A Complex Yet User-Friendly DJ Application for Your Mac

very good
key review info
application features
  • DJ MIDI Controller
  • (6 more, see all...)

We all know what a DJ is, but we might not know the work and dedication required to become a good one. Beside the good musical taste, knowledge and a set of specialized devices and mixers, you also need a good multimedia mixer.

CuteDJ is a fully featured, thorough and intuitive application that enables you to mix music, videos and even karaoke tracks. The well-designed interface offers quick and easy access to professional-grade tools and to a wide variety of features and effects designed to satisfy the needs of both novice and professional DJs.

The installation process is pretty straightforward: you just have to download the lightweight package, launch it, select the installation location and follow the steps needed to install it.

From CuteDJ’s main window you are provided with instant access to all the tools and features you need to put on a show. Although the interface might seem a little overcrowded at first, you will get used to it in no time. In addition, you can browse your Mac’s hard disk for audio and video files or import your iTunes library along with your playlists.

What is more, the built-in search form helps you find the desired song or video in a matter of seconds. You can always clear the current playlist, add or remove files, shuffle their order and even apply colored tags. If you like to use the tags offered by Mac OS X, then you will absolutely love this feature. Unfortunately, you will have to settle with a limited number of colors: yellow, red, blue and green.

The great thing about CuteDJ is that it does an outstanding job mixing videos and songs in both AutoMix and manual mode. However, it is worth mentioning that in manual mode, your skills are essential in obtaining the performance you are looking for. You can even save your mixing sessions as AIFF audio files and reuse your recordings. Although it works great as it is, it would have been useful if CuteDJ allowed us to save our audio and video mixing sessions to other audio and video file formats for easy importing into future projects.

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As mentioned earlier, you can add as many audio and video files as you like to your own, custom playlists. Moreover, you can let CuteDJ take care of the mixing process and randomly play your favorite tracks. As an added bonus, Karaoke fans will love CuteDJ’s ability to play and display MP3+G, CD+G and ZIP MP3+G files. Thus, CuteDJ can be used as a professional mixing application, as well as an automatic music mixer and player for bars, restaurants, pubs, retail stores and more.

The app features three different tabs for audio, video and karaoke. Each tab offers you access to your files and your playlist. What’s more, while in the Automix or manual mode, you can click on the MixNext button every time you want to seamlessly jump to the next track.

Additionally, CuteDJ’s two decks come with interactive waveform display and beat grid. There is also a sync function that makes it very easy to synchronize the tempo and beat of the two loaded tracks for easy mixing or in order to smoothly cross-fade between them. You can also save and load up to three different loops and adjust the BPM, gain and key along with the 3-band equalizer (high, medium and low) of each track.

Furthermore, CuteDJ offers an impressive list of audio effects that can be applied onto the loaded tracks, as well as to video tracks. You can virtually do anything you can think of, from simulating vinyl scratches to reverse playback. You can fade in and out, equalize the audio and normalize the volume, add reverb effects, echo, flanger, phaser and more.

Regardless of the type of content you are mixing, you will have a unique and pleasant experience thanks to the beat-match and beat-tempo detection tools, real-time sampler, advanced mixing engine, automatic cue point selection and a lot of other useful features.

If you are a DJ in training or one that just started learning, CuteDJ’s built-in “Learn” mode, designed to help you discover and learn all CuteDJ’s functions, will definitely make your day. The “Learn” mode will also make it effortless to define your own, custom keyboard shortcuts for every single button and feature available via its interface.

If video mixing is your thing, you will be pleased to know that CuteDJ is also capable of smoothly playing both 720p and 1080p/1080i videos. If you have an ASIO / multichannel enabled sound card, you can even take advantage of the separate headphones output to pre-listen your mixes before playing them.

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What is more, CuteDJ also promises to offer support for over 50 DJ MIDI controllers and 8 different hardware MIDI/HID controllers at the same time. Furthermore, the timecode support will enable you to use a real DJ-CD player or turntable as a controller.

CuteDJ is fairly considerate regarding your Mac’s resources, especially if you take into consideration its long list of features. During our testing period, the CPU usage was between 20 and 60%, with rare spikes of up to 80% on one of the CPU cores. Additionally, the RAM load was constantly at about 250 – 300 MB . These values may vary according to your Mac’s configuration and the type of video and audio you are playing.

Although we enjoyed the long list of features, the flat learning curve and its performance, CuteDJ could be even better if it featured a visualizer, similar to the one offered by iTunes.


The Good

All in all, CuteDJ is a smooth-running, complex and comprehensive audio and video mixer, designed to help you manually or automatically mix music and video clips.

The wide variety of effects and filters, recording capabilities, well-designed interface, along with the support for numerous audio, video and karaoke files make CuteDJ the ideal DJ-ing utility.

The Bad

It is hard to find something bad in such a well-thought and thorough application, but, beside the missing visualizer we’ve already mentioned above, we would also like to see a video recorder for the video mixing sessions.

Furthermore, the crowded interface might push away novice users or newcomers that do not have the patience to get to know the app. A dual interface might solve this problem by offering a simpler interface for aspiring DJs and a complex interface for professional users.

The Truth

All things considered, CuteDJ is a versatile and highly capable application that allows you to show off your DJ-ing skills by manually mixing your tracks or by sitting back and enjoying your favorite music and letting the app do the rest.

user interface 3
features 4
ease of use 3
pricing / value 4


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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