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Teased over a year ago as “the first ever professional DJ application for iPad,” Mixr is finally here. Unfortunately, actually using Mixr is mildly frustrating. Most of the time it functions as the powerful, robust turntable app it reports to be. During that time it works for professionals, is fun for novices and is quite recommendable for anyone interested in being a DJ. However, it has just enough technical issues to bring down the entire experience.
Upon first launching Mixr, users are treated to a brief overview of its features. Pretty much everything a DJ would need to play a set at a party, a rave or any other kind of social gathering is here. Songs are loaded from the music library in the form of two vinyl records and the user takes it from there. These songs and whatever metadata users have added – like cue points – are then stored in a virtual crate.
Users can scratch, rewind, set multiple loops and cues, and add all sorts of delay and reverb effects. The virtual turntable has a good tactile response with little latency. What doesn’t work as well is the tempo matching. There is a bar for adjusting it but while the songs are playing it is hard to tell if the changes are taking effect. There also isn’t an easy way to automix or sync the BPM of two songs, a feature found in apps like djay.
However, when it works it works and it can a totally a viable way for DJs to perform and for those new to the art of turntablism to mess around, record a mix and learn a few things. Mixr’s biggest problem, though, is that sometimes things just don’t work. There will be points when a certain song crashes the app and when any song crashes the app. Sometimes everything will just go silent which is especially bad considering that turntables are pretty much all about sound. Creating a mix of the “Mad Men” theme song with “Rolling in the Deep” shouldn’t be such a hassle.
It’s a shame that Mixr has the technical problems it does, because without them it’s a perfectly fine, sometimes great even, turntable app. Maybe a future update will alleviate these issues but right now, for $20, there are better alternatives.