As some of you probably know, Traktor offers the ability to change any of its decks into 4 sample/loop players. What would happen if you switched all 4 decks into loop players? In this article I’m going to explore the concept, and feasibility, of running all four decks in sample mode, allowing for on the fly remixing and building tracks from the ground up in a live situation and trying to push the sample decks into being more than an auxillary tool.

Prior to the release of this year’s well-known DJ Mag Top 100 list, former DJ Mag editor Terry Church published an article detailing the complete failings of the list over the years, suggesting that the internet already has plenty of tools to determine the true popularity of DJs. We decided to take his conclusion to heart, and using stats from social media websites, see who has the biggest following. Continue reading to see the full list and how it stacks up against the much debated DJ Mag top 100. 

Sonic boom! After two months of development, the DJ TechTools labs have cooked up a super sweet mapping for the S2 that is sure to blow your socks off. Continue reading for a full demo from the man himself, Mr. Golden.

Launched today, Zayik is a new website that allows controllerists to design their own MIDI controller within a web interface. The brainchild of a handful of cool smaller music technology companies, Zayik is a fun and simple tool that is great for taking simple ideas for controllers and assembling them. More information, our thoughts, and links after the jump!

Okay, so we know loud music’s cool. Not too loud, of course – there’s no point in putting your eardrums into retirement before your dancing shoes – but how is ‘loud’ actually defined? And is ‘loud’ the only thing we should be concentrating on?

I remember mashing my keyboard to bits when Winamp launched over 15 years ago with its trippy, keyboard controlled graphics. Now projected displays in tandem with DJing are popping up at many headliner shows, and even in bars and smaller clubs. In this article, we’ll look at music visualizers you can use to hypnotize your audience and an introduction to Video DJing (VJ) software for some next level displays.

It wasn’t until the spring of 2000 when someone handed me a black and green CD that I experienced a sound that truly confused me. Having spent the previous ten years subsisting on a diet of mostly progressive house and trance, it had become my natural instinct to categorize everything I heard as “club”music” or, well, not.  That CD was Progression Sessions 3 and the tune I kept going back to again and again was Blu Mar Ten’s ‘Santur’. 12 years later I am still buying their music and their music is still surprising me. Today we look into what got them there.

Don’t run off! We’re not actually going to give you a physics lecture. That said, you might need to put your thinking caps on, because I’ve been working on a concept that’s designed to sidestep some of the limitations of DJ software and open up a whole new world of power, but it’s a little bit complicated.

DJ Unkut, the winner of the DMC Online championships – not to mention a slew of other high profile titles – has just released a new Native Instruments sponsored routine video. Unkut’s been bringing more and more controllers into his turntablism routines recently, and we think this video might be his best example of the two worlds colliding yet – so we asked him a few questions to see if we could get into the mind of a champion…

One rarely known but sometimes serious side effect of using controllers in clubs is jog wheel vibration. Without a motorized platter, some jog wheels can start to move in unwanted ways when introduced to heavy vibration. Unfortunately, big bass is a required environmental conditions of most clubs. This is not common to all controllers but if you happen to have this problem, here are a few ways to fix it.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen evidence that Serato and Traktor are about to have some serious competition on their hands in the coming months. We’ve seen this happen in the past, namely with Deckadance and Torq making major inroads with new feature sets that the Big Two lack, but neither of those have gained enough traction to be taken seriously.

After six months of development, we are proud to announce an exclusive line of high performance knobs and faders that come in a wide range of attractive colors, designed specifically for DJs.  Up until now, there were almost no after-market knobs available, so we decided to design them ourselves. The result is a line of modern knobs for the modern DJ that takes into account looks, feel and function. Offering a affordable way to personalize and improve your MIDI controllers and DJ mixers.