Image-Lines Deckadance 2 Beta

[yizzle]

Pre-Reviewed: Image-Line Deckadance 2 Beta DJ software

Price: $179 (Club Edition) / $99 (House Edition)

Available: Beta available now to registered users; commercial availability TBA

Supported Audio Formats: MP3, Ogg, M4A, WMA, FLAC, AIFF, WAV (records to WAV)

It’s been more than six years since Image-Line launched Deckadance 1.0. After many incremental updates, the version 2 beta has now reared its head to registered users.

With a redesigned modular interface, 4-deck support, Smart Knobs, the slick Gross Beat rhythmic effect and other enhancements, Deckadance looks to give the giants of DJ software a run for their money for a second time.

NEWLY DECKED-OUT:

The cleanly redesigned, modular Deckadance 2 interface feels more in line with the modern feel of Image-Line’s flagship software, FL Studio, but with an even better handle on clutter that can populate the FL Studio screen. On the Deckadance 2 top menu bar, buttons let you quickly toggle from 2 to 4 decks, and loaded songs get the delicious multi-color waveform treatment.

You can set the decks to include 0-8 Smart Panels, which are small control panels for segments of deck functions, including Loop, Cue, Grid, DVS, Key, Smart Knobs and Tempo. Within a small space, the Smart Panels offer a full complement of looping controls, 8 cue points to set/trigger per track, a convenient set of beat grid editing controls, etc. Like Deckadance’s other software controls, each Smart Panel control can be mapped to a MIDI controller from Preferences > MIDI Learn.

SMART KNOBS – CUSTOMIZABLE MACRO CONTROLS:

Deckadance 2's Smart Knob editor window

The Smart Panels of Deckadance 2 decks are a nice new cosmetic addition to the software’s interface, but one of the particular Smart Panels, the Smart Knobs, represent a giant leap forward in Deckadance’s programmability and real-time performance potential.

Each deck can have two Smart Knobs active. Basically, Smart Knobs group 2 or more functions onto a single knob, and Image-Line has included dozens of useful presets related to effects, EQ, the dedicated channel filter, track volume and the crossfader.

You can also while away hours of your time (or seconds, if you’re fast) creating your own Smart Knob settings, which you can then save to disk. You can choose any number of 20 parameters to assign to a Smart Knob, and each parameter has an editable x-y curve that determines the relationship between the knob input to the control output. You can also insert any number of control points to the x-y curve, and assign them shapes like Pulse, Stairs, or Half Sine.

Editing the Smart Knobs could be a brain-melting affair if you go really deep with it, or if you just want to do something simple like make an effect parameter go up while the dry/wet mix goes down, you can do that fairly easily.

GROSS BEAT:

Definitely one of the coolest new additions to Deckadance 2, Gross Beat is a stand-alone plug-in from Image-Line that’s been built into the new DJ software. It’s a pattern-based effect that manipulates the pitch, playback position and volume of audio in real time to create a vast variety of stutter, repeat, reverse, gating, scratch, and other turntable-style effects in 4-beat (1-bar) chunks.

You can access Gross Beat from one of the six tabs on the Function Panel, which is the center section of Deckadance 2, comprising the mixer, effects, sample, Peakscope (vertically scrolling waveforms), VST plug-ins, and Gross Beat.

Each deck gets 8 Gross Beat slots for different effects, and there are well over 100 Gross Beat presets of different effect styles. You can simply click on the slots or assign them to controller pads/buttons to trigger the effects in real-time. You can even trigger Gross Beat effects from a paused deck, and they will play back in sync with the master track.

This is a really quick and fun way to add plenty of rhythmic flavor to your music, and of course you can create, edit, and save your own Gross Beat settings from the editor window, which uses pretty much the same x-y axis editor that the Smart Knobs settings use. You can click and drag the Gross Beat curve along the x and y axes, add Control Points, and even flip the curve vertically to see what wildness ensues. If the Gross Beat grid doesn’t make sense right away, you can just observe the grid while the effect plays back, and you’ll soon understand visually how it works.

Gross Beat settings can play back in one-shot, re-trigger, or loop modes.

SAMPLER:

Another section of the Function Panel, the Deckadance 2 16-pad sampler almost speaks for itself with its standard 4×4 grid that you can launch in one-shot, trigger, re-trigger or loop modes. You can load up the sampler by dragging and dropping audio from the desktop, right-clicking and loading them from a menu, or recording them from one of the decks. You select the deck and the length of a sample, and then record a sample from an active deck, or drag it from a paused deck, and the sample will start from the current playback position. Deckadance reads the tempo of a sample and can then sync it to the master tempo.

You can assign pads to MIDI controls and save sample sets as an .xml file to be reloaded later.

The sampler is a great addition, but still a bit basic compared to some other DJ software samplers. The level control and headphone cue button apply to the whole sampler, rather than each individual pad. If you load a sample from your hard drive, it doesn’t keep the file name; you have to rename it to know what it is. Also, the sampler routes straight to the master output; you can’t run it through any effects

EFFECTOR VST PLUG-IN:

Effector VST plug-in, to be included with Deckadance 2

Effector includes 12 effects — many basics, as well as a ring modulator and vocal resonance effect — that can be used one at a time. To get more effects out of Effector on a single deck, you can load more than one instance of the plug-in from the VST Host section of the Function Panel.

A Kaoss-style x-y pad dominates Effector’s interface, and the effects’ tweakability hedges on X and Y parameters, as well as the modulation of the X and Y position.

In Deckadance 2, you can link Effector or any other VST effect to a controller by first assigning a VST control to one of the VST Host controls, and then MIDI-mapping that control to your hardware.

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System Requirements:

PC: Windows 7, Vista, XP (SP2); Intel PIII 1 GHz or Althon XP 1.4 GHz; 512Mb RAM; DirectSound or ASIO compatible soundcard.

Mac: OSX v10.4 (Universal Binary) or later; G4 1.5 GHz or Intel Core Duo family; 512Mb RAM; CoreAudio drivers.

Source: djtechtools.com

[OxyKon]

Nice find dude

[yizzle]

I'll def grab the demo of this.

[GREMM1S]

Looks very similar to traktor doesn't, worth a try though.

[yizzle]

it looks a lot like traktor.

its looks like a good product for me, i use traktor so similar look and i use FL Studio and incorporates the same features.

If the final version is solid. could be a winner.