BABY BLOC  This is the mid/level DJ program I use to broadcast my radio show. It was easy to learn because it's laid out just like the Denon CD players at the station. It has a growing list of features and refinements that have been making it easier to use and more reliable.

Most of the problems I have with it seem to be problems with Quicktime or hardware issues beyond the developer's control – that you can't hot-swap outputs, controllers.

I really like the new full-screen mode. I kinda wish there was visible wave-forms. The pluggins for controllers seem to be working very nicely. There's more controllers supported all the time.

And it still runs pretty good (with pitchlock off) on my older 15" Powerbook, running Leopard.  (Version 3.2.1)

BREAK42  This is the best mixing application there is. PERIOD! I have been mixing records for a while, mostly drum N' base and break beats, and love the fact that I can use my laptop in the mix. I use an imic along with the headphones jack and send the signal in to my mixer on the line channels. Then when I can use my 60 gigs of digital music to mix with my vinyl. This also gives me the mids on my mixer and the ability to use the fader in a more natural style.

Dj18k is also great for practicing, or just seeing if two tracks will work together. Sometime you have to use sound flower to get the signal to go where you want, but now I can mix records late at night with out bothering the neighbors. Keyboard shortcuts are easy to learn, and I suggest using them.  (Version 3.0.1)

CHARLES ALPREN  I have just purchased a macbook and made the leap from vinyl to DJing with a computer, and am using DJ 1800. First a bit of perspective.... I am not a professional DJ but have been DJing for fun for 10years or so - beat mixing mainly house music at parties and the occasional clubs and bars. I also should point out that I have nothing to do with DJ 1800 other than using it - so i offer this review from an independant perspective.

It's great

It works

Having read the reviews here, I had some reservations when I did take the plunge, so I thought it would be useful for me to go through these reservations incase someone else is thinking the way I was.

You can beat mix using a laptop, connector cables and a imic to connect your headphones. There is no lag when running the master output through an regular line-in amp and the cue through an imic.

Yes, you can use iTunes as the playlist manager, so no, you don't have to go through any hassley playlist making. Just turn it on and, if like me you are too impatient to learn the shortcut keys it is possible to use a mouse and mix away to your little heart's content. I have used it for 4 hours straight on a new macbook with 2gig of RAM and it hasn't dropped out at all.

So after that glowing review, can it be improved? Well, yes I think it would be useful to have a mid range adjust on the channel mixer. It would be good to be able to cut out channels 3 and 4 from view if they are not being used and put the crossfader between the 2 active channels to save space on the screen. It would be good to be able to enlarge the screen so that the pitch control is larger and more exact control could be gained.

However, if you are like i was a week ago, humming and harring about whether or not it will actually do what it's meant to do, the basic answer is yes, it works. Go buy it and get all you DJ equipment into a small shoulder record bag!  (Version 2.2.2)

LOU KASH  In fact, in its class DJ-1800 doesn't really have any competition.

Some professional Mac DJ applications are much more expensive and they suffer often on "featuritis". Others are more in the "hobby-DJ" class (and also a bit cheaper) and thus lacking some essential features for pro and semi-pro DJs which you can find in DJ-1800.

2.2 is the best version ever. The playback is now very reliable (basically due to QuickTime 7 - not all of the earlier problems were the developer's fault!) and the overall performance has been highly optimized.

MIDI support is a nice addition, especially if you have one of the supported DJ controllers (I don't).

However if you want to control DJ-1800 with non-DJ devices like general MIDI keyboards, there are still a couple things that need to be fixed; I hope this will happen in v3.x. (I'll be posting workarounds in forums.dj1800.com/viewtopic.php?t=438)

I use DJ-1800 on an iBook G3/700, and although it's slightly below the minimal system requirements, v2.2 now runs better than any version before. Of course it runs much better on my Powerbook G4/1.67, but I don't use that machine for deejaying...

And finally, it's also necessary to highlight the excellent support from Dave Addey, the developer... :)  (Version 2.2)