A DJ iPod?

[bennetsaysargh]

at the iPod release party, the dj's were just playing songs, not scratching but i seriously think that it is the advanced iP{od dock which I am dubbing the superdock. scroll wheels. they have do do something with them.

 

[druggedonions]

Re: would never happen

Originally posted by julzmon
sound quality does not come near to vinyl let alone CD.
You play that thing on a slammin sound system and it will sound like ****.

It will never happen!

I can assure you it is far from **** and even further from ****e.

 

[druggedonions]

Re: iTunes is great...

Originally posted by pfranzen
Oh and by the way...We have started to experiment with iTunes for playback of Music in our restaurants and Bars and it is great.

We have to buy the CDs of course, but instead of buying the same disc 5 times due to scratching and theft we buy it once and store it as a backup.

Also, the amount of grime that gets into the CD players in my industry is crazy so the cost of serving big 200+ CD changers is a thing of the past...

Anyone else in here in the Bar/Club game and doing this?

Just about to free up an old iMac which I'm going to put in to service as a music jukebox in the cafe/venue I work at. I really like the feature to allow streaming over the network, which means we can have one computer that the staff can put their tunes on and one upstairs that can be updated with up-coming bands then have iTunes with another app change to a different playlist at different times of the day.

 

[aasmund]

Re: would never happen

Originally posted by julzmon
sound quality does not come near to vinyl let alone CD.
You play that thing on a slammin sound system and it will sound like ****.

It will never happen!

This is offcourse complete rubbish. Have you heard the sound quality on the Pioneer DJ-CD players? it is easily matched by an iPod, I don't believe this either, however they may add some functions to the current line (cross fading, beat sync, and use the wheel as a slider) to make it more dj-like.

Regards.

 

[makkystyle]

Just to clarify something as I think a lot of people haven't thought about this...

Yes, an iPod would be absolute crap for a DJ who is playing House, D&B, Hip-Hop, Trance, Rap, etc.

...BUT...

What a lot of you are forgetting is that the majority of DJ's throughout the world are just playing Pop Hits from the 50's through to the 90's at Weddings, Birthday Parties, Reunions, School Dances, etc. A DJ iPod would kick *ss for any one of the people playing these types of gigs. Think about it... no lugging around crates of vinyl, huge books of CD's and component/rack mount CD players.

Think about the bigger market. Do you really think that DJ Scribble, Funk Master Flex or Digweed are going to give up vinyl? No. But do you think that the tens of thousands of DJ's playing Bat Mitzvah's every weekend would? Absolutely.

 

[MorganX]

I don't think a Dj would get laughed out of the venue. A good DJ rules his booth.

I think that if a DJ ipod had a cue button, and the scroll wheel had a turntable mode, this would be great for mobile DJs. In Da Club, it would probably be too small and too hard to see. Battery may be an would be an issue.

You would really need 2 of them, but that's not a must. The iPod would just be another in on the Mixer. I don't know many DJs that are CD only, even if that's all they play, they still have vinyl and keep a TT around.

I dont' think in it's current form factor it would be huge, but it would be doable.

 

[illumin8]

Re: Re: Re: Honestly, Kyle..

Originally posted by Mudbug
a few questions as they come to me:
You make money doing this? Full time? People pay you to play music? At parties, I assume? Do you host the party, or does someone else throw it, and hire you? Or do you work at a nightclub/disco? If at a nightclub, why would you be the one to provide the equipment, unless you own the place.

No problem. Yes, I make money doing this. No, I don't do it full-time, just Friday and Saturday nights at my friend's club.

This is how the setup works:

My friend has a standard Pioneer mixer and 2 Technics 1200s at the club in the DJ booth. Most of the DJs that play there just use vinyl and bring a crate of records. I bring a small record bag, my laptop (currently an HP, but soon to be replaced by a Powerbook), and my Final Scratch box (a little USB thingie with RCA ins and outs). When I get there and am ready to go on, I setup my laptop off to the side of the turntables, unplug one of the turntables from the mixer, and plugin the final scratch box in between the DJ mixer and the turntable. I stick one of the specially recorded Final Scratch records on the turntable, select the song I want on the laptop, drop the needle on the record and mix in. Once I've mixed out of the last DJ's record, I hand it back to him, connect the other turntable through the final scratch box, and now I'm totally setup. I select records on the laptop, or create a playlist there, then using the special final scratch records on normal turntables, mix them together. Pitch control works. Beat matching works. Most people in the club think I'm just mixing vinyl except for the fact that most of the time I have the same two records on the turntables always.

I hope that makes sense. If you want to know more about how it works (I can't really explain it as well as they can), you might want to check out the Final Scratch website. Now that they have a Mac OS X version, I'm going to be buying a 15" Powerbook soon.

 

[danishboy]

Re: doubt it

Originally posted by Mudbug
there's just not enough market for them to make a different - or stand-alone "pro" model ipod, if this is the only pro feature available. It would have to include other features to make it worth the astronomical development and manufacturing costs associated with bringing any new product to an international-level market.

There's just not enough people making a living at DJing around the country to justify this being an identifiable market niché. (thank goodness!)

And to that effect, don't they already make a "pro" level ipod, and call it the ibook? or PowerBook for that matter?

While I agree that maybe there's not much of a market yet (it could be developed...) what about just adding the nice lil' feature of being able to mix on the fly. Ergo - I'd really like to pick what song from my entire library I'd like to hear next and have my iPod remember that and then switch to that song (maybe even automatically mix it for me) when I'm listening. While iTunes4's new playlist thingy is nice (I've not really played with the new features) I more commonly am just listening to my iPod on a plane and would like to pick a list of songs I'm in the mood to hear and let it play while I relax instead of having to scroll to each song when the song I'm listening to ends.

Just wanted to get this in print out there - maybe Apple's watching...

 

[siberian]

Pro iPod --- iProd?

Maybe this will make Apple fix the annoying 'Gap Between Tracks' problem and put real crossfade into this new 'iProd' product..

That would be sweeeet.

 

[bennetsaysargh]

to add the croos fading feature, they would probably just need an OS update. software issue, it hardware.

 

[TSEliotLives]

I see this as being an absolute golden move on the part of Apple...something that I've been pining for for a long time.

I'm a DJ...but not the beatmixing kind. I lug hundreds of pounds of gear all around the state for weddings, school dances, fraternity formals, and the like...and I run my entire show off my PowerBook G4 and iTunes.

Do people laugh when they first see the laptop? Sure. But they shut up pretty quick once the show starts.

MP3's (even the poorly encoded ones) sound just fine through my system, which is nothing but the best. Running the output of the PowerBook through an iMic even furthers the quality. I've already convinced my mentor (a professional mobile DJ of over 20 years) to convert to MP3...and winning those old-school folks over is no easy task.

An iPod tailored to the mobile DJ crowd would be a massive boon for Apple. There's a LOT of us out there...and ANYTHING to lighten the load to a gig is a blessing. If I could find a way around putting my precious PowerBook in harm's way, I would. Having a drunk sorority girl spill her Cosmo on an iPod would be far less devastating than on what serves as my main machine when I'm not working.

 

[springscansing]

There's no way you could DJ on an iPod. Period. It would need many more controls to be able to handle all the real-time beat matching and such that DJs have to do.

Anyone here who says its practical doesn't know what a good DJ actually has to do.

Currently... I think the best tool going is NI's Traktor.

Then again, I'd never be caught dead DJing anything...

 

[tjwett]

yeah, this sounds really lame. it's a cute idea but no serious DJ would ever do this. don't get me wrong, the iPod is cool, i have one, and it's cool for playing tunes at parties but for real creative DJ work it's just not gonna work. i do live DJ sets with a laptop running Ableton Live but i would never attempt it with an iPod, doesn't sound like very much fun. all this technology and still nothing can touch vinyl.

 

[mim]

Re: Re: hm somethings fishy...

Originally posted by SlowX
actually, should it be able to go up to 11?

lol...ok, I got that.

Took a minute though!

 

[Freg3000]

Originally posted by tjwett
yeah, this sounds really lame. it's a cute idea but no serious DJ would ever do this. don't get me wrong, the iPod is cool, i have one, and it's cool for playing tunes at parties but for real creative DJ work it's just not gonna work. i do live DJ sets with a laptop running Ableton Live but i would never attempt it with an iPod, doesn't sound like very much fun. all this technology and still nothing can touch vinyl.

Yeah I agree. I think they did this at the Apple store after the big Music special at the Apple Store. But it isn't practical, and only total mac heads would do it.

 

[gwangung]

So, to sum up....

Folks who are saying there's no way that this could happen generally don't know what they hell they're talking about or don't know what's currently being done in the field and have no clue as to the considerably large market that this product could appeal to.

Hm. Sounds like half the posts here on ANY topic. And it sounds like what people were saying about the iMac before it came out.

 

[mymemory]

I'm an audio engineer...

It is possible to use an iPod as an audio source. Many DJ's uses CD with files downloaded from the internet in mp3 format. Acc sounds good, vinil sounds better but no one can tell the difference in a club at such high levels.

Tho change the speed/pitch all you need is a small variation in the actual iPod software, I'm not sure if the processor can handle the information, I bet it can. You are gonna need an external controller for speed/pitch, that is the key element.

Using 2 iPods it is a bit too expensive I think, one would be ok.

About the sound quality, it is good enough for clubs. I have a friend who mix from his iBook using Reason and you can not tell the difference in the sound quality. Now, if there is a difference, yes there is but no one will tell unless you are fully aware of it, average people just won't tell in a thousand years.

 

[bennetsaysargh]

Re: So, to sum up....

Originally posted by gwangung
Hm. Sounds like half the posts here on ANY topic. And it sounds like what people were saying about the iMac before it came out.

we do go through this every time there will be a new product like the iMac or the iPod. i remember a lot of people being skeptical about the iPods before they came out, but it turns out to be one of the most awesome products of all time! i might do a sketch of what i think the superdock will look like later.

 

[tjwett]

Re: So, to sum up....

Originally posted by gwangung
Folks who are saying there's no way that this could happen generally don't know what they hell they're talking about or don't know what's currently being done in the field and have no clue as to the considerably large market that this product could appeal to.

Hm. Sounds like half the posts here on ANY topic. And it sounds like what people were saying about the iMac before it came out.

i'm not saying it couldn't happen, i'm just saying it would be lame. i work as a musician for media and i also do live sets sometimes with vinyl or laptop. the amount of processing power it would take to actually make this thing cool is well, alot. it would need more than just a simple tempo adjustment feature even to be worth it's weight in dog crap. it would have to be fairly large if we are to assume it will have some sort of "scratch" feature. it would need a decent spec processor to handle the DSP. to get quality stretching/pitching results with an Mp3 is near impossible. to be of any use to DJs it should also incorporate some MIDI i/o for syncing. some internal effects wouldn't go amiss either. also it would need to have the abilty to cue up loop points and be able to punch them in and out on the fly. a basic sampler/looper function should be standard too. basically this thing would have to take the features of the current iPod and throw in the advanced timstretching algorithm technology of Ableton Live or Traktor, plus a new proprietory onboard FX format unless you expect it to handle VST plugins or something (yeah right), a decent size realistic feeling scratch wheel/jog, quality audio in/out, MIDI, etc, etc, etc. without all these things it's nothing special and certainly does nothing software can't do already for cheap. if it CAN do all these things Apple will have just taken their first steps into the hardware musical instrument business which currently is suffering sales drops of up to 80% over the past 2 years, thanks to you guessed it-SOFTWARE. i can't imagine Apple waiting to get into the hardware sampler industry a year after it's pretty much been declared dead. even Akai and E-mu are jumping ship and will soon be pushing software versions of all their stuff. i think Apple is a little smarter than to try and release a hardware musical instrument into a saturated and depressed market where everything you need to do and more is being handled by low cost software. and even if they squeeze all that magic into a box it would probably cost well, i don't even want to think about that.

 

[rt_brained]

Interesting. I was having that exact same conversation with the DJ who was spinning in the Apple store during the launch party a few weeks ago.

We were talking about how cool it would be if he could control the pitch and speed of the music through the 2 iPods and a Powerbook.

He said MP3s wouldn't work, but was amazed at the sound quality using the other music format.

I dunno how many other stores had the same set-up, but all he had to do was bring his mixing board, amp and speakers.

I guess we weren't the only ones who had that same conversation across the country that day.

 

[gwangung]

Re: Re: So, to sum up....

Originally posted by bennetsaysargh
we do go through this every time there will be a new product like the iMac or the iPod. i remember a lot of people being skeptical about the iPods before they came out, but it turns out to be one of the most awesome products of all time! i might do a sketch of what i think the superdock will look like later.

Well, what it points out is that what technically savvy (or half savvy) people want out of a product is not the same as what people actually want (or, more particularly, what a good chunk of people want; what people forget is that you can make a good living out of just a segment of the audience)(and that being technically good can make as much money as technically superior [see Windows 3.0]).

 

[dutchmaster]

there numerous dj events in NYC every week where the dj's use ipods. the post had a whole 3 page "spread" on ipod gear, accessories, events and it really only
touched the subject. Using software like Traktor, Final Cut, Ms Pinky (check that one out!) mp3 dj's are able to approximate many typical dj techniques in dance, hiphop, turnablist genres. i myself have done a basic set with itunes and traktor and other sources mixed. as stated if you use AIFF's the sound quality is superior to most CD's. I don't think QBERT or Shortkut are going to be abandoning their 1200's any time soon, nor will I, but I do find the convenience
of taking beats, tracks, effects, sounds, etc. straight from my computer or DAW to Traktor an incredible alternative to burning your own vinyl! The Pioneer's scratch wheel doesn't come close to the sound of a true skilled dj cutting on a 1200 at all, but I've still seen a lot of dance dj's use them. Truly Innovative products create their own market.

 

[frinky23]

I've been to shows and clubs and have seen stuff being run from turntables, Powerbooks, etc. As long as the music is good nobody cares what you're using. If this rumor is true, it could be a very successful product - I'm sure a lot of DJs would love not having to lug around crates of equipment.

 

[WannabeSQ]

What I think would be cool, is not a new iPod, but as someone else said, a superdock. My vision of the product would be a dock that holds 2 iPods, and has additional controls, whatever may be needed like fade, pitch, etc. Or, maybe the "pro" iPod would be mostly self contained, but have a dock for a second "regular" iPod, either for more tracks, or for more control on crossfades etc. I think it would be pretty cool, especially for weddings, birthday parties, etc. That way those types of DJs can have more pop tunes to please more people, and hopefully land more gigs.

Another thought, why not make the pro iPod slightly bigger, and incorporate regular laptop HDs, or even full size drives, so you could put 250GB of music, so uncompressed audio would be very feasable. Laptop drives are up to 80gb, and im sure they are working on getting them bigger.

 

[bennetsaysargh]

if apple decides to use bigger drives, it will take away from the effect of the iPod and it being sleek and whatnot.