Who else would spend US$25 in a Hello Kitty Action DJ Speaker–which moves pretending she’s a DJ at the rhythm of the music played in your digital audio player–but a twisted disco pussy lover with probably too much Jack Daniel’s running through his veins and listening to ABBA right now?
The US$500 Xross Fade DJ system is Sony’s hard-to-pronounce dual iPod dock kit for mixing songs. It may have some rad-looking bass reflex speakers and dual subwoofers, but it’s unfortunately gimped as far as DJ features go—you can cue and crossfade between songs, a technology straight outta 2005 and something you could do on a PC with moderate iTunes skills. There are also some presumably lame-arse drum beats you can lay on top of your tracks to spice them up, but not much more. Seriously Sony, what gives? DJing is just no fun without some “wikki wikki”. Press release down below. [Sony]
There are a number of products out there that allow aspiring DJs to engage in mobile scratch sessions (like the recently released Mixmeister application for the iPhone), but Art Lebedev’s new Plastinkus scratch pad claims to deliver a sound that is close to the real thing on a disk that you can fit comfortably in your wallet. Yeah, its a pretty frivolous thing to waste your money on–but at least it won’t break the bank at around US$4 a pop. [Art Lebedev via Pocket-Lint]
Live DJ-ing takes a step further into the 21st Century with this invention which lets DJ’s view, cut, grab, loop and mix tracks by doing live waveform editing on a twin touchscreen “turntable.” Invented by UK student Scott Hobbs as part of his innovative product design course, ATTIGO is about the same size as a conventional deck set-up, but has all the flexibility of digital track storage: choosing new tracks without all that swapping of vinyl. Check out the video to see it in action.
newVideoPlayer("ropepulleydrawing_giz.flv", 494, 276,""); Today at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Show, I discovered my next workout machine: Michael Chladil’s Rope and Pulley. Seriously, gone are the elliptical and the rowing machine—I’m going to install this and do the silly dance you see above every day, until I’m at least as fit as any Wii could make me.
Future Retro’s Revolution Synthesizer R2 looks amazing; we completely have no use for a synthesiser, but we totally want one. With a complete aluminium construction, perfectly contrasting gun gray and white colours, as well as a smattering of blue LEDs all over, this synthesiser makes us moist in the most clichéd way possible. If that was not enough to get you interested, perhaps the circular sequencer interface, which allows single handed control; the ability to play patterns forwards, backwards, upside down and sideways, as well as remote pattern selection using MIDI program change messages will have you reaching for your anorexic wallet?
DJing on the bus, at work, in the supermarket and in line at the RTA may sound like a pipe dream, but this pocketable Tonium Pacemaker DJ system lets you do just that. We got hands-on of this at CES, but Kat from TechDigest takes it for a “spin” (worst. pun. ever.) and finds that it’s actually quite good if you ever need to liven up a party with your sub-par DJing skills. Check out the review over at TD. [Tech Digest and Pacemaker]
A new system devised by a pair of UCLA students could well bring democracy to music selection at parties. The two scientists have created a software-and-antennae combo that currently works on laptops, scanning people’s music collections, grabbing the most popular tunes from guests’ MP3 players and adding them to the night’s playlist. The next step will be to see if Smart Party can be made to work on MP3 players (currently it only works on laptops), polling partygoers’ music devices as they arrive at the party. More info below.
Rather like some of my Swedish girlfriends, Pioneer is going after mobile DJs and bars with their new MEP-7000 player and matching SEP-C1 controller. The MEP-7000 allows to play anything except vinyl (which will probably cause a Macbook-Air-sized conflict), including MP3, WAV, AIFF and AAC files, from any source, including hard drives, CD, DVD, USB keys and computers. It can also work alongside software DJ applications, like their own DJS or Serato Scratch Live and Traktor. Pioneer says that it can also be set up to play things automatically (vade retro!), but I guess that’s OK if you are a mobile DJ or own a bar, with or without Swedish girlfriends.
The Gizmo: The iBuddy is a portable iPod DJ mixing station, with inputs for two iPods, two MP3 players or a combination of the two. The three knobs control things that are strictly to do with DJ talk, like “reverb,” “flange” and “autophase.” As crap as we are with DJ lingo, we know it sounded damn good. It was also quite small, making your nomadic DJ dreams a true possibility.
The Catch: If you are having dreams of becoming a nomadic DJ; get off the smack. Shipping / pricing details not available at present.
