itDJ – Free DJ Mixing App for Mac

itDJ – Free – Macroplant

There are some excellent free DJing suites available for the Mac, some great budget ones and a redundant record box full of full-blown commercial apps. Currently Mac owners can download Virtual DJ Home and Mixx in the App Store, both of which have large user bases and, in the case of Virtual DJ, a clear upgrade path to a more comprehensive package should a bedroom DJ decide to move up to the DJ booth.

itDJ certainly has the feel of a free app and while I realise that this means we ought to take it easier on the software, there are other free DJ apps available for the Mac and itDJ has to be reviewed with this in mind. So the first thing to say about this software is that the interface is all over the place – metal styled knobs, old school folders and nasty buttons. It’s probably best to say that it isn’t a thing of beauty but I’d forgive the ugliest of interfaces if the functionality made up for it.

In terms of layout you get a vaguely Serato Itch style interface, with a couple of decks at the top and the music list at the bottom of the screen. There’s pitch and gain controls for each deck, along with EQ knobs per-deck. Music you cue up by dragging it onto either of the decks is shown at the top of the screen in over-lapping waveforms – red for the left deck and blue for the right. There’s a master BPM setting in the middle of the decks along with the obligatory cross-fader. It’s a fairly ramshackle arrangement.

In terms of sonic goodies, there’s actually some fairly cool tools to play with. Principle amongst these is a neat beat mixer that enables you to chop a track up in 2, 4, 8 or 16 beat chunks. It works surprisingly well and syncs nicely between beat modes. There’s also an effects tab with the obligatory reverb and flanger and a wahwah which can be set to match beats and works well when combined with a loop.

The loops and cues tab, an essential tool for any digital DJ these days, is a bit hit-and-miss. This comes down to the fact that itDJ’s beat detection isn’t exactly world-beating and so while the cue points function well, getting a loop on the money is not guaranteed. There is a cool loop shifter slider that enables you to flick your 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4 or 8 bar loop up and down the track.

Many digital DJs either don’t know how to beat-match tracks or choose not to and so the Sync feature is all-important. We found this to be lacking – unless there was a crystal clear bass or high-hat for the sync to latch onto, it failed to find the beat. In comparison to Virtual DJ Home’s syncing facility, it’s woefully inadequate. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was easy to mix the ‘old fashioned’ way, but the virtual decks are non-functional and did nothing no matter how we moved the mouse pointer on them, so to beatmatch you have to use the top waveform to nudge, speed up or slow down the track and it simply doesn’t work in any useful way.

Hidden behind a toggled FX Panel button are four sample decks, 16 effects slots which you can fill with your own police sirens and ‘woo-yea’s and a full sequencer. The latter seemed like a vaguely bizarre thing to add to a DJ mixing application and its painfully simple design wouldn’t add much to any set beyond, possibly, getting you out of trouble if a track comes to its end before you’re ready to cue up the next one. itDJ also appears to have some basic support for MIDI mixing panels, but it’s not clear which ones it supports or indeed if you need to do the button mapping yourself.

The bottom line is that this digital DJing package simply doesn’t cut it in any meaningful way. If I was being charitable I’d say it was a step up from using iTunes to DJ with – but only just. Given just how good the also free Mixx and Virtual DJ Home are and given the fact that many people get Traktor LE free with their digital DJ decks or MIDI panels, you’d have to be fairly desparate to consider using itDJ. It does have a nice icon though.