Overview
While VirtualDeck lets you scratch, loop and distort audio samples, it doesn’t offer much more than that and is actually pretty overpriced and unexciting. Unless you’re looking for a virtual turntable for live performances, there is little added value from this app.
Functionality
VirtualDeck functions like a basic turntable, sans mixer. Users can speed up or slow down samples, adjust effects like cut off and resonance and can scratch. That is pretty much it.
The turntable responds well to touch and records can be slowed down, sped up and scratched with the drag of a finger. While the app succeeds in executing these functions well, there is no way to move the pickup arm to another part of the track (probably because it would be near impossible not to move it unintentionally). This means that there is no way for skipping ahead or backtracking in a track or sample, other than by twirling your finger like crazy.
There is also no way to record or export your creations.
In case that didn’t bum you out enough, there is no support for MP3s and the program can’t access your iTunes library, so samples must be individually loaded into VirtualDeck via a wireless upload mechanism, which allows users to access their VirtualDecks from a web browser.
Review
I guess it’s possible that I might one day walk into a club and see a DJ scratching on his iPhone (cringing at the thought) but VirtualDeck is not the app that will make that happen.
While the turntable functions, the app overall is too basic to be a valuable tool. Its lack of mixing and recording options are huge downers, as is its inability to deal with MP3s.
Using VirtualDeck only allows me to play one sample at a time, which is pretty uneventful, even if I’ve slowed it down and looped it. Maybe a more ambitious DJ might physically plug her iPhone into a mixer, at which point a looped and distorted sample would be useful to go along with other tracks and sounds, but short of such assertion, this app is very one-dimensional.
Users fascinated by turntables and DJ equipment might enjoy fooling around with this app and, who knows, perhaps it will inspire the next Timbaland or Paul Okenfold to move on to some real equipment and learn about possibilities in music production, but that’s what this app is at best: a starting point for beginners.
It needs a real, supplemental equipment to be productive, otherwise its simply a novelty that gets old fast.
Summary
VirtualDeck is a very basic virtual turntable that doesn’t offer many advanced or productive options. It’s overpriced and underdeveloped.
