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Ion Audio shows off its latest offerings, including the AirCopy and the iDJ2Go, at CES 2013
Ion Audio has a booth set up as usual on the floor of this year's International CES, where it is showing off a number of new and fairly new products for anyone coming to see them. This company is one of our favorites -- they make some really excellent iOS accessories and fun devices (including the very popular iCade line and the All Star Guitar) and we were very excited to see what 2013 would bring. Fortunately, Ion didn't disappoint. The most impressive accessories in the booth were probably from the iDJ 2 Go line. The 30-pin version of Ion's DJ controller (as seen above) is already available, and it provides a great physical interface for either the company's official iDJ2Go app, or Algoriddim's great djay app. There's a new Lightning version of the iDJ2Go board coming this spring, too, so if you have an iPad mini or an iPhone 5 you want to use it on, you can do that. Ion was also showing off its Scratch2Go accessories, which are a set of capacitive touch-based accessories (including a few sliders, and some turntable knobs), which can sit right on your iPad's screen and allow for more physical controls while using these DJ apps. The Scratch2Go kit makes for a little more crazier contraption (you literally stick the knobs and sliders onto your iPad's screen with suction cups), but at US$39, it's a relatively cheap and easy way to set yourself up with real physical DJ controls. Elsewhere in the booth, Ion was also showing off its Bluetooth speakers. The Party Rocker was an interesting bit of fun -- it's a speaker with a spinning light on top that's designed to make any parties you play music at a little livelier. But the Job Rocker Pro was probably the most impressive speaker in Ion's arsenal: It's a completely wooden speaker that's got all of the bells and whistles you can think of, from an AM/FM tuner to plenty of USB auxiliary plugins, a mobile battery for 50 hours of off-cord life, and even two AC power plugs on the side for charging or using anything else you happen to have around. The Job Rocker Pro was seriously impressive -- I don't know if you'd need a speaker on a work site, but if you do, this $299 model would be all you need. Finally, Ion also showed us the AirCopy, which isn't related to audio at all: Instead, it's a WiFi based scanner that can transmit any photos or documents wirelessly over to your iPad or any other iOS device. This scanner actually runs its own WiFi network wherever you set it up, which means all you have to do is connect the iOS device to its network once it's up and running, and then anything you send in through the slot on the wireless scanner will get automatically uploaded to the iOS device's photo library. From there, you can push it out to any other apps, running optical recognition, photo processing or any other tasks on it as needed. It's all very impressive -- you get a real-time view of the photo coming in as it scans, and the quality looks very excellent. The AirCopy will be available for $149 when it comes out this spring, and we'll keep an eye out for it to run a full hands-on. Ion always brings some fascinating gadgets to show off at CES, and this year was no exception. The company's certainly got a big year ahead.
Algoriddim's vjay gets remixed for iPhone, mobile movies meet the mash-up (video)
When it comes to holding the party down on an iPad or iPhone, djay by Algoriddim's been a front-runner ever since it came out. Then came vjay for video spinning iPad owners. Now, that video follow-up is ready for the main arena, as it's just been release for iPhone / iPod touch. Now you can mash-up your favorite videos right on your phone, add soundtracks to your existing clips, and throw down some effects for good measure. If you kinda dig what you create, you can -- of course -- share it with the world, or throw it up on the big screen. Not sure your cat clips will cut the mustard? Worry not, as there's purpose-made bundled content thrown in with the deal. And at just $0.99, it won't hurt the pocket it was built for, either.
Algoriddim's vjay for iPhone puts video mixing in the palm of your hand
With the ridiculous number of photo manipulation apps available for the iPhone, it's sometimes easy to forget that Apple's smartphone can actually be a powerful video editing platform as well. Developer Algoriddim aims to prove this by bringing its popular iPad video mashup app, vjay, to the iPhone, along with all of the bells and whistles of its bigger brother. If you didn't catch our original vjay review for the tablet, let me give you a refresher: The app's marquee feature is the ability to mix multiple videos together into mashups. While the app records your work, you can use real-time transition effects to swap between whatever two clips you happen to be using. You can loop sections of video or music, manipulate colors and tweak the audio of your work on the fly. You can also set up multiple cue points to make sure your video matches exactly what you had in mind. The number of options vjay presents to you is somewhat staggering at first, and it actually takes a fair bit of time to get a handle on just what the app is capable of. You can use the included music videos and montage clips in your work, grab your own video clips from your camera roll or even snag licensed videos from the iTunes store right from within the app itself. In short, you have a ridiculous number of options and starting points with which to craft something great. With the comparatively small screens size of the iPhone, compared to tablet, the tools you have to work with do feel considerably more compact on the screen. Thankfully, the app is laid out in such a way that you'll always know what tools are at your disposal. In portait mode, the app will switch back and forth between each of the source video clips in the source window depending on which is being used the most. When you flip your iPhone on its side, the app displays both source clips in the background with your work up front. The best thing about vjay is that it's almost impossible to fail at creating something cool. As you fade one video out and the other dominates the screen, with the pixelated visual touch you previously added, and your favorite song playing over it all, you'll feel like you created a masterpiece. In reality, it's the app that's doing the hard work, but we won't tell anyone if you don't. Once your mashup is complete, you can share it via YouTube and Facebook, or even toss it up on the big screen using an output cable, or wirelessly through Apple TV. As you might imagine, vjay demands a lot from your device, and as such it is currently only supported on iPhone 4S and 5. The pint-sized version of the app is currently on sale on the App Store for US$4.99, but only for a limited time, so video junkies be warned!
Daily iPhone App: djay for iPhone 5 brings new features to the wider screen
Algoriddim's music-mixing djay app has been a hit on both Mac and iOS for a while now, so it's not brand new by any means. But the iPhone version has just been updated with some new features, including compatibility with the iPhone 5's wider screen. And while a lot of developers have been content to simply spread things out with the extra real estate, Algoriddim has gone the extra mile, and actually added in some functionality that takes advantage of the extra space. You can see the difference above: The new version has volume sliders on each side of the virtual turntables, and the BPM is represented for each track above those sliders. There are two other big changes in the app that take advantage of new features in iOS 6. The first is that audio can now be routed within the iPhone, which Algoriddim calls a "game-changer" this means that the iPhone can send one signal out of its Lightning dock adapter, and another out of the headphone port at the same time, which means that with the right setup, DJs can listen to one track while another is playing. The latest version of djay, obviously, supports this. And the other change is that you can now buy and display music from iTunes right inside the app, which means users can pick up new jams without ever stopping the beat. Both of these features are pretty impressive, and make a big difference in how djay can be used to play music from the iPhone 5. And as if all of that wasn't enough, djay for iPhone 5 is now also on sale for just $0.99, which is a crazy price for such a feature-filled app. Algoriddim has won multiple awards for this one already, and the new features with the wider screen and iOS 6 mean this one's a must-grab if you don't have it yet.
Daily iPad App: Algoriddim's vjay brings real-time video mixing to the iPad
If your creative expressions include mixing and cutting videos, then you're going to love vjay, the latest app from the folks at Algoriddim. The company's known for its popular djay app, and it has brought a similar experience to video with vjay. The vjay app leverages the processing power of the iPad (current or previous-gen; it does not work on the iPad 1) and lets you mix two video clips on the fly. The app ties into iTunes and lets you select videos and audio clips from your library. You can also record your own source video using the camera on the iPad. If you don't want to bother with all that, Algoriddim includes a handful of stock clips for you to use. Once you select your video and audio, all the mixing is done in real-time, so there's no worrying about splicing at the right frame or picking the perfect transition. The app uses two scratch pads, one for each video, and has a center mixing window where all the action happens. Each scratch pad has a variety of effects that you can add to your videos on the fly. You can add a strobe, twirl, fisheye, and crush. Moving your finger on each video scratch pad will adjust the effect as well as let you speed up or slow down the clip. You can also run the clip in reverse. The mixing window also has several transitions that control how the final, mixed video appears. You can blend the two videos and use a slider to adjust the blend from one video to the other. There's also cube, grid, swap, push and mosaic transitions that let's you get creative with the your final clip. While mixing, you can record the video and save it to your camera roll. For live VJ sessions, you can output the app's mix to a TV using an HDMI cable or stream it to an Apple TV using AirPlay. You'll spend $9.99 to get vjay; it is available now in the iOS App Store. If you have even the slightest inclination towards playing with video, you're going to love vjay. Not only is it a blast to be able to mix videos on the fly, the performance is amazingly smooth on the iPad 3. I didn't see any perceptible lag and any stuttering was from user error. More than once in the middle of a mix, I clicked on the wrong effect or slide the mixing slider too far to the left or right, but that's all part of the fun. You can see how vjay works in the video below and read more about it on Algoriddim's website.
Algoriddim's Mac App of the Year djay 4 trades iOS and Mac features
Algoriddim is back in a booth at CES 2012 this week in Las Vegas, and TUAW stopped by to chat with the company as well as congratulate them on winning Mac App of the Year for its turntable music app, djay 4. We got to see the app early before it was released, and since then, Algoriddim's CTO Frederik Seiffert says things have been going well. The app is selling more copies all the time, and obviously, with the award and the holiday season, the end of 2011 was very lucrative for Algoriddim. One of the reasons the app has done so well, says Seiffert, is because Algoriddim took a lot of what it learned about making apps for iOS, and brought that knowledge back to the Mac. The latest version of djay takes a lot of cues from the iOS apps, including the two big visual turntables, and even things like using the multitouch trackpad for gestures and the FX audio. Effects in general came back to the main app from the iOS world, and of course djay 4 has plenty of bells and whistles like beat matching, the ability to pull in music directly from your iTunes library, and Harmonic Matching, which will not only detect the keys of all your songs, but match them up as you mix. Algoriddim's not sitting on its laurels to enjoy the award, though -- the company is working on future updates to all of its apps, most of which we couldn't hear about just yet. We were told that there's an update in the works to the djay Remote app, which allows the iPad or iPhone to control the djay 4 app, but we don't know what the update will bring. That update should be out in another week or two. After that, Algoriddim is planning to go back to iOS and update those apps, and of course it has other ideas for a Mac-based djay as well. Seiffert says winning Mac App of the Year from Apple has lit a fire under Algoriddim's developers, and the company is eager to continue to earn its growing reputation.
iDJ Live gives your iPad two turntables, microphone not included
Looking to get a more realistic feel from your Djay iOS app? Yeah, we suspected as much, and now Numark's giving you the ability to boost your street cred while spinnin' tracks in the club... or, you know, your mum's living room. The company's new iDJ Live accessory does its darndest to transform your iOS device (iPhone and iPod compatible, despite being obviously tailored for iPad) into a more legit deejay set-up. With George Strait / MC Hammer mash-ups just waiting to happen, the device guides you into the musical unknown with two "turntables," a mixer (with crossfader), an iPad stand and connection capabilities for use with an external sound system. Already sold? She's yours for a cool Benjamin, and if you'd rather use your existing stash of CoreMIDI-enabled DJ apps, be our guest.
djay app updated for iPad 2
We've taken a few looks at Algoriddim's excellent djay software before, originally for the Mac and introduced to both the iPhone and the iPad in the last year or so. And the excellent iPad version has just gotten better -- a free update brings the software to version 1.2, including compatibility for all of the processors in the newest version of Apple's tablet, making it faster than ever and providing for high-end features, such as time stretching, looping and advance audio analysis. The desktop version of djay can do things like detect beats in your favorite songs and sync tunes automatically, and now the iPad version of djay can do that as well (provided you're running it on an iPad 2). There are also some updates for the first iPad model, so you should still grab the update when possible. Algoriddim's djay for iPad software is US$19.99, but that's a solid price for all of the features an app like this provides. With these new features, the iPad version of the app provides almost everything the full desktop version does in a much more portable package.
algoriddim's djay now on iPhone / iPod touch, iPad version updated
Algoriddim, maker of the djay app, has gotten in touch to let us know that it has updated djay for iPad to version 1.1 -- introducing some exciting new features -- and to announce an all-new version of djay for the iPhone and iPod touch. djay is a virtual, touch screen DJ setup with a realistic turntable and mixer interface that lets you mix, spin, cue and scratch your tracks straight from your iPod music library. We took a closer look at djay for the iPad and the Mac late last year and were very impressed with the results. According to the specs, it looks like those results will transition nicely over to the iPhone version of the app. Algoriddim has also updated the iPad version of the app with stability fixes and some new features, including looping, multiple cue points and BPM library browsing. There's also added compatibility for Bluetooth audio devices and extended support for AIFF and WAV files, but this requires iOS 4.3 For the full list of improvements and features click here, or if you already own the app, head on over to the Updates section of the iOS App Store on your iPad -- the new version will be waiting for you to download. djay is available now on the iOS App Store at US$9.99 for the iPhone version and US$19.99 for the iPad version. Click past the break for a promo video of djay for the iPhone.
Be a turntable hero with djay for iPad
An iPad app might not be enough to convince a seasoned DJ to go iPad-only, but then, a medium-sized, multi-touch surface can only come so close to replicating a turntable, right? With djay for iPad (US$19.99 on the App Store), algoriddim has not only impressively mimicked traditional decks, they've added features that your average DJ setup doesn't have. Plus, they made it easy enough for even the most inexperienced music-lover to rock their next party. Our own Victor Agreda recently gave us a great rundown of djay for iPad's predecessors, djay for Mac and djay Remote for iPhone. A quick recap: djay on the Mac gives you two turntables and a crossfader, BPM analysis and automatic syncing, an "Automix" feature for effortless and seamless playback and plenty of extra goodies. djay Remote on the iPhone lets you control a significant number of those features, but not all of them. The combination is really fun, but the iPhone app doesn't do anything without a locally-networked Mac running djay. Enter djay for iPad.
Algoriddim's djay Remote app available now
One of my favorite apps at Macworld Expo this past February was actually Algoriddim's djay 3 -- it's DJing software for the Mac that had a surprising amount of new features and fun UI elements even in one of the oldest and most-traveled of music software functions. One of the things I got to see during the hands-on was a tester version of an iPhone app they were working on, and now that app is finished and out on the App Store. The price is US$4.99, which is actually a little high for a satellite application -- you must be running djay 3 on your Mac, and while there is a free trial, it would have been nice if they'd just released the iPhone app as a free add-on to the $50 app. But as you can see, it's a full controller for the app -- they have the vinyl artwork included, you can set cue points and tweak FX and audio levels from right within the app. Also, you can queue songs up for an Automix directly from the iPhone (if, say, you happen to be at a party and don't have time to run upstairs to your computer to add a little more music to the playlist). The app works over WiFi, and note again that you must have the djay 3 software running on your Mac -- this is basically a remote for that app. But if you do a lot of DJing from your computer and want to get even more remote, setting this up on your iPhone seems like a great solution.
Macworld 2010: Hands-on with Algoriddim's djay 3
DJ software tends to be hit or miss -- the ability to make a music player match beats on songs, even with different tempos, has been around for a while. For most software designed to allow you to mix and play music, the interface is the important part. What you want is a nice clean interface that's simple enough for almost anyone to pick up and use, but complex enough that DJs who know their stuff can take advantage of deeper features and functionality. Fortunately, that's exactly what Algoriddim has put together in the newest version of their app, djay 3. The app offers an excellent interface with quite a few nice touches of flash, and also offers up solid functionality for those who know their way around the ones and twos.
Scratching the surface: DJ'ing with your Mac
It's Saturday night and you're out and about painting the town red, or whatever color it is that towns are painted these days. Whether you end up at a night club, a lounge or a bar, there's a good chance there's going to be a DJ spinning up some tunes at the venue. And there's a good chance that you'll see a glowing Apple in front of the DJ, as said DJ may be accompanied by a MacBook or MacBook Pro. If you've ever looked into doubling your Mac as a virtual turntable, then this post may help you scratch the surface -- err, vinyl.
Vestax Spin DJ controller gets reviewed, much approved (video)
Bedroom DJs and wannabe Sven Vaths, take note. Key of Grey has got its hands on the Vestax Spin DJ controller and they give it some pretty good marks. Of course, no one is going to confuse this bad boy for a pro rig, but the reviewer found the hardware solid enough for home use, and the bundled Algoriddim djay software is more than up to the task. In fact, both the software and hardware are full featured enough to make it worth a second or third look: multiple cue points and sampler controls (commonplace on DJ mixers yet pretty rare on software-based rigs) get kudos, while the lack of a waveform view can be a huge turn-off for some folks. Want to get a closer look? We got it for you: move on past the read link for the award-winning video.
Vestax Spin might just be the USB-based DJ rig of your dreams, only shinier
Your USB-based DJ-ing options aren't exactly all that limited these days, but there's few rigs out there quite as eye-catching as this new Spin controller developed by Vestax and Algoriddim. Designed for Mac users only, this one packs two touch sensitive jog wheels front and center, along with a full multi-channel audio system complete with the requisite sliders, mic input (and included microphone), audio output, and of course that USB connection, which also eliminates the need for a power adapter. On the software side of things you'll get Algoriddim's djay 3 mixing application, plus some out-of-the-box integration with iTunes to let you easily pull tracks for your mix. Sold? Then you can snag this one right now for $250.
