handle everything. You can have it auto beat match, that's just about it. You could set up cross fading and such, but it's going to sound really amateurish. And also yeah, you can have iTunes pick tracks for you, but I've never seen a DJ using that at a club and no system conceived yet would know how to pick the perfect song for the perfect moment. For now, skilled humans tend to do this stuff a lot better.
"If I'm smart enough, I've pieced all the songs together ahead of time so when I get to work I only push play once. Then I put one headphone to my ear and twiddle this fader that controls nothing and people think I'm awesome!"
LOL. I guess this could work, but any misstep as far as picking a bad track and continuing down that path would result in an empty dance floor. Obviously no DJ would risk that.
FWIW, I've done the musician thing when I was younger. Now that I don't play a traditional instrument anymore and DJ instead, it's interesting to have both perspectives. Few DJs (I don't fall into this category) have the skill to really use their equipment and wield them like true instruments, using their skill to REALLY get creative, which I guess is why musicians shun them (even guys that can mix very well). I think it's still a bit silly for DJs who can't do this stuff to refer to themselves as musicians, but whatever. Most of the big name DJs you see nowadays produce themselves, so obviously they have earned that.
eh, DJing and mixing can still be an "art" even with technology. Products like Deckadance and Torq go even further with VST intergration, allowing even more of a live performance of music, rather then just playing tracks
The problem is to many people don't even bother mixing...djing has become nothing more then a popularity contest to who can have more followers on myspace show up at a party.
When I mix, I take 2 songs, and make it sound like 1 new song that no one has ever heard before....that's DJing. Going track to track playing hipster-electro-blog "hits" isn't DJing...even if you are beat matching the last 30 seconds of the song to the first 30 of the next, thats being a human ipod.
sorry, what makes your description any different from a person who simply memorizes a few chords and plays them over and over. By your thinking, they're also musicians yet people with any ability to dj apparently aren't.
DJ'ing is much more than just hitting a button and looking cool. anyone who does do that, yes, doesn't deserve to be a dj. but much like "musicians" have to practice, so do dj's, whether its manual beatmatching, learning how to identify which songs mix harmoniously (think sound engineer, but again not a "musician" by your definition) timing drops and fades so that transitions are either seamless or musically artistic, among a variety of other factors. Yes DJ's have set lists that they perform much like, *gasp*, bands who have set lists that they perform over and over by basically having memorized which chords to hit when.
True musicians, then either don't exist on the live stage, because they can't do the artistic part live unless its a tiny part where you go on a solo and even then, those moments are short lived. True DJ's however, do. More and more mixing is moving towards live production. Sure, they hit a button that plays a sample, but thats like a musician hitting a key and it playing a tone. These people mix and match on the fly, adjusting for the crowd (since no two crowds are ever the same). If you want an example, look at the grammy award performance with Kanye West and Daft Punk, where the camera cuts to behind Daft Punk and at their controllers. They control everything live. Watch videos of Deadmau5, where his entire setup is predicated on the fact that he mixes and performs LIVE.
there are good musicians, and shit "musicians" (see college kids playing guitar to pick up chicks) much like there are good DJ's and shit "DJ's" (see college kids who DJ to pick up chicks). Some are good examples, some aren't. But ultimately DJ'ing is a musical skill.
Cute.. and probably not bad, but this is definitely not for me. I require a nice big platter to put my hands on. Even CDJ-800s are tiny to me. And ok even though some people will find this useful, but there's still a market for the traditional DJ. I find it funny how on tech blogs people bash the DJs that say "I still just love to spin vinyl" (especially since I'm one of them.. Serato is as high tech as I want to go), and don't like setups like this. It's not bad though.
Bottom line about these things are, even though they have the ability to sync BPMs for you, they don't mix automatically for you. They don't know drops, measures and breakdowns, they don't know EQs and timing etc. So you still have to know how to spin in order to well.. spin. They're a great tool to help you get there, and even dudes that talk shit about street cred or being a "Real DJ" can respect them for inspiring someone to do that much.
Wait a second.. so this is just a tiny Traktor Scratch box or what.. I thought from the diagram it was a USB table controller.
"Bottom line about these things are, even though they have the ability to sync BPMs for you, they don't mix automatically for you. They don't know drops, measures and breakdowns, they don't know EQs and timing etc. So you still have to know how to spin in order to well.. spin. They're a great tool to help you get there, and even dudes that talk shit about street cred or being a "Real DJ" can respect them for inspiring someone to do that much."
Perfectly stated. And while I don't agree with your preferences, I definitely still understand them. I learned on turntables and really never use them as I love some of the edges that I get from using Traktor Pro and Ableton. All these systems really do is lower the barrier to entry a bit from the $ and skill perspective (particularly around beatmatching); the stuff that separates the men from the boys is mixing, programming (track selection) and creativity. If you don't have the skills / experience to execute on the important stuff, you're still going to sound like garbage.
Did you even bother to read what the product was before you went rambling off about it automatically syncing based on bpm? Cause I sure as hell have never seen a soundcard that would randomly sync its inputs based on bpm, that would just be retarded
wtf? sorry double post
I'm dj'ng digitally for quite a while now.
This product will serve a lot of people in the digital dj game with little i/o needs. Decent (and most of all stable) sound quality from laptop to soundsystem is an issue for a lot of budget dj's, this thing is the solution to those problems!
Main out+Phones out OR deck a+b out is all a lot of people will need.
(There are a couple of very attractive soundcards available with more i/o though, Terratec Phase 26 for instance)
As for the "a dj is not an artist" stuff in the comments here; Yeah a lot of dj's are lazy fucks with few to no skills.
Not being able to recognize the talent/artistry a few dj's do possess is another thing imo.
More the problem of the observer. ;)
A dj is not a musician though, those are different disciplines, though they converge in some cases/people.
1. DJ related post
2. People saying it isn't real DJing
3. People saying DJing isn't a real instrument
blah blah blah
It's an unusually cheap price for a good piece of hardware from a notable music hardware/software company. I agree with other comments, however. Personally I need the timecode ability because timecode vinyl just plain feels right to me. I like the control I get with physical vinyl. But this is definitely a sweet product for anyone using specific hardware setups for their gigs. I'd say this is news worthy.
Now... if only people would stop bitching everytime there's a DJ post. It's worse than the console wars and Apple vs. Anything discussion.
I think this is just a smaller version of the Traktor box that can be used with other stuff. If you think the bitching in this post is bad, just jump to a DJ forum and watch the whole Traktor vs Serato vs Torq vs whatever no name soultion vs Real Vinyl vs CDJ's spectacle. Fanboyism is wherever one can go. Always hilarious though.. always.
Does it work with real computers, or only Macs?
Sweet I could use this on my laptop at gigs and for recording. Yes I am a digital DJ that started out playing "traditional turntables" but switched to the Torq Exponent because of cost for records and general upkeep of a turntable and mixer . I chose the exponent because it can be used just like a turntable and mixer without all the headache and you get the convenience of the VST plug ins and remixing on the fly that you can't do with a traditional setup. Digital DJing is the way of the future, yes you can have it auto beat match but that is all it can do. I don't use the feature because: 1 it doesn't sound right and 2 to me its cheating because any real DJ SHOULD KNOW how the beat match and all of the other skills that are required to mix. So yes DJing is an art and you are creating music just like any other musician is.
Auto beat matching doesn't even really work for hip hop ... nobody uses auto beat match anyway unless they're mixing techno.
I think people aree forgetting that Digidesign came out with the mbox2 micro that is a usb key. Technically thay is much smaller.
I have something similar to this I bought a few years ago called an M-aduio firewire audiophile. It had 2 channels but I'm not sure about the sound quality - it's been a while.
Frankly, if it's a smaller, more mobile sound card at the same or better sound quality of an Audiofire or something, then this is a great little thing for those using Ableton and midi controls.
Frankly, those who want to believe "real DJs" are the ones with vinyl or "decks", they can keep holding on to their ideologies...but I'll bet in 5-10 years every major headliner will be walking into clubs with laptops and controllers.
"Keepin it real" means you keep true to the music...not the gear.
I am both a producer and a dj, and I applaud NI for providing a small platform interface for being able to dj without problem. I have a MOTU 828 MK3 firewire interface, but for just mixing and having fun (which I thought djing was all about anyway) something like the Audio 2 DJ is perfect. You can have fun at home or take your laptop and midi controller and the interface and go gig at friends house or at a club. Bottomline, it makes DJing more accessible at more locations, and for the DJ in me its great. I do not have to haul a coffin that weighs as much as well an actual coffin and easily setup and get to what DJing is all about; sharing good music with good people. I mean if you suck as a DJ, this product is not going to magically transform you into John Digweed. I am just so tired of all these people being so elitist and bitter. It completely is at odds with how DJing and the culture surrounding it began. Its just plain sad. Whatever I can do to make Djing more fun and easier to set up I completely advocate. Stop tha bitching and start tha mixing
A DJ is anybody who can rock a party, regardless of how they're doing it--vinyl, time code, straight midi, whatever. The gear is not what matters, and is different to each individual's taste. What matters is the music.