PCDJ Pro Edition review

When I was a youth, the electric guitar was the standard-issue device for voicing teenage angst.

Today it's a pair of Technics record decks. Professional DJs may be resolutely snobbish about using anything but vinyl, but surely our PC and MP3 collection can pull off a similar job without the toil and expense?

We've seen DJ-style MP3 software before, but none has got much beyond the realm of the child's plaything. The problem is twofold: 'real' DJs have a separate headphone or 'monitor' mix with which to preview tracks before unleashing them on the audience, and they rely on a range of manual controls and vinyl nudges that simply aren't possible with a mouse.

PCDJ claims to be different. The Pro Edition reviewed here can send main and monitor mixes to the left and right outputs separately (or to front and rear outputs on SB Live! sound cards, or to two separate cards), so that you can cue up tracks as you would with a pair of decks. There's also an optional USB controller that closely models the controls of a professional DJ CD player, which we have also reviewed this month.

Once we got used to the software's occasionally cryptic controls, we were mightily impressed with what it had to offer. There's everything you need to keep a tight rein on your mix, along with a looping sampler and superb track library management. The auto-tempo matching feature actually worked, thanks to the enlightened method of extracting and saving tempo information before playback begins, rather than making wild guesses as you're mixing. The icing on the cake is a comprehensive (if somewhat bewildering) set of keyboard shortcuts for every single control.

PCDJ is the best DJ MP3 player we've seen, but we wouldn't spend £80 on it. There are cheaper versions of PCDJ, though, which share the same basic controls, plus a downloadable demo. If you're tempted, try this first to see if you can get by without the help of a controller.