DJ-1800 - an update

[Admin]

Hi all,

Quite a few of you have posted here recently about the lack of information about DJ-1800 v3.0, and indeed the lack of communciation or support in recent months.

First up, I'd like to apologise for the lack of support on here (and via email) from myself recently. Real Life has thrown a few curveballs my way over the past few months, and as creator (and lead programmer) for DJ-1800, this has curtailed my ability to develop and support DJ-1800 as I would have liked. Please accept my apologies if this has inconvenienced anyone during this time. DJ-1800 is very important to me, and having it lose support for the past few months is not something I want to happen.

I'd like to thank the members of the DJ-1800 community who have provided support on the forums in my absence. Lou Kash, Jovino and others have been brilliant in helping out new users with problems they have encountered. Thanks guys - it is [b]very[/b] much appreciated.

Looking to the future: the good news is that DJ-1800 v3.0 is very much alive and well. The final planned beta - v3.0b5 - was intended for beta release some months back, but initial user testing showed that it was missing certain small-but-key details which meant I didn't want to release it before it was ready. This - coupled with the Real Life mentioned above - is the reason that 3.0b5 is still not yet available.

Time for some good news. All being well, v3.0b5 should be available for you to download within a month (always good to set onesself a deadline!). I once again have the time and resource needed to support DJ-1800, and will be making a big push to get v3.0b5 available. Assuming it goes down well, the full release of v3.0 will follow soon after.

More good news: in order to make sure DJ-1800 always has the support it needs, we'll be taking on some extra help with both development and support over the next month or so. This will ensure that DJ-1800 has the back-up it needs to continue as the best DJ software on the Mac. It should also mean that more time can be spent on adding new features and functionality - which can only be a good thing

Thanks to everyone for their continued support for DJ-1800, and here's looking forward to v3.0!

All the best,

Dave.

[maceddy]

Glad to see you're back..

I had almost given up hope

[Gethin]

Hi Dave

Thanks for the response - it's great to know such a good product isn't going to stop development. Looking forward to seeing 3.05b in the near future

In the meantime, is there any chance that you could put a version of 3.04b with an extended expiry date up? The present one expires in a couple of weeks and I'd really like to carry on using it

Cheers

Gethin

[Lou Kash.]

Welcome back, Dave.
Yeah, the Real Life can also play mean sometimes. The past few months weren't easy for me either. (You might even find a couple of entries on the topic in my http://blog.loukash.com - although in fact I'm usually writing there exclusively about Czech music!) And just these days it looks like it's not over yet.
But as I said: welcome back!

[jovino]

He's alive! AAALLLIIIVVVEEE!!!!

Good to hear from you Dave. Thanks for the mention too.

I'm looking forward to a final release. I've been spinning with 3.0b4 for some time, and I have to tell you... for me it has been rock solid. I've done tons of gigs that ranged from heavy beatmatching dance to several hour-long downtempo and ambient sets.

While I don't have the computational power to take advantage of the new master tempo feature, I'm sure to have a new machine sometime in the future so that I eventually will.

More good news is that I just found out this afternoon that I converted another friend over to DJ1800 and more are on their way.

Glad to ahve you back with us!

[Admin]

Hi all!

Thanks for the conversions Jovino, and thanks to all of you for the kind words too We're so close to having 3.0b5 ready that it's scary - these last few days I've been running a whole bunch of tests, which keep throwing up lots of tiny things which need fixing... but it's close!

All being well with the testing, the plan is to release 3.0b5 late next week. This will either be a public release (like 3.0b4 is), or *maybe* a private beta to start with, to anyone on here who's interested, to get some feedback on the many changes (esp. interface changes) befoe going more public with it. I'm rather excited by it - there's a lot of good stuff in there.

We will also be re-issuing v3.0b4 with an extended expiry date, as I'm very aware that quite a few people (Jovino included) rely on it for live performances. Whilst the plan is of course to test v3.0b5 and get it released as v3.0 ASAP, we don't want to scupper people who use b4, just in case there's something we've missed in b5.

So, exciting times! If you can help me out late next week with some trialling and feedback of b5, I'd be most grateful

In the meantime, to whet your appetites, here's the change log (as it stands today):

[new] DJ-1800 is a Universal Binary, running natively on both PPC and Intel Macs
[new] New Pitch Lock (master tempo) feature in place of the old Pitch Shift on / off button
[new] Pitch Lock preference pane to adjust Pitch Lock quality
[new] Pitch Lock can be disabled to use the old "Pitch Shift" approach on slower machines
[new] Added a "Library" rack device to load songs directly from the rack interface
[new] Library rack device automatically keeps in sync with your iTunes library (and synchronization is faster than before)
[new] Library rack device uses true Unicode case-insensitive sorting and searching
[new] iPods are supported directly in the new Library rack device (if "Enable disk use" is selected in iTunes)
[new] Multiple iPods can be used at the same time - people can bring their iPods along and you can use them to DJ!
[new] Mix between iTunes songs and songs from multiple iPods, in any order
[new] iPod attach / removal is automatically detected
[new] iPods are synchronized when their library changes
[new] iPods preference pane to set iPod synchronization preferences separately from iTunes preferences
[new] StartPoints are (optionally) saved to iTunes / iPod in the Start Time field (requires iTunes 7)
[new] AutoGain is (optionally) saved to iTunes / iPod in the Volume Adjustment field
[new] BPM is (optionally) saved to iTunes / iPod in the BPM field, and a precise BPM can be saved to the Comment, Composer or Grouping field
[new] Support for the Hercules DJ Console MK2
[new] Support for the Hercules DJ Control MP3
[new] Two Hercules DJ devices can be used together to control all four CD players
[new] Scrollbar for the rack window, and pretty "rack background" when the window is bigger than the rack.
[new] Songs can be option-dragged-and-dropped to a CD player, and will be appended to the existing set of songs, rather than replacing them. This even works when a song is playing.
[new] Songs can be loaded into a CD player directly from the library using apple-1/2/3/4, or appended to a CD player via option-apple-1/2/3/4
[imp] DJ-1800 now handles corrupted databases more gracefully, by creating a new blank database and re-syncing with iTunes / iPod
[imp] iTunes / iPod libraries can now be re-synchronized whilst songs are loaded or playing, without emptying the CD players
[imp] PCDJ DAC-3, and Hercules DJ controllers, now turn Pitch Lock on / off rather than Pitch Shift
[imp] Improved Tranzport controller support
[imp] Changing your Output Preferences now gives a warning that all CD players will have to be emptied to make the change, and gives an opportunity to cancel the change
[chg] Escape key now switches to the Library search box, rather than opening the current CD player
[chg] Removed the internal library - DJ-1800 now uses iTunes as its library by default
[chg] Mouse scroll wheel no longer controls the search (jog) wheel - instead it scrolls the library listboxes, or the window
[chg] Removed the old "song load" hierarchical contextual menus
[chg] Removed the "File" menu, as it is no longer needed
[chg] Removed the "Outputs" menu, and moved the Output Preferences menu item to the Application menu
[chg] Removed the "Open/Close" buttons (no longer needed)
[chg] Tabbing of focus works slightly differently now, due to the library controls also accepting the tab key
[chg] Removed the Rack ToolTips
[chg] DJ-1800 now requires Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later, and QuickTime 7.1 or later
[chg] Removed the global hotkey - Shift-Escape - to switch between DJ-1800 and iTunes
[chg] Removed the menu keyboard shortcuts to minimize and hide the five rack devices
[chg] DJ-1800 Preferences and song libraries are now stored in ~/Library/Application Support/DJ-1800/
[fix] If a previously-used audio device is not available on startup, DJ-1800 no longer allows you to continue without selecting an alternative device
[fix] If more than 99m59s99 of music is loaded, the CD players will now display 99:59.99 rather than an incorrect time
[kis] If a song has just been added to iTunes (or an iPod in iTunes), but the library has not yet been re-synced with DJ-1800, then that song can't be dragged and dropped onto DJ-1800
[kis] Medium (or higher) Pitch Lock quality can't be used on multichannel audio devices due to a limitation in QuickTime
[kis] The included help manual (accessed from the Help menu) is still the v2.2.2 manual



Dave .

[sqook]

Wow, looks like a great update!

[jovino]

BUH!

This looks like quite an amazing update. I'm certainly looking forward to running it through my usual paces; at home of course. I'll certainly pound on it as much as I can to scare up any bugs should they still exist.

And thanks for the extended date of b4! It's kind of funny that I totally rely on a beta application for live DJing, but I have determined that it has been really solid and I like the feature additions in comparison to 2.2--many things I don't think I would be able to work without them.

Okay... I'm holding my breath for b5...

[Admin]

We've just posted a preview of 3.0b5. Full info here:

[url]http://forums.dj1800.com/viewtopic.php?t=892[/url]

Dave.

[Gethin]

Now the biggie is do I risk using this on Saturday. Time to have a play

Cheers Dave much appreciated 8)