Choice is good right? Well there's more choice than ever now in the burgeoning DJ software market with the actual release of
Image-Line's Deckadance. This software appeared pretty much out of nowhere a short time ago as a beta and now it's out there - PC only unfortunately - and as fully featured as anything on the market and then some. And for a limited time, you can grab a copy on the cheap (well slightly cheaper anyway).
I could copy and paste every page from the
Deckadance site in the name of providing you with all the info you'll need, but that's what the innanets is for - so shoot off to the
Deckadance site, have a poke around and download the demo for a thrash around on your pooter. And then come back and tell us what you think.
And if you like what you see, you can get the full Deckadance experience for $149 instead of $179 for a limited period.
It's worth pointing for those not savvy with the ways of digital DJing that you'll need a soundcard and some control vinyl on top of this price. So don't go getting all giddy at the thought of a $150 SSL. But for those people who want alternatives to their established setup, Deckadance could be worth a try. For version 1 (usually one to avoid), this is coming guns a blazin'.
If someone from Image-line wants to hook us up with a demo copy, we'll add it into the list of solutions that we have in-house right now for testing.
The demo is fully function, it just adds 'this is a decadance demo' (spoken in the ungliest american accent ever to have come out of my speakers) every so few minutes to the audio output.
I haven't been able to really test it yet though. It looks promising that you're not limited to one soundcard or vinyl system.
You can also just use a midicontroler if you wish.
Oh, and it loads in ableton (or any other host) as a vsti. Or you can host vst effects in it.
Quote from deckadance site "Of course, if you suck as a DJ, you will still suck using Deckadance, but you will suck better, faster, harder and more creatively than ever before!"
I love a company with a sense of humor.
Now that's Funny... :D
Looks cool, but I'm not sure what it is that is supposed to set this apart from the other products besides an ad with a white girl's ass in it. Price isn't everything, I'm afraid. The gui reminds me of Traktor, to be honest.
> I love a company with a sense of humor.
they stole that line from Mackie. Belgians have no sense of humour.
I know that people are already talking trash about Deckadance (see the TS post), but I'm willing to give it a shot. I currently own MixVibes, FinalScratch 2, Serato, and Virtual DJ. I downloaded the demo and noticed the following (correct me if I'm wrong):
1. No support for absolute mode unless it's Ms. Pinky vinyls... Are they going to sell Ms. Pinky vinyls or make them available somehow to their users? Or do I have to buy Ms. Pinky software as well?
2. No auto-gain function. I couldn't figure it out if there is one. I need this desperately. Someone please tell me that I'm just overlooking it.
3. Out of the timecode support that is there, I found that it has very low internal latency and has a great feel to it.
I can't find out how high or low the pitch can go. Also how sensitive it is like can I go .01% to .02% and it knows it. What I realy want to see is it on the mackie mixer. There is lots of mixer you can just plug it in and it works right away.
Louis, torq vinyl is actually ms pinky vinyl, so you can just buy that instead of going through the pinky sources.
they going to have absolute mode support for serato vinyl?
I tried it again last night... They put out ver 1.08, and to be honest it's really not anywhere in the league of SSL, MixVibes, Traktor Scratch...
It only supports Pinky vinyl - I found a spare that I had, set the generation number correctly, and it was continually reading the wrong positions. It would play for 3 seconds then jump to someplace else in the track.
Maybe in the future, but at this point they should be paying me to be a beta tester (not the other way around, with me potentially paying $149 to use software that's not really done).
I tried it last week and I thought it was good for a first attempt for the digital dj crowd. I was using my spare scratchamp2 and some Serato timecode vinyl and Deckadance kept up w/ the quick skratch movements....
As much as I want to use it, it's not up to par feature-wise yet.
And plus, I saw the advert in Remix magazine, with basically 3/4 of the page dedicated to girls in bikinis, and 1/4" with the actual software. Give me a break, you'd think they'd give us a little more credit.
Yeah, I don't know what girls in bikinis have to do with digital djing!?! =) Anyhow, I am really interested to read some reviews (or see some demo videos) on the hands on vinyl control and scratching.
Used Deckadance with Midi controller (vestax 300) at a gig, had a good feel with it, very easy to use sampler for on the fly screwing about, easy effects to use, I think it looks a bit messy, if they had a cut down skin for use with an external mixer that would be good.
Tried it in the studio with mixvibes vinyl and had a few issues. It was not reading properly. simple as that. Still screwing about with settings to make it work, but also got some torq vinyl on the way. Lets see what happens.....
Used Deckadance with Midi controller (vestax 300) at a gig, had a good feel with it, very easy to use sampler for on the fly screwing about, easy effects to use, I think it looks a bit messy, if they had a cut down skin for use with an external mixer that would be good.
Tried it in the studio with mixvibes vinyl and had a few issues. It was not reading properly. simple as that. Still screwing about with settings to make it work, but also got some torq vinyl on the way. Lets see what happens.....
Hello i try deckadance whit serato and torq vinyl and the torq vinyl work great but the serato did work at all.
The software is O,K but the sound quality is a litlle bit weird... But the Effect are cool specialy the relopper that allow you ti create relooping patern..
And i think its weird to select tracks beaucous of the design of the software...
Sorry For my english whit native language is french..
Now, i've been troubleshooting.. can you use this software with the new Numark Mixdeck? I can't figure it out.
On May 10, 2007, Kyran commented...
17 comments to this story