Urbanears have only recently discovered the DJ market for themselves, with the Slussen now to the iPhone and iPod touch for DJ Center. Announced at CES, the small plug trickles currently in stores, it costs 15 euros. We have looked at the plug.
Slussen – as everything from Urbanears available in various colors – plugs into the headphone jack of your iPhone and provides two ports. One for the headphones, a second for a speaker. The stereo signal is being split into 2 mono time, which limits the application of Slussen from the outset hobby room and living room and clubs are disregarded. For the couch or the birthday party in a small group, the Urbanears solution is acceptable, as you do with the acquisition does not fall into financial ruin. Slussen itself is worked solid, the two outputs for headphones and investment are clearly marked, using the 3.5 mm jack can also be turned inside a protective cover, which in turn is provided with a ring for your keys. This gives Slussen one cute “Always Ready” premise.
To use the plug-DJ also adequately, you need the free app, which is present at the moment only for iOS. Currently, the program is also only optimized for iPhone and iPod, the iPad, there is the well-known scaling of phone apps very pixelated. The app itself comes in DJ-usual style. Above, the two decks are covered with tracks, including there is a small waveform display. The pieces are first loaded, they are analyzed by the app so that the sync function works. The analysis is reasonably fast vonstatten (we tested on an iPhone 5). To switch to the position of the pieces themselves, can either use the pre-and rewind buttons and of course the emulated turntable. We know this from similar apps: it’s not particularly practical. In such a small screen, it relies more on the sync feature. In the waveform itself can be scrobbled. But it’s dangerous in some circumstances. Imagine, we load a new track and jump in the waveform just before the middle to hear a particular location. If you decide then but for a different track, the cursor stays are centered, ergo the app starts the play at the minute 3.45. No matter. Important to mention is that the EQs are hidden in the middle of the turntable.
The special feature of the app is the vote to Slussen. Sun, different output modes available. By default, the app simply displays the stereo signal to the headphone jack. WYSIWYG. Pressing on the headphone icon in the app enables the setting of the split mode. Henceforth, two Corssfader available. One that controls the mixing ratio for the headphones and one for the speakers. This looks at first glance a little fitzelig, works in the operation but then surprisingly good. Thus, the controlled cueing through the headphones and the right place to wait until then to push the new track in the mix on the speaker. Everything fine then? Unfortunately, no.
Because the app – it uses advance iOS 6.0, we used version 1.02, released on 13 February – is currently still quite buggy. Crashes are common and unfortunately not run off to a comprehensible scheme. Time can be charged a second track, sometimes the app crashes just from here. Times can abuse the crossfader like a Turntableist, not times. With such unreliability can be very difficult to delve into the mix. We will watch how quickly Urbanears nachbessert here with updates. That does not happen, the whole concept that we find still sympathetic, doomed to failure. If the APP, however, revised the party is really nothing in the way of fun.
