Is it possible to setup a professional DJ rig with an iPad?
As tablets become more and more powerful it seems to me like they would be much better suited for DJing then lugging around a laptop. I have not found a way to get my VCI-100 to work with my ipad. Are there any professional controllers out there that really work well with the ipad?
I am not about to buy one but I do see the potential for using the new windows surface pro + traktor + any controler you want to make an ultra portable pro level rig. I just want to use the gear I have in some new ways.
What is your criteria for “Pro Level”? Is a VCI-100 pro level? I think pioneer and denon have iPad apps to use with their respective CD players and I think people even get paid using those setups, so I guess that would be Pro level.
Not as yet I don’t think it would be possible but I believe it is just round the corner. I love the advantages of digital dj ing and controlerism but I am at present going back to my routes analogue style as I feel more in touch with the music. A nice hybrid setup is perfect for me at the moment having. Having an ipad at the centre of that would certainly be easier than a laptop or my iMac. Fingers crossed the technoe is round the corner and I believe it is.
if using a controller in the first place a laptop is not much more then an iPad to carry around. the controller would need a bag or case that a laotop would fit nicely into.
I’ve used my iPad on it’s own for one small gig and was fun. I highly doubht I’ll do that again anytime soon. it’s not quite there yet.
TouchOSC and Lemur are wonderful, but I believe you are asking about standalone apps that dont require a computer. New NI iPad app soon to be released!!
Lets say the standard used to be two 1200s and a DJM600 to be a “pro level setup”. Now that we have moved into the digital age I think of “pro level setup” as any setup that could be taken into a club and doesn’t have any use or reliability drawbacks. I am curious to see what this new NI app is as it may be just what I am looking for.
Not with an iPad, no; a Surface Pro, or any other Windows-based tablet, for that matter, would work just fine though. When 1080p Wintabs start being available at the £200 mark, I’ll be switching away from my MBP.
Ahem, cough bullshit cough - a $200 tablet aint gonna cut it any more than an Ipad im afraid.
You do realize that the Surface pro is going to be around $800 right ? .. the regular surface is no more than a netbook with a touchscreen and intensive apps like Traktor wont run on anything less than the pro.
DJ player for the iPad/iphone is more than capable of being combined with pro controllers and IMHO is “Pro-enough” its got quite a few tricks up its sleeve and full midi mapping with a camera kit usb connector.
Personally I LOVE the Wireless feature of the Pioneer Aero, as it means you can lift up your pad and browse your collection on Rekordbox, I hope someone brings out some sort of wireless audio router that can be used with ipads and brought along like we would an Audio4 in the near future.
That’s why I said WHEN there’s a Windows tablet out for £200. And considering how I can run Traktor 2.6 fine on an EeePC 701 (800mhz Celeron), I highly doubt a cheap tablet with a Haswell-Y processor in it is going to struggle lol.
I know you CAN run traktor on an EEE .. I did just that a few years ago with a Celeron 900 and Traktor 3.3 worked great, but the current versions of windows chew up so much resource wise before anything else is loaded and I doubt any newer versions of Traktor or anything else “pro” will support lower end CPU’s or tablets unless specifically aimed to actually be lower end apps with slimmed down feature sets designed for lower end processors.
Also worked great with OSX running on a Lenovo S10 which was a bloody great backup machine running TraktorPro
I think the idea of having a high powered CPU windows Tablet @ 200 sounds great in theory, but
A) They wont be cheap initially
B) At that stage when they are cheap it’ll already be out of date,
C) Full size notebooks get a much faster processor bump at the same time and the newest software requires the higher spec to operate with all functions.
Tablets IMHO will for the time being will have apps with a limited feature set - not that thats a bad thing though (now if developers and manufacturers would get rid of every freaking “flange effect!”)
Also IMHO developers have cared too little about the overall efficiency of their software, with every other application these days being absolutely MASSIVE - personally I like the small is beautiful motto, rather than large is lovely. I hope that will change with the sheer amount of apps that NEED to be cross machine/processor platforms into the future.
Not if you tweak them properly; there’s plenty of services and components which can be removed, and not only that, but Traktor itself is nowhere NEAR as resource-intensive as people would have you believe. The only thing which even makes a DENT on the CPU is keylock, and poorly-written ASIO drivers, which is really down to hardware manufacturers and not NI/MS.
One of my hobbies has always been getting OSes running on hardware configurations well outside the “required” spec, and you’d be surprised what you can do with a few hours’ work. I’m CONVINCED that the next big thing to come out of China will be ridiculously cheap Atom-based Ubuntu tablets; at which point, I’ll be installing Windows 8 and Traktor, and then tossing my MBP in the bin
EDIT: If I have the time/effort, I’ll probably put together a Traktor-specific Windows 8 Embedded image designed purely for DJing, that way I can optimize for latency and provide hardware support for most controllers out-of-the-box.
I use my iPad with DJ Player midi mapped to my mixtrack pro. It has everything you would need to mix, but it is missing a way to record the master out (but this can be worked around if you have a spare iPhone/iPod touch). It is relatively easy to midi map, with any class-compliant device. I actually like this software better than CrossDJ which I bought a few months back for 50$.
I wish however that it could be navigated through entirely via controller, but it requires at least some touchscreen manipulation.
It’s bad enough on a 1280x800 MBP, can’t imagine how horrible it’d be at 1024x768…