I’m considering getting a new phone (albeit a fairly old model). Given my general interest in Ultraportable DJ’ing, I’d wondered if it might be possible to compress my existing setup down by using an iPhone 12 and a Mixfader.
My questions are around the usability of Djay on an iPhone 12.
Q1: I’ve grown to quite like the ‘pro’ UI in vertical mode on the iPad lately, and wondered would that be passable for 2 deck mode on a smaller screen? I like being able to scratch using the waveform, and using the FX.
Q2: Neural mix - is it going to be the same nice-quality you get on an M1 iPad Pro, or a lower quality? Not a major deal breaker, but there’s a few things where - it doesn’t stop me from DJing if it’s not available, but it’s so handy to have there. E.g. one thing I quite often do is mute vocals when I’m transitioning out of a track.
If anyone’s used an iPhone to DJ in the field, as it were, I’d be interested to hear how you found it too
I am your guy to answer you here!
Reason: I just sold my M1 ipad pro 12.9" and bought me an iphone 12 mini last week! I am having tonnes of hours learning and pushing the little “mini” iphone harder everyday to see it’s capability, limits and shortfalls.
First off on Q1: The UI:
Algoriddim tweaked the UI to fit all functions within the small screen but not all could fit, hence, compared to ipad UI, the iphone UI comes with drop-down hidden menus (alot). On ipad your Neuralmix, FX, Cue, Loop, EQ tab can sit on the side concurrently with the main waveform, jog AND some part of the library, right? NOT the same with iphone! However, the experience is very much alike, once you find the drop-down arrow or shortcut to click. Gettig to display my Cues on a deck meant I i had to do 2clicks to display the cue window, and once inside that window i forfeited 50% of my waveform and my other deck is gone too. What has NOT changed though, is the size and quality of the main vertical or expanded waveform view that visually aids your scratching. If you are the kind who uses the touch screen to cratch on the jog though, your finger size and iphone size jog size “might clash”
I give you screenshots here below for your reference - landscape, protratrait & neuralmix qaulity of iphone 12 mini.
On Q2; Quality/Perfomance
Excitedly I must admit, that the iPhone 12 A14 bionic chip is in fact the apple neural engine that runs NeuralMix at 100% quality and for sure djay runs as flawlessly as it does in my ipad pro M1!
However, (and this is a serious warning), get an iphone with a type C port!
On my iPad M1, i was able to seamlessly connect my 2TB external SSD AND my projector and VJ my way all night. Now with iphone lightning port i can’t get that connectivity and relaibility. People will tell you to buy apple lightning camera kits and dongles and connect, but, alas, those will cause you headaches (lag, crashes, etc), if you’re a power-user.
I tried screen mirroring my iphone 12 mini to my mac and it brought out my HD videos and sound nice and clean on the mac instantly and I was so excited (only for it to thermal throttle and stutter 30min later to a point where music was skipping/stopping, video was glitching heavily (frames-skipping, judders,etc). Of course I had pushed it hard, and this was to be expected as the phone needed to slow down CPU in order to cool off the heat). I re-tried airplay option (scren mirror for video only) and re-drirected audio back onto the iphone speakers (not mac speakers) and suprisingly it performed for over 3 hours without throttling! So i was excited enough to now try plugging in my dj controller for sound output to mimick a real life scenario, only to realise that once there’s airplay, you can’t have sound go anywhere else other than either the airplay receiving device or the iphone speaker only. As soon as i direct sound to dj controller, airplay (screen-mirror video) goes off by default. This is the point where I meant to get a type C iphone 15 (preferrably pro), so that if you need to do video, you just connect a USB dongle with hdmi and off you go - no need for airplay or screen mirror… If you don’t use external drives, nor videos, your iphone 12 is more than capable. In my use case I need at least iphone 14 pro and above (prefer iphone 15 though).
Last point, about iphone 12 to dj with;
Huh! Yes! But…
1: you need the original lightning to USB3 dongle in order to connect your dj equipment to it.
2: sort of that, you need a very good battery life on your iphone as mine tends to drain pretty fast (talking 100% to 20% in about 3-4hours or less!)
I will be so glad to hear how you use your iphone, your experience and the gears you use with it! Please report - you could save me the costs of buying an iphone 15 pro!
Yeah, got the iPhone a few days ago. Still getting to grips with things a bit, but first impressions …
I like it. Still playing about with the UI - i think I prefer it in vertical form to horizontal. Weirdly 4 deck view feels the easiest (for me) to use currently, I prefer the lengthways waveforms. The one slightly irritating thing in 4 deck mode is I can’t assign decks 3 & 4 to “thru” as I can on the iPad. Not an absolute dealbreaker as mostly i only play on 2 decks anyway, but yeah - that UI but being able to hide decks would be great, and having some way to assign them to “thru”.
I really think a Bluetooth crossfader would elevate it to another level for me. Just got to find one of the damn things haha
Battery life, yeah see what you mean. It’s not awful, but definitely worth working out how to optimise that over the coming weeks. Would definitely agree on the USB C port, though I don’t handle videos so it’s less of an issue for me.
All of the above though shouldn’t overshadow the fact that I’ve played, what, 3 or 4 practice DJ sets on hardware that in total takes up the space of a 2l soda bottle (inc speakers, decks, etc) and it sounded perfectly serviceable for a little house party we’re having in October. Minirigs + Djay Pro + iPhone seems an absolute match made in heaven for the lightest of lightweight DJ setups.
