Livetronica Studio, the next generation of DJ DAWs.
So this DJ DAW called Livetronica Studio by Stage Craft Software.com is software for, “looping, scratching, turntablism, controllerism, VST/AU hosting, and all sorts of live music making. Comes with tight Soundcloud integration, easy midi mapping for complete control, intense turntable visualization, and timecoded vinyl support.”
The GUI is butt ugly but the functionality looks beautiful. Of course this isn’t the only DAW application to take on the DJ experience but unlike “The One” this application looks to be making progress not lip service.
In other words it is free to download the BETA. If you decide to download the BETA and play with it post your thoughts here. You should also make a video for the software developer. In the video below he pokes fun at his DJing abilities and wants a community of DJs to show him what his software can do. I think this forum can take that challenge.
So here are the key features…
independent loop tracks with all the functionality of any hardware looper
virtual turntables which can be scratched with mouse, timecoded vinyl or midi devices
beat splicing and bpm shifting on loops/turntables or master tempo
Oh and there is this thing the developer is calling, “Turntable Quantization.” With Livetronica you can turn the turntable sensitivity up to well beyond that of a realistic turntable, and even hit freq shifts that are unrealistic or impossible on real turntables. But lets go a step further. Just as guitar has frets for every semitone, you can quantize the virtual turntables in Livetronica to produce pitch shifts the correspond only to semitonic intervals. Or, like some other instruments, you can quantize to only the major or minor intervals, or the blues or jazz scales. There are even options for modal, flamenco and middle eastern scales in Livetronica. Not satisfied with sticking to a scale? You can also set how strictly the turntable adheres to the scale. You can push and pull the notes … sliding like a guitarist bending a note from one pitch to another to strain to hit that perfect blue note between the intervals. It’s all there, Livetronica has the most advanced pitch quantization of any tool in the dj’s arsenal.
Dude. He is a programmer. Chill out. No one is going to make fun of you for not knowing how to write lines of code. Why bust his balls? He has to scratch to test his software does he not?
In the second video he talks about how he isn’t a scratch DJ (http://youtu.be/u4sM3t2Bu48?t=2m38s) and that he needs scratch DJs to send him performance videos. If you’re so good please DL the app and show us what can be done with these features.
I think it’s actually pretty accurate. A confused, unfocused mess of scratching, to demonstrate a confused, unfocused mess of software. It’s pretty fitting a programmer demoed the features, as it was obviously designed by programmers, for programmers, and not by anyone with any intention of actually using it. It looks like a gigantic pile of features and options slapped together into a mess of code and UI.
To quote Giantbomb: “Guys… I know a couple engineers, and this… It looks like it was built by engineers…”
These guys are complaining about the scratching demonstration and the GUI being designed by an engineer but they don’t offer to help in any way shape or form. That’s simply trolling. Just ignore em.
Considering this is just one person developing this software I am impressed. I’ve offered to help the developer with GUI improvements. I think the ugly interface is what really will turn people off. The way The One does it is far better and I think it would be a good idea to work from that styling guide.
But some people will just hate the idea of a customizable user interface to begin with. They are unable to think of how they would use it and apply that same internalized limitation on everyone else.
extracted zip to program files then tried to open on two different windows computers, both hung for longer than 5 minutes, then I terminated with task manager. first computer is a Acer 2.4ghz, amd dual core 4gb laptop, this wouldn’t allow task manager to shut it down, so waited a further 10 minutes then switched it off, needed to run start up repair and proceed with a system restore to boot back up.
second computer - eeepc 1.66ghz overclocked to 2.11ghz atom single core 2gb, hung for 5 minutes, shut down successfully with task manager..
looks like a great set of features for an all in one performance solution but unstable
Yeah. I too had stability problems on my quad core i5 HP laptop. It didn’t freeze like you mention but I couldn’t get it to run right. Very slow. Seems like he needs some development help.
I feel exactly the same way… I even (unintentionally) posted about this software on another link. I also offered to help them with the graphics as well (because, well… I have a degree in 3D Animation and I’d really like to see this program take off). There are a few things I’d like to see improved, but nothing tops the “scratch anything” and pitch-shift to frequency-accurate note ability. Hopefully, I’ll get to hang out with these guys and talk about what I’d like to see happen with the software. It’s just surprising that one programmer can get so much right where teams of them just can’t seem to.
It’s probably because there is is no bureaucrats holding him back, check what gwen did with djdecks, a lot of it’s functionalty was from requests on his forum… Although this is one step further as it allows vst instruments natively. I’d love for this to work, but it’s just not stable enough yet.
This is the programmer in question. Thanks for all the feedback above. I just stumbled upon this thread and, well, have a few thoughts.
First off, thanks for the kudos on all my hard work. This has been a long couple years getting this program to where it is - there is a lot to work out still but it’s moving fast. The bureaucracy comment is right on point - if you have a very direct goal and not a lot of meetings/discussions/shareholdes/QA - things tend to go pretty fast (as opposed to a project like, say, the bridge, which took years to develop … I mean, you can’t scratch backwards … come on ableton/serato).
Being a one man operation, however, also means I don’t have 10 different computers to test on and a staff to help out … so I rely on feedback and update the beta frequently. The windows issues referenced above were cleared up last week for example (openGL was a problem on the windows side for many users). There are, of course, lots of other issues being worked through currently.
DigitalTiger - thanks for the offers, I will contact you and would love to hear you’re thoughts and maybe work together.
With regards to scratching skillz … yeah, I’m working on it. Also, working on getting some scratch DJs to come demo the program (seems 95% of DJs don’t actually scratch … no surprise there). Please feel free drop me line if you would like to help out
Aaron great work on the program! I also would like to help you with the GUI but beyond that I think the program is stellar. The newer beta does seem far more stable and I plan on playing around with it. Where is the source? Or is this open source yet?
Thanks! It is not currently open source (though certain parts of it will be in the future). What programming experience do you have? The program is written in C++ using the JUCE libraries. Drop me a line on the forum or through the website and I’ll get back to from my email.
You mention that this is written using the Juice library which is GPL.
How do you plan on satisfying the GPL requirements by only opening up parts of the program? You might want to consult with the Free Software foundation because my understanding is once you link with that library you must open up the rest of your program (open source it).
