The creators of Baby Decks DJ, Async, know what it is to stand behind a pair of turntables and move a dance floor. You can tell from their app. It’s authentic, true to DJing, and really, really fun.
Laid out like a compact set of turntables, it took me a little while to get used to chirping and transforming with my pointer finger, but once I adjusted to the iPad’s small screen real estate in comparison to a real set of decks, I fell in love with this app. It’s highly responsive, realistic in the way it sounds when you scratch vinyl, and a pretty authentic DJ experience. So many apps make DJing seem like an unrealistic anybody-could-do-this gig, but Baby Decks DJ respects the art that is DJing.
Equipped with a cross fader, transformer bars, and pitch control, this app has all the major components of DJing. Every component is right on the money when it comes to responding to your every move, so something as basic as dropping on the one is as easy as it would be to do the same on a set of decks. What this app doesn’t have is anything to count BPM, but I consider this a charming attribute, and something that will teach people what it was like to DJ before everyone started relying on programs like Serato. It’s a little difficult to nudge the record a touch when you’re beat matching, but it’s doable and this app is so cool that it hardly matters.
Baby Decks provides a decent arsenal of dubs, drum beats and beat heavy tracks to start, but by far the best thing about this app is the ability to upload your own songs easily. I could see myself planning a set on this app very easily, using it to count the length of intros and choruses before actually taking a set to a place where the speaker range exceeds that of the iPad.
Who knows if the iPad would support this, but Baby Decks DJ would be even better if you could drop tracks straight from iTunes. It would also be nice to see a separate headphone volume component that allowed you to find your place in your earbuds before you dropped the track down onto the iPad’s main speakers. These are small criticisms though, and as a whole Baby Decks DJ is one of the best experiences I’ve ever had trying to DJ on a screen of any kind.
Bottom Line: You won’t regret it if you’ve already dropped the big bucks on some real turntables and a mixer, but this is Baby Decks DJ delivers a really fun and authentic DJ experience. $24.99 is costly, but this app is well worth the investment if you are a DJ or are serious about knowing what it feels like to have two tracks rolling at once. 8/10