The main screen of Cross DJ For iPad, showing a traditional layout but with a wealth of extra information too.
Ever since MixVibes showed an early iOS version of its well-regarded Cross DJ system at Musikmesse earlier this year, we have been eagerly waiting to bring you this review.
Finally, with the app due to hit the app store shortly (it’s now available!), I’ve been able to spend a week of quality time with it. The press release boldly claims it to be the “World’s First Professional DJing App”. Similar claims have been made before by other DJ apps that have often fallen short of expectations. So given that the DJ app market is already competitive, does Cross DJ live up to the hype, and will it stir the competition up?
The main screen
CrossDJ is mostly a single screen app (with the exception of access to the music library and settings). Everything is easily accessible, focused around the familiar twin-deck layout with the mixer in the centre, and crossfader, cue, play/pause and sync buttons underneath, plus a wealth of information at the top. To a first-time DJ, the abundance of detail on the screen may confuse; however, I suspect after loading the first couple of tracks this will pass.
The display on Cross DJ feels particularly crisp and well defined.
The decks are neatly coloured yellow (left) and red (right). This becomes particularly useful when you look to the top of the screen at the waveforms and the circular four-beat progress display. As the track loads; the BPM is detected (to two decimal places), the waveform is calculated and the beatgrid is applied.
All of the track metadata is visible at the very top of the screen as well as the current pitch increment detail. Underneath is the zoomed-in waveform with beatgrid. The waveforms for both tracks are sandwiched together for a visual alignment of kicks, snares and other major peaks in the audio.
CrossDJ employs beatgridding to assist alignment of tracks during a mix. The beatgrid is shown on the waveform; a longer white line represents the position of the first kick drum, with three smaller markers indicating beats. The next white line shows the start of the next bar (four beats).
Track nearing end = flashing lights!
As the track plays, the circular beat-progress display rotates in the colour of the track. As the beatgrids for the two tracks become better aligned, the red and yellow lines on the circular display get closer until eventually they merge and become a single orange bar. The four-beat progress bar is something that Virtual DJ users, for instance, will be familiar with a version of; unfortunately it’s not a frequent feature on iOS DJ systems, which is a shame as it is a useful visual indicator.
Another nice touch is that when a track nears its end, the “Remain Time” field and summary waveform display both flash (thankfully, at the same rate as anything else that may be flashing on the screen!).
We’ve seen scrolling waveforms before on other apps; however the display on CrossDJ is particularly crisp and well defined.
We’ve seen scrolling waveforms before on other apps; however the display on CrossDJ is particularly crisp and well defined.
Below the beatgrids and waveforms is a section which either displays cue points (flag button), loops (anti-clockwise button) or beatgrid adjustment (last button). There are six stored cue points; when they are set you see colour-coded flags in both the scrolling waveform and the summary waveform.
The loop functionality is currently limited to on-the-fly looping with a “slip” feature that can allow the track to continue as if the loop button had not been pressed. The eight loop buttons are in increments from 16 beats down to 1/8. It would be great to see stored loop points available in CrossDJ in the future.
Beatgridding
The stand-out feature is the beatgrid adjustment. In general, Cross DJ does a great job analysing tracks, detecting the BPM accurately and identifying where the beatgrid should be placed. However, on those few occasions where it wasn’t perfect I could use the beatgrid buttons to manually identify the first beat of a bar and fine-adjust the gap between the beats in the grid. I haven’t seen this level of detail for beatgrid mapping on any other iOS DJ app so far.
The deck display is self explanatory and should be familiar to anyone who’s used DJ software before. The pitch increment can be set from 4% to 100%, with pitch nudge buttons at the bottom of the pitch control slider.
Swap turntables for X-Y pads...
Whenever I see an app that can adjust pitch to 100%, I’m always keen to hear how it sounds at slow speeds. With better quality playback, the audio should be smooth and consistent throughout the range without any glitching or digital artefacts. Only a few DJ apps achieve this and it turns out that CrossDJ is one of them. As the app is rumoured to shortly be being made compatible with MixVibes’ own U-Mix Control Midi controller, I imagine the scratch sounds that you’ll be able to get from the decks will be impeccable.
The effects mode
With Cross DJ you needn’t restrict yourself to the traditional turntable view; with a quick press of the “FX” button you get a generous X-Y pad for use with one of the 13 quality effects. An effect can also be applied continuously using the “Hold” button (arrow pointing down).
The “Bliss” effect is a handy white noise plus high-pass filter – useful for adding atmospheric whooshes to build-ups and break-downs. The “Brake” effect was also useful, sounding like a deck stop but also coming with a slip mechanism so the track continues as if the it hasn’t been slowed/stopped.
I’m not usually keen on rotary controls with a touchscreen interface; however the EQ and gain dials worked perfectly. Configuration of the app is limited to five items, including when the track end warning should start and split audio output (in conjunction with a splitter cable).
Music library access
Cross DJ really moves away from the pack when it comes to music library access. It’s a custom interface with access to iTunes playlists, a search bar at the bottom with a sort by button. The “Sort By” button gives you sorting in ascending and descending order on title, artist, album, genre, BPM, length, rating and track number.
Sorting within a playlist,
This is already above and beyond most other DJ apps. If you select “All Tracks” you get a number of additional buttons displayed at the bottom of the music library screen. These give you the power to set a default method for slicing through the entire music library. I had mine set to “BPM > Genre” which meant I had a display of BPM ranges that I could drill into and view the genres, drilling down further to the tracks.
You have the option of setting up to three tiers for this style of browsing. Ideally I’d like to see the comments field included in the metadata sorting and drilldowns; this would mean I could select a BPM range and then a harmonic key to return a subsection of tracks I could use.
You can use the “Analyze List” button for CrossDJ to bulk analyse the tracks on the screen.
Conclusion
Cross DJ has several distinguishing features that help raise it above most other DJ apps available. There is an undeniable feel of quality about the interface and the functionality within, which is unsurprising given MixVibes long history with DJ software and hardware.
With the introductory price set to be low (for a limited period only), CrossDJ is certainly well worth checking out, and even at full price it will remain excellent value.
If you have a first generation iPad, note that Cross DJ is only available for iPad 2 and upwards; however on a brighter note, there are plans for an iPhone / iPod Touch version later in the year.
Summary
We like:
- Extensive music library slices and sorting
- Detailed beatgrid adjustments
- Quality waveform display
We don’t like:
- No crossfader adjustment
No key lockUpdate: This has been added in v1.1.0- No storable loop points
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Product details:
Price: US$9.99 / €7.99 (special launch price) – to increase later
Download from: App Store
What do you think?
Do you use Cross DJ on another platform? Do you use other iOS DJ software but feel tempted to give this ago? What do you think of the deck and FX views? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Now go to:
Review: FutureDJ for iPhone & iPod Touch
Review: MixmoDJ for iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch
Review: DJ Player 4.0 For iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch
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Tags: cross dj, ios, ios dj, ipad dj, mixvibes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
No key lock?! That’s a show stopper for me!
[ link ]Hi Raphael, I was surprised to not see Key Lock among the features available – especially since CrossDJ is iPad2 and upwards. We know that the MixVibes team will be reading the comments on this article, so perhaps we’ll see Key Lock in the near future!
[ link ]Hi Raphael,
As of today (v1.1.0) the app has Key Lock functionality. Not much else to report on this release though.
[ link ]This is the one i’ve been waiting for.
I’m hoping this will finally turn my iPad in to the useable backup system i’ve always imagined it could be.
[ link ]Looks amazing – I will definitely be purchasing.
[ link ]Only slight disappointment for me is no saved loop points – if you are reading this Mixvibes then please include that in the next release!
Question: does this work with any midi controllers yet? If so which ones?
[ link ]Hi Paco Loco, no midi controller support at the moment however it is something we’ve passed back to MixVibes as a recommended improvement. Maybe it’s our chance to suggest some midi controllers worthy of support with the app?! It would need some redesign (landscape to portrait) but CrossDJ could be a good fit with the new Numark iDJ Pro controller, especially in FX view mode.
[ link ]I’d definitely like to see support for the new Behringer CMD Micro for starters.
[ link ]Of course what I would really like would be full midi mapping capabilities a la Traktor…
Hi all,
Thank you for you interest and comments on CrossDJ.
We are very excited about this product.
You will be pleased to know that we plan to make the MIDI control available in the second version of CrossDJ. The Key Lock (Master Tempo)feature and stored loop points are also an improvment that we plan for futur versions, sonner rather than later.
It is important to understand that the iPad limits us in terms of CPU hence we have to make choices and priorities features.
However, the arrival of iPad 3 offers new possibilities which we are currently exploring.
We will do are best to keed our product simple and relevant.
Thanks again for your comments.
[ link ]Best,
MixVibes
Your DJing solution Provider.
So when is it actually going to be released? April 24th has passed, May 7th has passed, 2nd week of May 14th has passed.
[ link ]It’s not an exact science, because of getting app store approval.
[ link ]yeah the app store approval can be a surprising looooooong process.
[ link ]Thanks for the info, this is great to hear.
[ link ]Can you tell us what midi devices will be supported? Will it be just the mixvibes hardware or will other controllers also be supported?
Hi Paco! I guess they’ll do their own first, followed by others. We have no official word though.
[ link ]MixVibes’ Cross DJ for iPad is awesome.
[ link ]What people out there have to understand is the iPad is limited in terms CPU.
Obviously they have optimised the product to the max.
Would you rather have more features or the app crash!!!!?
Might i remind you that the iPad 3 just came out. Clearly the first updates will allow new features on this more powerfull iPad. its common sens…
People are so greedy for features and apt to criticise as soon as something goes wrong.
Im one of the rare privileged who has actually seen it and tried it.
and let me tell you that as is
Its a KILLER app!!!!
DJ PLAYER has proper key-lock, working on the iPad 1. No “doubling kicks”, no big artifacts, almost like in Traktor.
DJay also has a (less quality, but still okay) key-lock, working from iPad 2.
Other apps have quite poor quality key-locks, so i did not mention them.
[ link ]If the “key lock” feature is an absolute necessity for you I understand you concern.
[ link ]To me its also important but not a important as loops or FX or the media management system, the quality of the equalizing.
Given what I have seen from Cross DJ, I m quite confident that you would have a lot of fun with it.
Its a serisouly solid app as it is today.
Also, we have to remember its only version 1.0. Key lock is probably what they are working on as we speak…
Looks pretty solid, this one. I´ll sure give it a try. I´m a huge fan of DJAY which I use professionaly here and there, this could replace it if they improve these minor short features (key lock, etc.) A recording would also be useful. I´m sure they´ll lauch updates and so I foresee it running full-featured in a short time.
I´d appreciate a pre-programmed crossfader for scratch too, DJAY´s one is really convincing and unless you´re using a MIDI controller there´s no way to scratch on iPad. I thought the iPad3 superior CPU was being used exclusivelly for the retina display, and in fact the processing capacities were equal to iPad2, but we´ll se how this translates into app advantages.
Thanks for the review Hombre, very good.
[ link ]Just got this today. I’d spent the last few wks using Traktor on MacBook pro with Touch OSC, but wasn’t v comfortable with it. Road tested IK Multimedia’s Dj app, and didn’t like a) the non-native iPad app interface and b) the dreadful syncing (coming from Traktor – what’s digital djing without good ?). Paid top dollar for the full iPad version of Djay and found fault for the same beat grid problems (I’m open to suggestions that I was using it wrong). Today I grabbed the introductory-offer-priced Cross DJ. This is fantastic. The beatmatching/syncing is mostly perfect. The interface is lovely and intuitive. The effects are quite nice sounding, and toggle between the jog display and the fx disay is quick, responsive and easy to use. The library is nicer than Traktor’s even. I love the visual representations of the track.
3 flaws: no kills on eq, no reverb in fx, and no monitor button. Also it crashed on me twice today for no discernible reason. In saying that, i got the two tracks that it crashed on back up within 10 or 15 secs.
I used to play vinyl. It’s been a tough transition to playing digital. There has just been too much stuff to factor in! I still prefer to just trust the tune, play it through, with the occasional eq twiddle or fx for a few bars, two decks. I neither need nor want extra sample decks and bank upon bank of linked effects. Bearing all that in mind, CrossDJ for iPad is simply perfect for me. I just need to load up relevant tracks to my iPad, bring the appropriate connectors, and away we go!
My only concern is sound quality. Through a big pa this may sound miniscule. Does the audio splitter reduce both tracks to Mono as well, as in other apps?
[ link ]It out!!!! its out!!!!
[ link ]Its awesome.
I love you mixvibes
I had the opportunity to do some spins on the beta version, which was crashing a lot, and it seems that Mixvibe didn’t solve this situation so far. But I think CrossDJ has a lot of potential and it will be a heavy competitor as a tablet DJ tool.
[ link ]Hi,
[ link ]Can Cross DJ access music from an external disk connected to the IPAD ? this would be the thing that makes me buy the IPAD and Cross DJ !
Thanks
Hi Mat,
[ link ]No…currently there’s no DJ app on iOS that I know of that lets you access music from a connected external disk drive, that may change later though. DJay has Cloud integration which may help you. Although, whatever the source of the track, the app will always need to copy it locally for analysis before playback.
Sadly no app save for the built-in photos application can use any sort of external mass storage, nor are there any available APIs that could be used for this purpose. Here’s hoping Apple decides to make some available in a future software update…
[ link ]Fat!!!
[ link ]Play fine with only 24 tracks, then I loaded 600+ to my library and now it crashes all the time (on the new iPad 64 gig)!! Don’t developers test this stuff before they release into the wild?!
[ link ]Hi,
just recognized this great APP – It’s awesome, MixVibes did a nearly perfect job, thanks guys !.
Now there are 2 professional DJ Apps in the store. RedBullBPM (RB) and CrossDJ. I would love to use CrossDJ instead: as you have all on one screen, Waveforms, Cue/Play, Effects/FX – perfectly designed! … but there are still some reasons, why I have to stay on RB:
Here’s my wish list:
(1) a minor issue: The 6 hot cues work in cue/stop mode, instead of cue/play. That’s irritating. Most professional controller use the hot cues also to start play mode.
(2) RedBull has 6 different Output Modes, CrossDJ only 2. E.g. the ‘Ballroom’ mode in RB: using stereo on the headphone, switch to mono only if prelisten (PFL). Sounds much better, perfect at home. Or the full stereo modes in RB in clubs (using a second iPhone/iPad) … also missing.
(3) the pitch bend buttons are really to small and to close together, any ideas to improve ?
(4) more options in ‘Settings’, e.g. increasing/decreasing amount for pitch bend.
(5) and as mentioned from the other guys already: the missing key lock functionality !
Hope some folks from CrossDJ read this blog, getting some ideas for the next release.
Be sure … I’m looking forward to 2nd version – folks, it’s August already (3 month after May
Thanks !
[ link ]Cross DJ is a great app but needs a record button along with key lock.
[ link ]I too think it’s a great App apart from two things…Keylock and no Bluetooth audio support (something no-one seems to have picked up on) The latter would allow me to DJ free of trailing leads, even walk around a club and do a section of a set on my IPad…
That aside its a triumph on iOS
Keep up the great work DDJT’s
[ link ]I am having issues playing my music on CrossDJ. All of my cloud media files are visible on Cross but when I attempt to add a song it completely shuts off. This also happens when I attempt to analyze my music list. What do I need to do?
[ link ]I’ve not heard of that issue before, David; MixVibes has a good forum, I’d definitely go and ask your question over there.
[ link ]This seems like a nice app but why no rec button??? Why? I don’t use key lock but a rec button is mandatory to use an ipad to bang out ideas and mixtapes. No recording option is just insane.
[ link ]I love Cross but I cannot get any external soundcard to work for multi route audio, it just does not recognise them. However djay recognised both of my external soundcards instantly and brought up a screen asking where I wanted my headphone cueing (headphones connected to ipad jack) , and the master audio (to PA) through my USB soundcard. I’m certain cross is capable of this, I cannot mix in mono through a splitter cable. Any help here?
[ link ]Do you know if cross dj works with idj pro?
[ link ]