Native Instruments is sitting its sights on the house party market with Traktor DJ 2, a free app that pretty much anyone can use to start mixing.
With a focus on accessibility, this is designed to be easy to use and, if you have the relevant subscription, enables you to stream tracks from SoundCloud. It’s also compatible with NI’s Traktor Kontrol S2, Traktor Audio 2 and Kontrol Z1 hardware.
The interface certainly looks pretty straightforward, with a waveform view at the top and a two-deck mixer layout below. There’s the obligatory auto-sync feature, plus hotcues, effects and, in the iPad version, a Freeze mode that enables you to slice up a track and ‘play it’ to create live remixes.
Traktor DJ 2 is also notable for its SoundCloud Go+ integration, which enables subscribers to that service to stream and mix tracks from there. To celebrate, NI has launched a series of artist-curated playlists on its SoundCloud profile in the hope that people will use them to improve their mixing skills and discover new genres.
Find out more and download the desktop versions of Traktor DJ 2 on the Native Instruments website. The iPad version can be downloaded from the Apple App Store.
