openDJ

openDJ is a free, open-source DJ app for macOS, Linux and Windows, built in Rust. It's made to be fast, pleasant to use, and to have a great Automix, for DJs just starting out and for experienced DJs alike.

These docs cover openDJ 0.6. They have two parts:

• The user guide covers installing openDJ, loading your music and everything on screen, from the decks to Automix and controllers. Start with Install.
• The developer guide covers building openDJ from source.

Where to start

• New to openDJ? Install it, add your music in Your collection, then learn the decks and mixer.
• Coming from VirtualDJ? Bring in your library: cues, grids, lists and history come across.
• Tidying a big collection? Stages, crates and sets and Collection Health.
• Mixing: Pads, Looping, Effects, Stems and Automix.
• Playing live over the mix: Jam on a deck and the Groove Box.
• Got a DDJ-FLX4? See its own page.

openDJ also has short tutorials on the website.

openDJ is in beta. If something here is wrong or missing, use Suggest an edit at the top of any page, or open an issue.

Install

Download openDJ from the download page or the latest release on GitHub.

macOS

Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 11 or newer.

1. Download openDJ-…-macos.zip.
2. Unzip it and move openDJ to Applications.

The app is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other app, and it offers new versions itself when it starts.

Linux

x86_64, glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 36+, Debian 12+). openDJ needs ALSA and a Vulkan driver, which most desktops already have.

• AppImage: download openDJ-…-x86_64.AppImage, make it executable with chmod +x, and run it.
• Tarball: download opendj-…-linux-x86_64.tar.gz, unpack it anywhere and run bin/opendj.

Windows

Windows is a preview from openDJ 0.4: 64-bit Windows 10 or 11.

• Setup: download openDJ-…-windows-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs openDJ for your user only (no administrator needed), adds it to the Start menu, and openDJ updates itself from then on.
• Portable: download opendj-…-windows-x64.zip, unzip it anywhere and run openDJ.exe. It doesn't update itself.

The builds aren't signed yet, so on the first start Windows shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.

In Settings → Audio, pick an ASIO driver if your controller or audio interface has one, for the lowest latency. Windows lets only one app use a MIDI controller at a time, so quit any other DJ app before you start openDJ.

First start: the guided tour

The first time openDJ opens, a short guided tour sets it up with you. Every step can be skipped.

1. Sound: pick where the master (your speakers) and the headphones play, and play a test tone in each. A controller with its own sound card, such as the DDJ-FLX4, is its own device: pick it for both, on channels 1 & 2 and 3 & 4.
2. Controller (only when one is plugged in): openDJ shows which mapping it runs. Press a button or move a knob and the tour says it heard it.
3. Your music: add your music folders. If openDJ finds another DJ app's library, such as VirtualDJ's, it offers to bring it in.
4. Your first mix: a hands-on lesson on two demo tracks. It switches to the 2-Deck layout, rings each control in turn and waits for you to use it, on screen or on your controller: load, play and cue, listen in the headphones, sync, bring the second track in with its fader and EQ, then a bass swap.

Settings → Help runs the tour again, whole or one part. If you used openDJ before the tour existed, it's offered once in a banner under the top bar.

Tutorials

Settings → Help → Tutorials has short hands-on lessons that work the same way, a few minutes each: Looping, Using FX, Filtering tracks, Automix and, with one plugged in, the DDJ-FLX4. Each rings the real controls and waits for you; the ✕ on the tip leaves at any step and puts the layout back. A ✓ marks the ones you've finished, and the last tip links to that part of this guide.

Your collection

Your collection is every track openDJ knows about, with everything it knows about them: one database file with every track's tags, rating, color, cues, loops and beat grid, your playlists, smart lists and folders, and the history of what you played. It points at your audio files where they are, and only moves them between your stage folders when you turn that on (see Stages).

Collection is the top of the tree on the left, and the first source in the rail. Together with Files and the streaming services it makes up the browser, the lower half of the screen.

Sources

The rail at the far left picks where the tree and the track list come from:

• Collection: all your tracks, with their stages, crates, sets, playlists and history.
• Files: any folder on your computer, as it is on disk.
• Spotify, TIDAL, Apple Music, SoundCloud and Mixcloud: your playlists and saved tracks on those services, for browsing (see Streaming services).
• Jam: the Groove Box, your instrument plugins, the Mic and the Mixer (your aux inputs), dragged onto a deck to play there instead of a track (see Jam on a deck).
• Plex, Navidrome and Jellyfin: your own music server, searched from openDJ with its tracks downloaded into your collection (see Your own music server).
• Bandcamp, Beatport and OneLibrary: coming soon.

Settings › Sources lists every source by kind (streaming services, stores, your own servers, free music, add-ons and the built-in ones). Each row says whether the source is signed in or set up, and its In rail switch shows or hides it in the rail, as right-clicking the rail does. Click a source to open its settings: its server and sign-in, the folder its downloads go to, or Sign out for a streaming service. The cache for tracks played from your own servers is at the top of the page: one size for all of them (10 GB unless you pick another); Manage under Settings › Collection › Storage clears it.

Streaming services

openDJ shows what you saved on a streaming service, but doesn't play its audio: a track plays on a deck when your collection holds the same track, and the others are greyed out. Double-click one to open it on the service's own site; SoundCloud tracks and Mixcloud shows also have a ▶ button (and Play on… when you right-click) that plays them there in your browser. Tracks are matched by ISRC when both sides have one, then by artist and title. If a match is wrong, right-click the track and pick Change Match….

To keep track of songs you mean to get, right-click a greyed-out track (or several picked ones) and pick Add to Wanted. Right-click a playlist and pick Add to Wanted to use it as a shopping list: its tracks you don't have go on the Wanted list, and so does anything you add to it later, each time openDJ signs in or you open it. Tracks you take off the Wanted list stay off. Stop Adding to Wanted leaves what's there. With a download add-on such as the Soulseek add-on installed, Add to Downloads sits beside it and searches the add-on for each track.

A download add-on's panel lists your Searches, then Downloads (everything it is fetching and has fetched, with cancel, retry and clear), then any page of the add-on's own, such as the Soulseek add-on's Sharing: what you share, and uploads now, waiting and done lately.

Under the playlists, Signed in as shows your account; click it to Sign out.

Each service is signed in to with your own app, so openDJ ships no keys:

• Spotify: create an app at developer.spotify.com with the redirect URI http://127.0.0.1:8898/callback and paste its client ID.
• TIDAL: create an app at developer.tidal.com with the same redirect URI and the scopes user.read, playlists.read and collection.read, and paste its client ID.
• Apple Music: needs an Apple Developer account. Under Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles › Keys, create a key with MusicKit and download its .p8 file. Enter your Team ID, the key's Key ID and the file's path, then sign in with your Apple ID on the page that opens. You see your library's songs and playlists.
• SoundCloud: register an app at soundcloud.com/you/apps with the same redirect URI and paste its client ID and secret. You see your Likes, your own tracks and your playlists.
• Mixcloud: just type your username. You see your shows, favourites, listening history and playlists; shows play on mixcloud.com.

openDJ keeps your playlists and the tracks of those you opened, so after a restart they show straight away. A playlist you open is checked again in the background and updated if it changed (Spotify, TIDAL, SoundCloud and Apple Music say when a playlist changed, so unchanged ones aren't fetched again at all). The refresh button at the top right of the side panel, beside the service's name, fetches the list of playlists again. Signing out forgets what was kept.

Your own music server

If your music lives on a Plex Media Server, on Jellyfin (or Emby), or on Navidrome (or any other server that speaks the Subsonic API, such as Gonic, Airsonic, Ampache or LMS), openDJ can search it and bring tracks into your collection. These are your own files, so unlike the streaming services they play on decks.

Pick the source in the rail: until it's set up, its panel asks for the server and sign-in, and Connect saves them. You can also fill them in later in Settings › Sources: click Plex, Jellyfin or Navidrome to open its settings.

• Navidrome: the server's address (for example http://192.168.1.20:4533), your username and your password. The password is only ever sent as a salted token.
• Jellyfin (or Emby): the server's address (for example http://192.168.1.20:8096), your username and your password. openDJ signs in once and then uses the server's access token.
• Plex: the server's address (for example http://192.168.1.20:32400) and your Plex token. To find the token, open any track's ⋯ menu in Plex Web, pick Get Info › View XML, and copy the X-Plex-Token at the end of the address that opens.

Then pick the source in the rail, type in the search bar at the top and press Return. The cog next to it sets what to search for: Auto finds albums and songs, Track, Album and Artist narrow it down (Artist lists that artist's albums), and Playlist lists your server's playlists whose name has the text in it (leave it as * for all of them). Open an album or playlist to see its songs.

Each song, album and playlist offers two ways to bring it in:

• Play (double-click a song, or its ▶) loads it onto a deck that isn't playing, fetching it into the cache first. A FLAC on your home network takes a second or two.
• The cloud downloads it into the cache, to play later or offline. A filled cloud means it's there. Cached tracks stay out of your collection, and the oldest go when the cache is full (10 GB for all sources together unless you pick another size in Settings › Sources). Their waveform, tempo and key are kept as long as the file stays in the cache.
• + Collection (or + Album) brings it into your collection for good: Downloaded/Plex, Downloaded/Jellyfin or Downloaded/Navidrome in your music folder, one folder per artist and album with its cover, or the Collection folder set for the source in Settings › Sources. A song already in the cache moves over from there instead of downloading again.

Tick several rows to Download them to the cache or Add to Collection together. openDJ fetches the original files, so a FLAC stays a FLAC.

How tracks come in

Tracks come into your collection in three ways:

• Your music folders. openDJ looks through them each time it starts, and when you press the circling arrows at the top right of the Collection sidebar. New files are added, and changed files have their tags read again. Add as many folders as you like under Music Collection in Settings › Collection with + (pick the folder in Finder or your file manager), and take one out by selecting it and pressing −, or start openDJ with the OPENDJ_MUSIC environment variable set to one. There's no default folder: ~/Music is where Ableton, GarageBand and other apps keep their samples, so openDJ only looks there if you add it. When a folder is no longer looked through, its tracks leave your collection, except ones you rated, played, staged or put in a list. The files stay where they are.
• Files. The Files source in the rail browses any folder on your computer. Load or drag a track from there to add it.
• Another DJ app. openDJ can bring in your VirtualDJ library (see below).

Bringing a track in only reads its tags: title, artist, album, genre, year, key, BPM, rating, comment and cover art. It is quick, and nothing is played or analysed yet.

Stages: Inbox, In Prep and Play Ready

Stages take new music from wherever it lands to tracks that are ready to play. Set them up in Settings › Collection › Stages:

• Inbox: the folder where new music arrives, such as Downloads, a Soulseek folder, or where purchases land.
• In Prep: where tracks you are preparing are kept. Its subfolders are prep crates (for example Yoga STG or Journey STG), for sorting tracks by where they'll go.
• Play Ready: where prepared tracks are kept. Its subfolders (such as Albums) stay as they are.

Once the In Prep and Play Ready folders are set, Inbox, In Prep and Play Ready show under Collection at the top of the tree, after Wanted, each with its track count and subfolders. Every track gets the stage of the folder it is in.

Right-click tracks to move them along, or drag them onto a stage. The track menu shows Inbox › In Prep › Play Ready with the track's stage lit; click another stage to move it there, or use the lines below it, whose arrows say whether a track goes back or forward:

1. Send to In Prep (or Send to In Prep › a crate) for inbox tracks worth keeping. Tracks you don't want go to Quarantine.
2. In In Prep, prepare each track: tags, cover, rating, tempo and key. Show the Prep column (right-click a column heading) for a dot each for tags, rating, and tempo and key; tracks in In Prep are analysed in the background, so tempo and key fill in on their own. The In Prep list has its own columns, to see what each track still needs: Grid (✓ locked, ✓ edited, ? check when the analysis wasn't sure, the number of tempo sections, or detected), Cues (how many hot cues), Tags (✓ with a genre and at least one of your tags) and Cover. Pick other columns from the header's menu as in any list; In Prep keeps its own set.
3. Send to Play Ready when it's ready. A track from a prep crate also joins the list named after the crate (Yoga STG goes to Yoga).

Back to In Prep and Back to Inbox move a track back a stage, and ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux), or Edit › Undo on a Mac, takes back the last change.

Files only move between the folders when Move files is on. Leave it off while another app, such as VirtualDJ, still uses them: tracks change stage in openDJ at once, their moves wait, and they are made when you turn it on. Files going from the inbox to In Prep are renamed Artist - Title (Remix) from their tags, unless you turn Rename files off. A file is never moved over another one.

Search with stage:inbox, stage:prep or stage:playready (the older stage:triage and stage:collection work too), and is:prepped for tracks with tags, rating, tempo and key.

When tracks are analysed

Tracks in In Prep are analysed in the background. Any other track is analysed the first time it is loaded on a deck: its waveform, tempo and beat grid, and its key when the tags don't have one. It plays while that happens, and the waveform fills in as it goes. The result is saved, so the track loads at once next time.

Storage at the bottom of Settings › Collection › General shows how the disk with your music is used: your music, the analysis results, high quality stems, tracks played from your servers, everything else, and how much is free. Manage clears the analysis results, the stems or the played tracks, each after saying what it costs, and Show cache folder opens the folder they are kept in.

Grids, keys and cues brought in from VirtualDJ are used as they are, so those tracks don't wait for analysis.

The beat grid stays at one steady tempo unless the track really drifts, as live drums and older recordings do; only then does it get tempo sections, and its BPM in the list shows a ~ (as in VirtualDJ). With Beat detection set to Neural (the default, in Settings › Analysis), openDJ then listens for each beat and downbeat with Beat This!, so bar 1 starts on a downbeat. That takes a few seconds more, after the waveform appears: the track plays on its first grid meanwhile. The first time, openDJ downloads the model (about 11 MB).

Beat This! also sets the tempo, from the beats it hears, which suits slow and soft music (ambient, acoustic) far better than the standard detector. Tempos are kept within BPM range (Settings › Analysis, 60 to 180 BPM unless you change it): a faster reading is halved, a slower one doubled.

The grid menu (click the BPM on a deck) says where the grid came from: Detected, Edited or the app it was imported from. A detected grid that fits the beats poorly says may be off, check by ear. Lock grid keeps a grid as it is: a locked grid can't be edited, and analysing the track again leaves it alone. Grids imported from another app come in locked. Back to the detected grid throws away your edits or the imported grid and uses openDJ's own.

To check a grid by ear, turn on Metronome in the same menu: the deck clicks on every beat of the grid, higher on bar 1, through the deck's fader and cue like the music. If the clicks drift off the music, fix the grid while it plays: Bar 1 here on a downbeat puts bar 1 there, Move grid ‹ › nudges it, Tempo here − + changes the tempo, and New tempo section from here starts a new tempo where a live track speeds up or slows down.

Edit Grid

The quickest way to fix a grid is the pencil in the bottom corner of each deck's big waveform (left for decks 1 and 3, right for 2 and 4). It stays dimmed until you point at it. Click it, or press G for the master deck, to start editing: the beat lines run through the waveform, bar lines in lilac, and the pencil lights up. While you edit:

• Drag the waveform to move the grid under the music; the audio slides and the beat lines stay put until you let go. Hold Alt (⌥) to scrub as usual instead.
• Set Downbeat in the Edit Grid popover makes the beat at the play line bar 1, and ◀ | | ▶ nudge the whole grid a little earlier or later.
• More… opens the full grid menu: tempo, ½ and ×2, tempo sections, undo and the metronome.
• Reset goes back to the detected grid; Lock locks it.

Click the pencil again, press Done or Esc to finish. Editing keeps whatever zoom the waveform is at, and loading another track finishes it. In the Prep layout the grid is always open for editing while it is unlocked, and the metronome turns on by itself there and back off once the grid is locked. Controllers and keyboard shortcuts can use edit_grid (the beats_edit control).

To analyse tracks yourself, right-click them and choose Analyze Track (or Analyze 12 Tracks when you picked several), or right-click a list, folder or stage and choose Analyze All. They are analysed again from scratch in the background, one at a time: tempo, beat grid, key, loudness, mini waveform and phrases. A grid you edited and a key you typed in or got from the tags stay as they are. While it runs, each waiting track has a gray dot by its title (lilac and pulsing while it is being analysed), and the footer shows how far along it is, with a ✕ to stop.

A track with no cover also gets one: openDJ takes the first cover it finds online, if it is at least 600 pixels, and saves it in the file's tags. When the first one is smaller the track is left without, so you can pick one yourself from the cover dialog in Info.

Phrases

Once a track has a beat grid, openDJ splits it into phrases of whole bars: intro, build (up), drop (peak), chorus (main groove), verse, break and outro. Each deck's overview shows them as a bar under the minute dots: deep blue for the intro and outro, violet for a build, rose for a drop, green for a chorus, gold for a verse and tangerine for a break. Phrases are 8 to 32 bars long, so a short fill never gets one of its own. openDJ listens for changes in the bass, the level and the chords, so a new part starts where the music changes even when it doesn't get louder, and it matches parts that come back: a second verse is a verse too. They are saved in your collection with the track, and move with the grid when you edit it.

Rest the pointer on a deck's overview to see the phrase under it: its kind, how many bars it runs and where it starts and ends.

The scrolling waveforms flag where each phrase starts: a line in the phrase's color and a small tab with its name (INTRO, BUILD, DROP and so on) just under the bar numbers. Between flags the waveform is left as it is. In 4-Deck, where the waveforms are thin, only the lines show.

Right-click a deck's overview and choose Hide phrases (or Show phrases) to turn the bars off or on for every deck. Right-click a scrolling waveform to do the same for the flags; the two are separate.

Bringing in a VirtualDJ library

Press Set up… next to Import from VirtualDJ in Settings › Collection › Import. That tab is always there and lists every DJ app openDJ can bring a library in from; Serato DJ is marked coming soon. Three steps follow:

1. Find your library. openDJ looks for database.xml in ~/Library/Application Support/VirtualDJ (or ~/.vdj on Linux) and shows what it holds. Choose another file if yours is elsewhere.
2. Choose which lists come across. Every playlist, virtual folder, filter folder (as a smart list) and history session is in a tree with a tick box. Ticking a folder ticks everything in it, and All lists at the top does the lot. History is grouped by year. Everything starts ticked except filter folders, whose searches may not mean quite the same here. Lists you add in VirtualDJ later come in ticked.
3. Choose whose tags win when a track's title, rating or color differ: VirtualDJ's, while you still use it, or openDJ's.

Press Import. Each track keeps VirtualDJ's tags, stars, color, comment, play count, dates, BPM, beat grid, key, hot cues with their names and colors, saved loops, gain, and its remix and automix points. Anything VirtualDJ leaves empty is filled in from the file's own tags. The lists go into a VirtualDJ folder, and history into the History tab. A VirtualDJ folder that holds songs itself becomes a folder whose first list, with the same name, holds those songs.

openDJ only ever reads VirtualDJ's files. If you keep using VirtualDJ, openDJ checks its files each time it starts and brings in what changed. Tracks are matched by their file, so nothing is added twice. Grids and cues you edited in openDJ are kept. The VirtualDJ folder is made again each time, so change those lists in VirtualDJ, or copy one out of the folder to keep editing it in openDJ.

Once it's on, VirtualDJ's section of the Import tab opens up with these choices and the two buttons below. Lists › Choose… opens the tree again to change which lists come in. Stop leaves what came in but stops updating it. Remove… takes out the VirtualDJ folder and history, VirtualDJ's cues, grids and markers, and the tracks only VirtualDJ had. Tracks in your own lists or music folder stay. Either one closes the section again, back to Set up….

Lists of online tracks

Streamed tracks (TIDAL and VirtualDJ's other online catalogues, or TIDAL, Spotify and the other streaming services in rekordbox) have no file to play, so they stay in their lists as placeholders, in their place. A placeholder is greyed out and shows its service (TIDAL) where the album would be. It keeps the artist, title and length the app saved, and the service's own track id. Double-click one to open it on the service's site. Lists made only of streamed tracks come in too, marked online only in the list picker.

When the song comes into your collection later (you buy it and it lands in the inbox, or a scan finds the file), the placeholder becomes that track, in the same place. openDJ matches by ISRC when both sides have one, then by artist and title at the same length (within 2 seconds). While you're signed in to TIDAL or Spotify, openDJ asks the service for its tracks' ISRCs, so the match is sure. If a match is wrong, or one is missed, right-click the track and pick Change Match….

Placeholders aren't put on the Wanted list for you: right-click one (or several) for Add to Wanted or Add to Downloads, or right-click the list in the tree to add every placeholder in it. To have every streamed track in the app's playlists go on the Wanted list, turn on Add streamed tracks to Wanted under that app in Settings › Library › Import. New ones join at each import; tracks you take off stay off. History is never added: what you played isn't always what you want to keep.

The Wanted list holds only what you put there: tracks you clicked Buy on and tracks you added with Add to Wanted. While the stores are off, it's under Collection. The search box narrows it. A track leaves the list once your collection has it; to take tracks off by hand, pick them (⌘A picks all) and right-click for Remove from Wanted.

Buying Wanted tracks

Pick tracks on the Wanted list, right-click and choose Buy… (or Buy N Tracks…). openDJ looks for each track in the stores it knows: the artist's own site and Bandcamp, Mirlo, the iTunes Store, Qobuz, Bleep, Boomkat, Beatport, Juno Download, Traxsource and Amazon Music. It finds tracks by their ISRC on MusicBrainz, by Bandcamp's and the iTunes Store's search, and opens a search on the stores it can't ask.

For each track it chooses a store that has it, preferring the artist's own site, Bandcamp and Mirlo, where most of the money goes to the artist, then the store whose files reach your library fastest, then lossless files. A store that doesn't have the track only shows up as Try, to search there. Click a track's store to choose another one it's sold on.

The tracks are grouped by store. Open opens the first track's page: add it to the store's cart, then press Next for the next one. Click a track to open just its page. Check out once on that store when they're all in the cart. openDJ never sees your payment, and its links carry no referral codes. Tracks you opened show Buying on … for a week.

Turn on Bring purchases into Inbox and what you download into Downloads afterwards is filed into your music folder, goes to the Inbox stage and comes off the Wanted list, matched by ISRC or by artist, title and length. Zips are unpacked. It takes only files that arrive after you turn it on. On a Mac, Also take purchases from the Music app does the same for iTunes Store purchases the Music app downloads, taking only tracks you are buying and leaving them where the Music app keeps them.

Bringing in a rekordbox library

Import from rekordbox works the same way. openDJ reads rekordbox 6 and 7's own database, master.db, which it finds where rekordbox keeps it (~/Library/Pioneer/rekordbox on a Mac, AppData\Roaming\Pioneer\rekordbox on Windows). For rekordbox 5, or if the database can't be opened, export your collection from rekordbox (File › Export Collection in xml format) and choose that file in the first step.

From master.db each track keeps its tags, stars, color, comment, play count, date added, key, My Tags (each category a tag group, see Your tags), hot cues A to H with their names and colors, memory cues, saved loops, its beat grid with any tempo changes, and rekordbox's phrases (Intro, Verse, Chorus and so on, shown on the waveform as openDJ's own phrases are). Playlists come in their folders, intelligent playlists as smart lists where openDJ's search can say the same thing, and history into the History tab. An XML export holds tracks, grids, cues and playlists, but no phrases, history or intelligent playlists.

Bringing in a Mixxx library

Import from Mixxx works the same way. openDJ reads Mixxx's mixxxdb.sqlite (only reading it, so Mixxx can stay open), which it finds where Mixxx keeps it: ~/Library/Containers/org.mixxx.mixxx/Data/Library/Application Support/Mixxx or ~/Library/Application Support/Mixxx on a Mac, ~/.mixxx on Linux and AppData\Local\Mixxx on Windows.

Each track keeps its tags, stars, color, comment, play count, dates, key, hot cues with their labels and colors, saved loops, the main cue (as a memory cue), intro and outro (as sections) and its beat grid, whether a steady grid or a beat map with tempo changes. Playlists come in a Playlists folder, crates in a Crates folder, and history sessions go to the History tab. Auto DJ's queue stays in Mixxx.

Bringing in a Traktor library

Import from Traktor works the same way. openDJ reads Traktor's collection.nml (only reading it), which it finds in the newest Documents/Native Instruments/Traktor x.y.z folder on a Mac or Windows. If yours is elsewhere, choose the file in the first step.

Each track keeps its tags, stars, color, comment, play count, dates, key, hot cues 1 to 8 with their names, saved loops, its beat grid, other cues (as memory cues) and fade in and fade out (as Automix points). Playlists come in their folders, folders within folders just as Traktor shows them. Traktor's own _LOOPS and _RECORDINGS lists and its smart lists stay out.

Bringing in a djay Pro library

Import from djay Pro works the same way. openDJ reads a copy of djay's MediaLibrary.db, so djay can stay open and its library is never changed. It finds it in Music/djay/djay Media Library.djayMediaLibrary on a Mac or Music/djay/djay Media Library on Windows. If yours is elsewhere, choose the file in the first step.

Each track that is a file on this computer keeps its title, artist, album, genre, BPM, key, rating, year, comment, hot cues 1 to 8 with their names and colors, saved loops (as memory cues), Automix start and end (as Automix points), play count and color. When you set the first downbeat in djay, the grid starts there. Playlists come in a djay Pro folder, in djay's order and with djay's folders, and djay's history comes as one session per set. Tracks streamed from TIDAL, Beatport, SoundCloud or Spotify show in their lists as streamed tracks, with their artist, title and length.

Bringing in an iTunes or Music library

Import from iTunes works the same way for iTunes and the Music app on a Mac, and iTunes on Windows. openDJ reads the library's XML file (only reading it):

• Music app: choose Music › Settings › Advanced and turn on Share Library XML with other applications, so Music keeps Music/Music/Library.xml up to date. Or choose File › Library › Export Library… once and save Library.xml.
• iTunes: it keeps iTunes Library.xml (or iTunes Music Library.xml) in its Music/iTunes folder by itself.

openDJ looks in those places, and for an exported Library.xml in your Music folder or on the Desktop. If yours is elsewhere, choose the file in the first step. When Music's file changes, openDJ reads it again at its next start.

Each track keeps its title, artist, album, genre, grouping, composer, comments, year, track and disc number, BPM, stars (not the ones Music worked out from the album), play count, date added and when it was last played. The file has no cues or beat grids, so openDJ analyses the tracks as usual. Playlists come in their folders, folders within folders. Music's own lists (Library, Music, Purchased, Genius and the like) stay out. Smart playlists are off at first; ticked, each comes in as a plain list of the tracks it held when Music last wrote the file. Podcasts, audiobooks, videos and voice memos stay out. Apple Music songs you added but don't have as files (and protected downloads, which openDJ can't play) show in their lists as streamed tracks, with their artist, title and length.

The same song from two apps

When a second app's library has a different file of a song you already have (the same artist and title, ignoring case and punctuation, and a length within two seconds), openDJ doesn't add it twice. The copy already in your collection stays, and the second app only fills in what it left empty. Its lists point at that copy. Its grid is only used when the track has none from another app, and its hot cues come in as memory cues when the track already has hot cues, so nothing is lost. Removing the second import takes out what it added and leaves the track as it was.

The tree

The collection's tree has these parts:

• Collection, with how many tracks you have. Select it for all of them; open it for Wanted (tracks you went to buy or added with Add to Wanted) and the stages.
• Crates: lists for sorting your music, such as Yoga, Journeys, Dance or a style. A crate has no order of its own (it sorts like the Collection) and holds each track once. The + beside the heading adds a crate or a Crate Folder; crates have a box icon, or the one you pick.
• Playlists: running orders, for gigs or anything else. A playlist keeps the order you add tracks in, and a track can be in it twice. Its icon is always lines with a note. The + beside the heading adds a playlist, a smart playlist or a folder. Your smart lists are here too.

Right-click any folder for New Crate, New Playlist or New Folder, so folders can hold folders and a folder can hold both. Right-click a list for Make It a Crate or Make It a Playlist (a playlist that becomes a crate keeps each track once).

Drag a crate, playlist or folder onto a folder to move it there, or onto the Crates or Playlists heading to take it back to the top (a crate's top is Crates, a playlist's is Playlists; a folder can go under either).

• Imported: other apps' lists (a folder per app) and Groupings and Tags. They are read-only, because the app's next import makes them again, so they show a padlock and dimmer names. To keep an app's lists as your own (say, once you stop using that app), right-click any of them and pick Make These Lists Mine: they move to Playlists and can be changed, and that import keeps bringing in tracks, cues and grids but no more lists. Turning the import off and on again brings its lists back.

Everything starts closed, and the tree remembers which folders you left open. Drag tracks onto a crate or playlist to add them, or onto a stage to move them there. Or right-click tracks and point at Add to playlist: a panel opens beside the menu with the lists you added to most recently at the top. Type to find one, or pick New crate to make one with the tracks in it. Show in playlist lists the crates and playlists a track is in and opens the one you pick.

Go to Artist and Go to Album on the track menu show the whole collection narrowed to that artist (any track they're on) or album, with a chip on the filter bar; clear the chip to see everything again.

A track can be in as many crates as you like, and the Crates column (right-click a heading) shows which ones it is in. Search with crate:yoga for tracks in a crate with "yoga" in its name, crate:=yoga for that crate only, and crate:"" for tracks in no crate yet.

History

Every track that plays on a deck for 30 seconds goes into that night's history session, named after when it started (such as "Sat 31 Oct 2026, 22:15"), in the History tab beside the tree. A session opens in the order you played it: the # column is the play order and Played At the time each track was played. Click any heading to sort by it, and # to go back to the order played. History sessions have their own columns, so changing them doesn't change your other lists. Playlists and crates open in their own order too, and the collection keeps its sort.

Right-click a session, playlist or crate and pick Export to Spotify Playlist to make a private Spotify playlist of it in that order. openDJ finds each track on Spotify by its ISRC, then by artist, title and length; the list's header says how many went in and names those Spotify doesn't have, and the new playlist opens in your browser. If you signed in to Spotify before this was added, sign out and in again so openDJ may make playlists.

Playlist files

Right-click a playlist, crate, folder, history session, album or mixed set and pick Export as M3U8…, then the folder to save it in. A list becomes one .m3u8 file named after it; a folder becomes a folder of them, with its folders inside. Tracks kept in the file's folder or below it are written with paths from there, so a USB stick with the music beside the list works on any computer; the rest are written in full. Online tracks in a list have no file, so they go in as a note with their name and service.

To bring a list in from another app, pick Import Playlist File… from the + beside Playlists. openDJ reads M3U, M3U8, PLS and XSPF (from VLC, foobar2000, Winamp, Serato and others), makes a playlist with the file's name and finds each track in your collection: by its path, by its path from the file's folder, then by its file name. Files on disk that aren't in your collection yet join it. The list's header names any tracks it couldn't find.

Taking your library to another app

File › Export › rekordbox XML… (or right-click Collection and pick Export as rekordbox XML…) saves your whole collection as one rekordbox.xml file: every track with its tags, rating, color, comment, date added and play count, its beat grid (one marker per tempo change, so a grid that changes tempo comes across), hot cues with their numbers and colors, memory cues and saved loops, and every crate, playlist and folder in its tree. Right-click a single list or folder to save just that one.

To open it in rekordbox, pick the file under Preferences › Advanced › Database › rekordbox xml, turn on rekordbox xml under Preferences › View › Layout, and it shows as a node in rekordbox's tree. Library tools such as Lexicon and Rekord Buddy read it too and convert it to Serato, Traktor, Engine DJ and VirtualDJ. A few things don't fit the format:

• Your tags go into the comment as /* Tag / Tag */, the way rekordbox writes its own My Tags there.
• rekordbox has eight hot cues (A to H) and eight track colors: pads 9 and up come across as memory cues, and a track's color as the nearest of the eight.
• Phrases, stems, stages and online tracks with no file are left out.

Collection Health

Collection Health, the cross under Collection in the rail, finds what needs fixing in your collection: duplicates, junk in names, missing or poor tags, covers, low bitrates, files that went missing, and more.

Search and filters

Search, the filter bar and smart lists have a page of their own: Filtering tracks.

Picking several tracks

Click a track to pick it, shift-click another to pick every track in between, and ⌘-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux) to add or drop one track at a time; ⌘A picks the whole list. Right-click, drag, rate or add to a playlist and it applies to every picked track. Sorting or a refreshed list keeps the same tracks picked. With several picked, the list's heading says how many and their total time ("12 selected · 1h 14m") in place of the whole list's time.

The track menu's Rating and Color rows set every picked track at once; the colors are the ones color:red, color:blue and so on search for.

A track's color shows as a dot in the Color column (headed ●, sorted red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, pink). Settings › Library › Track color changes that to a strip at the row's left edge or a soft tint of the whole row, or turns it off; color searches work either way.

Track info

The Info tab on the right of the browser shows the picked track (or the track on a deck) and lets you edit it in place. The rating is under the title. Below, three tabs keep everything in view without scrolling:

• Track: track, artist, remix, album and genre, then year and track number, BPM and key, gain and time, two to a line.
• Tags: your tag groups, grouping and the comment. Each tag is a chip: × takes it off, and the + tag box adds one (or several, with commas between), suggesting tags you already use.
• File: format, audio, size, the file (with Show in Finder), its folder, plays, when it was added and last played.

openDJ remembers the tab you were on. Tags go into the file as well as your collection.

Pick several tracks and Info edits them together. A field they share shows its value; one that differs says how many values it has. Type a value to give it to them all, or click ▾ to pick one of the values they have (with how many tracks have it), keep each track's own, or clear it in all. Changed fields are marked in lilac (a tab with changes gets a dot) and wait for Apply (or Discard). Apply writes them to your collection and the files' tags in one go, and ⌘Z takes the whole change back. Fields you typed this way are left alone by Clean up and Look up online. The stars set the rating of every picked track at once.

Tags work on all the picked tracks at once, with no Apply. A tag on only some of them shows how many have it ("dreamy 5/12"): click it to put it on all. × takes a tag off all of them, and + tag adds one to all. ⌘Z takes a tag change back. You can also right-click tracks and choose Add Tag: it lists the tags you added lately, then the ones you use most, and you can type to find one or make a new one.

Fixing names

Right-click one or more tracks and choose Fix Names… to tidy their names in one go. Pick a tool, choose In: all names (track, artist, remix and album) or one field such as Genre or Comment, and watch the preview:

• Find and Replace: what to find and what to put instead (leave it empty to take it out). Match case, Whole words, and Pattern for a regular expression, where $1 in the replacement puts back what the first brackets found.
• Change Case: Title Case (small words like "of" and "the" stay lower, DJ, MC and UK stay in capitals, names like McCartney are kept), Sentence case, UPPER or lower.
• Remove Brackets: takes out what's in (round) and [square] brackets.
• Swap Artist and Title: for tracks that have them the wrong way round.

Review opens the review table: untick what you'd rather keep, then Apply. Undo takes the whole change back. A track or artist name is never emptied.

Columns

Right-click any column heading to choose which columns the list shows, your tag groups included, or Reset columns to go back to the default. Drag a divider on a heading's right edge to make that column wider or narrower (the columns after it move along and keep their widths), and drag the heading itself to move it. Click a heading to sort by it. openDJ remembers your columns.

Your tags

Tags sit in groups you make in Settings › Collection › Tags, for example Mood, Instruments or Vibe: add as many as you need, rename them, and set each to Several tags per track or One. A tag is a name of its own, spaces included ("Peak Time"), with no # needed. Removing a group takes its tags off every track (openDJ asks first when tracks use it), and ↑ moves a group up.

Tags on a group's row lists its tags with how many tracks have each. Give a tag a color (it shows as a dot on its chip), or type a new name and press Return to rename it on every track: a name the group has already merges the two into one. × deletes a tag from every track.

Each group's name works as a search word (mood:uplifting, vibe:"peak time"), and so does its place (tag1:uplifting for the first group); tag: searches every group. The # in front of a tag is optional when searching. On the same tab, give Grouping the name you use it for, such as Trip Stage (tripstage:"4 peak"). Copy into a tag group there makes a group of that name with each track's grouping as a tag, so a track can then have more than one (the Grouping tag itself stays as it is).

Tags from other apps come into your groups: VirtualDJ's User 1 and User 2 each fill a group (each word a tag, the # dropped), and each rekordbox My Tag category becomes a group of the same name. A group you already have with that name takes them. Rename a group made this way and later imports still go into it.

Backups

openDJ backs up your collection (cues, tags, crates, playlists and history) and your settings once a day, under Backups in Settings › Collection › General. Back up sets how often: Off, Daily (the default) or Weekly. The newest 10 backups are kept. Each is one .opendjbackup file, which also holds your own controller mappings. Sign-ins to streaming services stay out of it.

Backup folder is a Backups folder next to openDJ's settings until you pick another; a cloud folder (iCloud Drive, Dropbox) keeps your backups off the computer. Back Up Now makes one straight away.

Restore… picks a backup. It goes in when openDJ next starts, so quit and open it again. How things were before is saved first, as a "Before restore" backup in the backup folder, and you stay signed in to your services. Cancel drops a restore that hasn't happened yet. Music and sample files are not part of a backup.

Filtering tracks

Two things narrow the track list down: the search box and the filter bar. They work together, on whatever list, crate, set or stage is picked on the left, and Save keeps both as a smart list.

The filter bar

The filter bar above the track list narrows it down with chips, as djay Pro does. The filter button next to the search box shows or hides it. The bar starts hidden, and the button lights up while any filter is on.

The bar starts with chips for Grouping, Genre, your first two tag groups (see Your tags), BPM and Key. Click a chip to pick values:

• Genre, Grouping, Artist, Album: tick the values you want. Each one shows how many tracks of the list have it, and a search box at the top finds one in a long list.
• Tag groups such as Mood: tick tags, and choose Match Any (a track needs one of them) or Match All (it needs all of them).
• BPM: type a range, From and To, or turn on Near the playing track to follow the tempo of what's playing, within a few percent.
• Key: tick keys, or turn on Mixes with the playing track to list only the keys that mix with it (see Keys).
• Rating, Color, Year, Play Count, Date Added are in +.

A chip that's on is lit and says what it picked. Clear in a chip empties it, and Clear at the end of the bar empties them all.

+ adds any other field to the bar for now. Turn on Keep on the bar in a chip to pin it there for next time.

With Near the playing track or Mixes with the playing track on, the list changes by itself when the next track starts: a quick way to find what mixes next.

Search

Type in the search box to find words in any field. Rest the pointer on the box for a moment to see everything search understands:

The chips are searches too, so a chip and the same typed search always find the same tracks.

Smart lists

Save, beside the search box, turns the search and the chips into a smart list in the tree. It updates by itself as tracks come in or change. VirtualDJ's filter folders come in as smart lists too.

Collection Health

Collection Health, the cross under Collection in the rail, checks the whole collection for what needs fixing. Overview shows how much of your collection is clean, with Inbox, In Prep and Play Ready on their own bars, and the checks grouped into five areas in the order they're best fixed: Files, Out of place, Duplicates, Info and Prep. The first area with work is marked Start here.

An area lists its tracks with a Problem and a Fix column and a progress bar. Its bar has:

• Auto-fix, for the fixes with one clear answer: relinking a missing file to the only file that matches it, merging easy duplicates, and taking the junk the clean-up rules know out of names. Undo takes the whole run back. On Prep the button reads Analyze and queues every track not analysed yet.
• Review, which goes through the area one track at a time on a card. Return applies the fix shown, → skips, I ignores the track for that check, E opens its Info tab, Space plays it in the headphones, ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z) undoes and Esc goes back to the list. When the area is done, Next carries on in the next one with work.

To fix only some tracks from the list, pick them (shift-click for a range, ⌘-click or Ctrl-click for single tracks) and right-click. Tracks a check was told to leave alone are under Ignored, below the areas; Bring back lets every check see them again.

Lists at the bottom of the page shows up when crates are empty or lists still hold tracks you removed from your collection. Tidy up deletes the empty crates and takes those tracks out of the lists. Playlists are left alone, since a new one starts empty.

Ignore for in the right-click menu tells a check to leave a track alone. A track that isn't music is left out of the other checks, so an audiobook doesn't also show up as missing its cover.

Remove from collection keeps the file where it is. The track no longer shows, and a rescan or a VirtualDJ import doesn't bring it back; adding the file again does, and so does Bring back at the bottom of the page.

Each check is also a search: is:notmusic, is:stray, is:outside, is:unanalyzed, is:noinfo, is:lowbitrate, is:junk, is:nocover, is:unrated, is:missing, is:long and is:duplicate.

Covers are looked for in the background, and a file is looked at again only when it changes. On a Mac, files that iCloud has taken off the disk are skipped, so the check doesn't download your whole collection.

Find covers looks online (Cover Art Archive, iTunes, and Discogs with a Discogs token in Settings › Collection) for each track, one at a time in the background, and embeds the largest cover found, scaled down to 1024 pixels when it is bigger. Tracks it finds nothing for stay in the list: search those from the track's info panel.

Clean-up

Clean up… on Junk in names (or a right-click on some of its tracks) shows every change before anything happens: the track, the field, what it says now and what it becomes. Untick a change to leave it, then Apply. The changes go to your collection and to the files' tags. Undo in the bar or the track menu takes the whole batch back.

Each rule can be turned off in Settings › Collection › Health, under Clean-up. Titles that start with a number, such as 99 Luftballons, stay as they are.

Genres… at the bottom of the Collection Health page lists every genre with how many tracks have it. Genres spelled like another but for capitals, spaces or punctuation (Electronica and electronica) are lilac. Tick the ones that mean the same, type the name to keep (the most used one is filled in), and Merge. Undo takes a merge back too.

Online lookup

Look up online on Missing or poor metadata or Junk in names works on every track listed (or a right-click on some of them). It looks each track up on MusicBrainz in the background, paced as MusicBrainz asks, and opens the same review table as Clean-up with what it found: artist, title, album, year (of the recording's first release) and genre, and with a Discogs token also the label and style (as the genre). Next to each track is where the match came from and how sure it is.

To match more of a DJ collection, openDJ searches for the title as tagged first, then without bracketed parts and guests ("Kerala (Original Mix) [Ninja Tune]" by "Bonobo feat. X" is also searched as "Kerala" by "Bonobo"), then by the words in any order. "Unknown Artist", "Track 01" and the like count as empty: they aren't searched by, and a file called Artist - Title.mp3 stands in for them. When the match gives no name, or nothing is found, the file name's artist and title are offered as "File name".

Only changes that fill an empty field (or one that says nothing) from a match at least 80% sure are ticked, and file-name suggestions for an empty artist or title. A genre that is the artist's rather than the track's is shown unticked. A change to something the track already has is shown unticked, so nothing you named yourself is overwritten unless you tick it. Fields you typed in the track's info panel are never proposed. Apply writes the ticked changes to your collection and the files, and Undo takes them back.

When it's done, the status line says how many were found (and how many by their sound), how many aren't on MusicBrainz (often DJ edits, promos and bootlegs), how many couldn't be looked up because there was no connection or MusicBrainz was busy (try those again later), and how many are in iCloud only, so they were looked up by name and not by their sound.

With an AcoustID key (free on acoustid.org; paste it in Settings › Collection › Health under Online lookup) openDJ recognises tracks by their sound, so files called track01.mp3 are found too. Without one, tracks are looked up by artist and title (from the tags or the file name), and those with neither are skipped.

Fill from file name… opens the review table with the artist and title each file's name gives, for those that have none. Check them before Apply: a file called Title - Artist.mp3 gives them the wrong way round.

Duplicates

Copies are tracks with the same artist, title and remix, ignoring case, punctuation and "Original Mix". Under Duplicates in the tree, openDJ sorts them into groups by what tells them apart:

In each group the copy kept comes first and the others are dimmed. openDJ keeps the copy in your Play Ready folder, then a lossless file over a lossy one, then the higher bitrate, then the one with cues or a checked grid, then the most played. To keep another one, right-click it and choose Keep this copy. The Location column (right-click a heading) shows which folder each copy is in.

Auto-fix on Duplicates merges every group but Different lengths at once. Merging loses nothing: the kept copy takes the others' lists and history, cues and grid (when it has none), links, the highest rating, all their plays, the earliest date added, and any tags it lacks. The other copies leave your collection and their files go to _Quarantine/<date>/, next to your Play Ready folder. With Move files off in Settings › Collection, the moves wait until you turn it on. openDJ never deletes anything there: the bottom of the Collection Health page shows how many files are waiting, and Show folder opens it, so you can empty it once you're sure.

Undo in the bar (or the track menu) brings the copies back and moves their files back. The merged plays and tags stay on the kept copy.

Link as versions keeps copies of different lengths and links them, so each shows the others on its Related tab, and they leave the Duplicates list.

Quarantine

To put away a track you don't want, without deleting it, right-click it and choose Move to Quarantine. It leaves your collection and its file goes to the same _Quarantine/<date>/ folder as duplicates, and Undo brings it back.

Export to USB

Experimental. USB export hasn't been tried on a Pioneer or Engine DJ player yet. Check the stick on a player before you rely on it at a gig, and tell us how it went (see Feedback and logs).

openDJ can put your lists on a USB stick that Pioneer DJ players read, the way rekordbox's USB export does, or that Engine DJ players (Denon DJ Prime and SC, Numark, Rane) read, the way Engine DJ does: the music, its beat grid, cues, loops and waveforms, album art, and your playlists and folders. One stick can carry both.

Exporting

1. Plug in a USB stick formatted FAT32 or exFAT.
2. Pick a playlist, folder, smart list or stage in the tree on the left and choose File › Export › USB… (or right-click it and choose Export to USB…). A folder takes its lists and subfolders with it.
3. Pick the stick under Drive (press Refresh if it isn't there yet).
4. Pick which Players the stick is for:
   • All Pioneer DJ players writes both Pioneer libraries below; it's right for Pioneer gear unless you know you only need one.
   • CDJ-3000, NXS2 and older, XDJ-XZ, XDJ-RX3 read the Device Library (export.pdb).
   • CDJ-3000X, XDJ-AZ, OPUS-QUAD, OMNIS-DUO read OneLibrary (exportLibrary.db).
   • Denon DJ Prime and SC, Numark, Rane read the Engine DJ library (Engine Library/Database2/m.db). It's written the way Engine OS 4 and 5 read it.
   • Pioneer DJ and Engine DJ players writes all three, for a stick you take to any booth.
5. Press Export. You can press Stop at any time; the stick then keeps the library it had.

Tracks that were never analysed are analysed first, so the first export of a big list takes a while. Music already on the stick isn't copied again.

What ends up on the stick

• The audio, under Contents/Artist/Album/ on the stick, shared by the Pioneer and Engine DJ libraries.
• Each track's analysis: beat grid, hot cues A–H with their names and colors, memory cues and loops, and the waveforms players draw (blue, RGB and three-band).
• Title, artist, album, genre, label, key, BPM, rating, color, comment, year and play count. Keys are written the way openDJ shows them (Camelot or notes, from Settings › Analysis).
• Album art.
• The lists you exported, in their folders.

For Engine DJ players each track gets its beat grid, hot cues 1–8 with their names and colors, up to eight saved loops (loops on hot cue pads keep their pad; memory loops fill the rest), the overview waveform, the main cue (your first memory cue), key, BPM, rating and album art. The players draw the scrolling waveform from the music themselves.

Good to know

• The stick's playlists are replaced. Each export writes the stick's library afresh with the lists you picked. To have several lists on one stick, put them in a folder and export the folder.
• A stick Engine DJ already exported to is left alone: openDJ only replaces an Engine Library it wrote itself. Use another stick, or move the Engine Library folder off it first.
• A stick rekordbox already exported to gets openDJ's library in the same place, in place of rekordbox's, so players never see two.
• Hot cues past H are left out, as players have eight. The result says how many.
• Tracks that can't be read (a missing file, say) are left out, and the result lists them.
• Exporting the same lists again is quick: only new music is copied.

Credits

USB export stands on the work of others:

• rbox by Dylan Jones (GPL-3.0) writes the Device Library, OneLibrary and the analysis files. While building on it we found three small bugs in its OneLibrary schema (a column name, a missing column and its foreign keys), which openDJ works around and has reported upstream.
• Bake'n Deck by Masanari Higashi (MIT) worked out, and tested on real CDJs, how rekordbox encodes waveforms, cue colors, analysis folders and album art. openDJ follows it.
• rbxport by Chris Le (GPL-2.0-or-later) documents the stick format in depth; openDJ checks its exports against that reference.
• EngineX-OS (MIT) measured Engine DJ's library on Engine OS players: the m.db schema and how beat grids, waveforms, cues and loops are encoded. openDJ's Engine DJ export follows it.
• rekordcrate (MPL-2.0) and the Deep Symmetry format notes were used to check openDJ's sticks.
• EngineX OS (MIT) reads rekordbox sticks for Denon, Numark and Rane players, and its OpenProLink CDJ-3000 simulator loads them with the same reader. openDJ's tests read every export back with a port of that reader, which shares no code with rbox.

Decks and mixer

Drag a track from the browser onto a deck to load it, or select it and press a controller's LOAD button. You can also drag an audio file straight from Finder, Explorer or your file manager onto a deck: it loads there and joins your library. (On Linux this needs an X11 session; Wayland doesn't pass file drops to openDJ yet.)

Decks

In 2-Deck each deck runs, from the outer edge in:

• The tempo column: SYNC on top, the tempo fader, and − and + under it for small steps. The triangle beside the fader puts the tempo back to the track's own. A lilac line down the fader means key lock is on; right-click the fader to switch it.
• The pads, with their tabs on top (see Pads).
• The LOOP column (see Looping).
• The jog wheel, with CUE and PLAY under it, next to the mixer. Drag round its black rim to bend the tempo, scroll over it to nudge, and hold « or » in its lower corners to bend slower or faster. SLIP sits in its top right corner (see Slip, bend and censor).

Above them, the deck's header shows the cover, title and artist, the time left and the track's tempo and key, with the overview waveform of the whole track. Click the overview to jump; dragging it moves without playing what it passes.

To empty a deck, point at its cover and click the small ⏏ in the corner (the Mixer has it at the end of its title bar instead). It works on whatever the deck holds: a track, the Groove Box, the Looper, an input or the Mixer. It only shows while the deck isn't playing. Right-clicking the cover has Unload deck too, and ⇧ ⌥ ← / → unload decks 1 and 2. If it was a mistake, click ↺ Put back on the empty deck: a track comes back where it was.

Waveform colors

Settings › Decks › Waveform color picks how the waveforms are colored:

• RGB (the default): one shape, red where the bass is loudest, amber for the mids and blue for the highs.
• 3-Band: the bass, mids and highs stacked in their own colors, the bass widest, as on rekordbox. Palette picks Blue-Orange-White (rekordbox's colors) or Lilac-Cyan-White.
• Blue: one blue shape, lighter where the highs are loud.
• Stems: each stem (kick, hi-hats, bass, instruments, vocals) in the color of its stem pad, the loudest at the back, so you can see where the vocals come in or the bass drops out. A track shows RGB until its stems are ready.

Overview draws the overview under each deck Full, mirrored about its middle, or Half, growing from the bottom edge as on rekordbox. The big scrolling waveform is always whole.

Show vocals, off at first, tints the sung parts of the waveforms green, as on VirtualDJ. openDJ checks each track for vocals the first time you load it (or when it's analyzed), in the background, so the green shows up a few seconds after the waveform; after that it's there straight away. Tracks with HQ stems use their vocal stem instead.

Size follows gain, off at first, makes a deck's waveforms taller or shorter as you turn its gain knob, as on VirtualDJ.

Waveform zoom

The large scrolling waveforms zoom in twenty steps of 5%, from 5% (about 40 seconds across) to 100% (under a second, close enough to line a grid up with a kick). They start at 40%, ten seconds across. Every large waveform zooms together, in every layout, so beats stay the same distance apart on each deck; the overviews under the decks always show the whole track.

• Scroll the mouse wheel or swipe on the trackpad over a large waveform: up zooms in, down zooms out. The zoom follows smoothly and settles on the nearest step when you stop.
• Use the bar at the edge of the waveform under the pointer (the side away from the grid pencil), widest at the top: click the grey track to move the lilac marker there, or drag the marker up and down.
• ⌘= and ⌘− (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) step in and out, ⌘0 goes back to 40%. They are also in View and in a large waveform's right-click menu.
• On a controller, map Zoom waveform in, Zoom waveform out, Reset waveform zoom or Waveform zoom (1 to 20).

The step shows for a moment on the waveform under the pointer (or the top one). openDJ remembers it for next time. Decks playing an input, an instrument or the Groove Box keep ten seconds across.

Waveform height

The large scrolling waveforms have ten heights, 1 to 10; 3 is the usual one. Each layout remembers its own, so tall waveforms in 2-Deck don't make 4-Deck taller.

• Drag the line under the waveforms: a lilac grip shows when the pointer is on it. The waveforms stretch with the pointer and settle on the nearest height when you let go, with the number in the middle. Double-click the line to go back to 3.
• Click the arrow on the right of the waveforms button in the top bar and pick a number.
• Right-click a large waveform and use − and + under Height.
• ⌥⌘↑ and ⌥⌘↓ (Ctrl+Alt on Windows and Linux) make them taller or shorter. They are also in View.
• On a controller, map Taller waveforms, Shorter waveforms, Reset waveform height or Waveform height (1 to 10).

The library always keeps room for about five tracks. When the window is too short for the height you chose, the waveforms show the highest one that fits, and grow back when the window does. The decks never shrink.

Beat counter

Beside the title, four squares light up one beat at a time, so you can see where the bar is: the first beat of each bar lights white, the others in the deck's color. The thin bars under them fill up through each group of four bars, and all four turn lilac in the last bar before a new phrase starts, so you know the change is one bar away.

Next to the squares, the count reads phrase.bar.beat (for example 3.2.1: phrase 3, bar 2, beat 1), and under it ↓ 6 › DROP says the next phrase, a drop, starts in 6 bars. The phrases come from the track's phrase analysis; a track without phrases is counted in phrases of eight bars from its first bar. If beat 1 doesn't land on the downbeat, the beat grid is off: click the tempo on the jog and choose Bar 1 here on a downbeat (see Beat grids).

Choose Off, Beats (squares only) or Beats and phrases under Settings › Decks › Beat counter. The 4-Deck strips show the squares only.

PLAY, CUE and SYNC show an outline in the deck's color while they're on. Shift-click and hold PLAY while the deck plays for censor.

The decks' effects are in the FX bar under them.

Jam on a deck

A deck can play something live instead of a track. Click Jam in the rail at the far left (the keyboard icon) and drag one onto a deck:

• A Groove Box kit: a drum machine in time with the mix (see Groove Box).
• An instrument plugin you ticked in Settings › Plugins, played with a MIDI keyboard or the KEYBOARD pads. OPEN on the deck opens its own window for its sounds and presets (see Instruments).
• The Looper: four layers you record in time with the mix and play back (see Looper).
• The Microphone, from the input picked in Settings › Audio.
• The Mixer: up to eight aux inputs from Settings › Audio (turntables, a drum machine, a phone, another DJ's mixer) summed into the one deck. The numbers on the deck turn each input on and off; a new input starts off. The deck's fader is the Mixer's master, and one deck holds the Mixer at a time.

It plays through that deck's channel, so the EQ, filter, effects, fader and crossfader all work on it. A track on the deck is stopped and ejected first. An input plays on one deck at a time: dropping it on another deck moves it there, and while a deck has it, its own channel in the MIC panel stays quiet. The Jam page shows which deck each one is on.

The deck's scrolling waveform draws what it plays as it plays: the sound comes in at the play line and scrolls away to the left, with nothing ahead of it. The beat lines and bar numbers are those of the track leading the mix (the sync leader, or else the first deck playing a track), so you can see your part land on its beats. The leading track's phrases show too: a thin strip along the top in each phrase's color, running on ahead of the play line, and a flag at each new phrase, so you can see the drop coming and bring your part in on it.

On a deck playing an instrument plugin, the notes you play show as bars on a note roll over a faint copy of the sound: one row per note, fitted to the notes played in view, with the notes still held lit up to the play line. The rows of the scale the instrument plays in (its Scale setting, Auto or a picked scale) are tinted.

On a Groove Box deck, the scrolling waveform shows eight step lanes, kick on top, over a faint copy of the sound. The hits it played scroll away to the left, and the hits still to come are drawn ahead of the play line as outlines, so you can see the next bars before they play. Fills are drawn in lilac, and a groove you queue shows from the next bar on.

On an instrument deck, the small sliders button at the waveform's top right switches to macro lanes: the knobs on the page the deck shows, drawn as lines up to the play line across the waveform's full height, each in its own colour, so you can see the filter ride you did a few bars back. Only the knobs that moved in view get a line. The list just past the play line names all eight with their values and colours, dimming the ones left alone. Click the button again to go back to the note roll. Macro lanes are in 2-Deck only; a Groove Box deck always shows its step lanes.

To go back to a track deck, load a track onto it, or press EJECT while it is stopped. openDJ remembers what each deck plays for next time.

Looper

Drag Looper from the Jam list onto a deck. In 2-Deck the deck shows four layers, two by two, with ▶ PLAY and four beat lights under them. The header shows the tempo the Looper plays at, and whether it is in time with the mix.

• FROM picks what it records: Mix (the main mix), Mic, Aux, Instr. (the instrument plugin), Aux 2 or Aux 3.
• BARS sets how long a new layer is: 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 bars.
• Tap a layer's ● REC to record it. It shows NEXT BAR until the next bar starts, then RECORDING, then ▶ PLAY with its length once the bars are done. Tapping a layer on a stopped deck starts the deck.
• Tap a playing layer to OVERDUB: what comes in is added on top of it. Tap it again to go back to playing. With THEN OVERDUB on, a layer goes straight on to overdub when it finishes recording.
• CAPTURE puts the bars just heard into the first empty layer, even if you weren't recording. LAST picks how many: 1, 2, 4 or 8 bars.
• Each layer has M to mute it, a level knob, and × to clear it.
• UNDO takes back the last recording or overdub, and REDO brings it back. While a layer waits for the bar or records, UNDO cancels it.
• ▶ PLAY under the layers starts all of them together, and ■ STOP stops them.

A layer holds up to about 48 seconds, 16 bars at 80 BPM. If what you pick is longer, the deck says Too long to fit: pick fewer bars. To go back to a track deck, drop a track on it.

Slip, bend and censor

SLIP keeps the track in time while you play with it. Click the word SLIP in the jog's top right corner (2-Deck only): it turns lilac when on and light grey when off. While it's on, scratching, a loop, a hot cue held down, reverse or a pause takes the sound away, but a silent playhead carries on, drawn as a dashed lilac line on the waveforms. When the trick ends (you let go of the jog or the pad, end the loop, turn reverse off or press PLAY) the track carries on from that line, on the beat and the phrase, as if it had played on. In slip mode a hot cue plays only while you hold it. SLIP blinks while the track is held elsewhere; switching it off then also brings the track back. Slip only works on a deck that's playing: on a paused deck, scratching and hot cues find a spot as usual.

Scratching follows your hand closely. openDJ smooths a controller's jog the way Mixxx does when you hold the record or push it at a steady speed, so the sound doesn't wobble. When your hand changes speed quickly, as in a baby scratch, a quicker filter takes over, so the record keeps up: about 10 ms behind your hand, where Mixxx's smoothing alone is about 26 ms behind. The audio buffer (Settings › Audio) comes on top of that, so a smaller buffer feels tighter still.

Vinyl mode (Settings › Decks) decides what touching the top of a controller's jog does. On (the default), it grabs the record so you can scratch. Off, the top bends the tempo like the rim does, so brushing the jog doesn't stop the track, as CDJ mode does on a Pioneer player. The DDJ-FLX4 and DDJ-FLX6 follow it, and a controller's own VINYL button still switches it for its deck.

Pitch bend nudges a deck's beat into line by ear: it plays a little faster or slower while you bend and springs back when you stop. Turn a controller's jog rim, drag round the on-screen jog's rim, or hold « or » beside the jog (2%, or 4% with Shift). ← and → bend the deck you started last, the one you're mixing in.

Censor plays the deck backwards while you hold it, then carries on as if it had played forwards, to bleep a word. Shift-click and hold PLAY while the deck plays, or hold SHIFT and PLAY on the DDJ-FLX4.

Sync and quantize

SYNC sits over the tempo fader. It stays on while it's lit: the deck follows the master deck's tempo and keeps its beats in step, at half or double tempo when that's closer. Press it again to let go. Shift-click SYNC to match the tempo and beat once, without staying synced, as SYNC does in VirtualDJ.

The deck that synced decks follow shows a small MASTER under its key. openDJ picks it by itself, the deck that has been playing longest, and hands over when it stops. Click MASTER on a deck to keep that deck the master (it fills in), and click it again to let openDJ pick.

Right-click SYNC for quantize. While it's on, cues and loops are set on the beat, and play, CUE, hot cues and jumps land in step with the other playing deck. The same menu sets the step: 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 or 1 beat, or 4 to land on the same beat of the bar. Cues and loops snap to a beat at most. Settings › Decks › Quantize sets whether quantize starts on for every deck.

Keys

Key lock shows on the tempo fader: while its line is lilac, moving the fader keeps the track's key. It's on from the start; right-click the tempo fader to switch it off and on (Settings › Decks › Key lock on at start sets how decks start). The + and − beside the deck's key shift it a semitone at a time, and clicking the key lists every shift with the key it gives.

The track list shows in lilac the keys that mix with the track playing now. Settings › Decks › Key mixing picks which ones count:

• Harmonic (4 keys): the same Camelot number, or the next number up or down with the same letter. 8A mixes with 8A, 8B, 7A and 9A.
• Fuzzy (6 keys): the letter doesn't matter, so 7B and 9B mix with 8A too. This is fuzzy keymixing.

A key one semitone from mixing gets a small +1 or −1 in a dimmer lilac. With Match key on load (Off, ±1 or ±2 semitones, ±1 by default), a track loaded while another deck plays is shifted by that much, with key lock on, so it mixes. At ±2, keys two semitones away are marked +2 or −2 in grey.

Auto reset on load

Loading a track puts its deck back to normal, so the last track's settings don't carry over. In Settings › Decks, under Auto reset on load, each of these can be switched off (all are on to start):

• Effects: the deck's effects switch off. Their beats and dry/wet stay as you set them. An effect that also plays on the main mix or on another playing deck, such as a shared Beat FX, keeps going.
• EQ and filter: EQ, kills, filter and sculpt go back to the middle.
• Gain: the gain knob goes back to 0 dB (or the track's own gain, if its info sets one). Auto gain still levels each track.

Mixer

Between the decks, each channel has four knobs down its outer side, its gain, and a channel fader beside the main level meter. Under the faders are the headphone CUE buttons and the crossfader.

The menu over the meters picks what the four knobs do:

• EQ: high, mid and low, and the Color FX filter knob, with a small ▾ beside it to pick the Color FX.
• STEMS: the level of each stem.
• SCULPT: a low-pass, a sculpt band with its frequency and cut or boost, and a high-pass, after PlayDifferently's Model 1.

A controller's EQ knobs follow the same choice.

Crossfader curve (Settings › Mixer): Smooth for blends, Linear, or Scratch, where both sides play at full level until the very end. With Scratch, Cut-in sets how close to the end a side opens fully: 0.5%, 1%, 2% (the default, under a millimetre on most controllers) or 5% of the crossfader's travel.

The crossfader can be switched off, so it no longer fades either side: right-click it, or use Settings › Mixer.

Master, phones and mic

The MASTER button in the top bar opens the output levels: Master, Phones, Booth, and Cue / Mix, which blends cue and main in the headphones. Its Ableton Link switch is described in Ableton Link. Audio Settings… opens the outputs in Settings. Levels are kept between runs.

The arrow on the MIC button opens the microphone, with ON, a level and one MIC FX slot of its own, which the decks' effects never touch. Auxiliary inputs play on a deck from the Jam source. Choose the inputs in Settings › Audio: + under the inputs adds a second and third auxiliary input, and each auxiliary input takes a pair of channels (stereo) or one (mono).

If the sound device goes away (an audio interface unplugged, or a dock disconnected), the decks stop where they are and stay usable: you can load, cue and seek, and a message says what happened. openDJ plays on that device again as soon as it's back, or pick another one in Settings › Audio.

Pads

Each deck has eight pads, with tabs on top that switch what they do. The tabs follow the pad mode buttons of a Pioneer DDJ-FLX4, so the screen and the controller always show the same page.

Pad pages

Four tabs show at a time. The first four are HOT CUES, PAD FX 1, BEAT JUMP and SAMPLER. Shift-click a tab for its partner, as SHIFT + a pad mode button does on the controller: KEYBOARD, PAD FX 2, BEAT LOOP and KEY SHIFT.

Right-click a tab to put another page in it. There are twelve pages in all; STEMS, LOOP ROLL, SLICER and FREEZE are only there this way. For example, put STEMS in place of the sampler. A controller's pad mode button then opens whatever page is in its tab.

The narrow column left of the pads flips the open page's own pages, such as the sampler's 1 and 2.

Hot cues

A hot cue marks a place in the track to jump back to.

• Press an empty pad (it shows +) to set a hot cue where the track is playing.
• Press a set pad to jump there and play.
• Shift-click a pad to delete its cue.

The eight hot cues are blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple and teal, and show in the same color on the waveform. A saved loop shows a loop sign instead of a play mark. Hot cues from VirtualDJ come in with their names and colors, and are written to the stick in a USB export.

Slicer

Open SLICER and the eight beats from the beat playing loop, one beat on each pad. The pad of the beat playing is lit, so you can watch the section go round.

• Hold a pad to play its beat. It keeps time: it starts at the same place in the beat as the track was, and repeats while you hold it.
• Let go and the section carries on from where it would have been, so you never lose the phrase.
• Open another page to leave the slicer. The track plays on from where it is.

A slicer pad also works from a controller or in Map mode without opening the page: the first press starts the section.

Freeze

FREEZE stutters the beat playing. Hold a pad and the beat is cut into eight short slices: pad 1 repeats the first eighth, pad 8 the last. Press other pads while holding to play other slices of the same beat. Let go of them all and the track carries on from where it would have been, as with a loop roll.

Keyboard and key shift

KEYBOARD plays from the deck's hot cue at another key, like a sampler keyboard: the pads go 0, +1, +2, +3 semitones on the top row and −4, −3, −2, −1 on the bottom. They take the color of the hot cue they play. With KEYS ON PADS on an instrument deck they play the instrument plugin instead, from C up (see Instruments).

KEY SHIFT sets the track's key shift: 0, +1, +2, +3 on top and −3, −2, −1, 0 below. Shift-click a pad to move the key up or down by its step instead. A pad is lit while the deck plays at its key.

See Keys for key lock and key matching.

Looping

A loop plays a stretch of the track over and over, on the beat, so you can hold a groove while you set up the next track, or stretch an intro or outro. Loops land on the beat grid, so the track needs a tempo first (it gets one the first time it loads; see When tracks are analysed).

The LOOP controls

In 2-Deck the LOOP column sits between the pads and the jog. Under its title:

• The loop length in the middle box, such as 4. Press it to start a loop of that many beats from where the track is playing; it turns green while the loop plays. Press it again to leave the loop and play on.
• ‹ and › either side of it halve and double the length, from 1/32 of a beat up to 512 beats. While a loop plays they halve or double that loop too.
• IN and OUT make a loop of any length. Press IN where it should start (it lights grey while the waveform marks out the loop), then OUT where it should end. The loop plays at once, in lilac.

In 4-Deck each deck has the same loop box, smaller, beside PLAY and CUE.

With quantize on, IN, OUT and the start of a loop snap to the nearest beat.

Beat loop pads

The BEAT LOOP pad page has a loop of each length, as on the DDJ-FLX4: 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 beats. Press a pad to loop, and press it again (or another one) to leave or change it. See Pads for how to open a page.

Loop rolls

A loop roll loops only while you hold the pad. Let go and the track carries on from where it would have been had it never looped, so the mix stays in phrase. Right-click a pad tab and choose LOOP ROLL to put the page there. Its pads go from 1/16 to 8 beats; short rolls make stutters and build-ups.

Saved loops

A loop you bring in from VirtualDJ, or one saved on a hot cue, shows on its hot cue pad with a loop sign instead of a play mark. Pressing it jumps to the loop and plays it.

Keyboard and controllers

• openDJscript has loop 4 (or any length) and loop_exit, so you can put loops on keys in Settings › Keyboard (see Keyboard shortcuts).
• On a DDJ-FLX4, LOOP IN and LOOP OUT set a loop, RELOOP/EXIT starts a loop of the current length or leaves one, and the CUE/LOOP CALL buttons halve and double it. See DDJ-FLX4.

Effects

openDJ has four kinds of effects:

• Deck effects: three on each deck, in the FX bar.
• Beat FX: one effect for the main mix or a deck, under the mixer.
• Color FX: one on each channel's filter knob.
• Pad FX: played from the pads while you hold them.

All of them follow the tempo of the track, so echoes and gates stay on the beat. Gates, flangers, phasers, the chorus and rolls also lock to the track's beat grid: a gate opens on the beat, and a roll starts on it.

The FX bar

The FX button in the top bar, beside WAVEFORMS, shows or hides the FX bar. It runs the width of the window, under the decks and above the browser: each deck's three effects across that deck's width, and the Beat FX in the middle, under the mixer.

Each effect has:

• Its name. Click it for the list of effects, or step through them with the arrows either side.
• ON to switch it on and off.
• Its length in beats, with ◀ and ▶ to halve and double it. Effects that have no length show a slider instead, for their main setting: reverb's decay, the filter's resonance, the bitcrusher's bit depth, the noise's sweep, the drive's tone, the ladder's resonance, the hall's decay.
• D/W, how much of the effect you hear over the dry track.

A deck's effects start as Reverb, Echo and Gate. They play one after another, so you can stack them.

In 4-Deck each deck's three effects are stacked in three short rows under that deck.

The effects

Switching an effect off fades it out quickly. On a DDJ-FLX4, SHIFT + BEAT FX ON/OFF releases the Beat FX instead: it stops taking in the track, and its echo or reverb rings out for a few beats.

Beat FX

The BEAT FX cell under the mixer is one effect on its own. Pick it by name, choose where it plays with 1, 2 or 1&2 (deck 1, deck 2 or both), then use ON, its beats and D/W as on a deck effect. On a DDJ-FLX4 the BEAT FX section of the controller plays it.

Color FX

Each channel's filter knob plays a Color FX. The small ▾ beside the knob picks which. Each deck keeps its own. The knob does nothing in the middle and more the further you turn it either way.

• Filter: a low-pass to the left, a high-pass to the right.
• Space and Dub Echo: the same filter, gentler, sent into a reverb or an echo on the beat. The tail rings on for a few seconds after the knob is back in the middle.
• Noise: adds filtered white noise.
• Crush: lowers the bit depth and sample rate.

On a DDJ-FLX4, SHIFT + SMART CFX steps through the Color FX.

Pad FX

The PAD FX 1 and PAD FX 2 pad pages play an effect while you hold the pad, and stop it when you let go: quick throws without touching the FX bar. See Pads for how to open them.

When you load a track

Loading a track switches its deck's effects off, so the last track's echo doesn't carry over. Their beats and dry/wet stay as you set them. Turn this off in Settings › Decks under Auto reset on load (see Decks and mixer).

Plugins

openDJ runs CLAP and VST3 plugins, and Audio Units on a Mac. Nothing is loaded until you ask:

1. Open Settings › Plugins, check the folders on the Folders tab and press Scan. Each file is opened once in a separate helper, a few at a time, so a broken plugin only fails its own row.
2. On the Effects tab, tick the effects you want. Plugins are grouped by maker: tick a maker to take all of theirs, or open it with the arrow. The CLAP, VST3 and AU chips narrow the list to those formats (none lit shows all), and the search box finds a plugin or a maker. Only ticked effects show in the effect lists, under a line after the built-in effects, in every slot: decks, Beat FX, Mic and Aux. A plugin's first four settings follow the slot's parameter knobs.

The plugin's own window

When a slot plays a plugin, an EDIT button shows beside its ON (in the FX bar, the Beat FX and the Mic FX). Press it to open the plugin's own window, with its presets and every setting; press it again, or close the window, to put it away. The window floats above openDJ and is titled after the plugin and where it plays, for example "Pro-Q 3 · Deck 1 · FX 1". Closing it leaves the plugin playing.

When an FX unit plays on more than one deck, each deck has its own copy of the plugin and EDIT opens the first one's window. Changes made in the window last while the plugin stays loaded; openDJ doesn't keep them when it restarts the plugin or quits yet. On Linux the windows need X11 (XWayland on a Wayland desktop).

Each plugin runs in its own helper process. If it crashes, openDJ restarts it once with the slot switched off; if it crashes again, or keeps the audio waiting, it is switched off and a message says so. The music keeps playing either way.

Instruments

Tick an instrument on the Instruments tab of Settings › Plugins, then click Jam in the rail and drag it from the list onto a deck (see Jam on a deck). It plays through that deck's channel, with its EQ, filter, effects and fader.

The deck's header shows the plugin's format (CLAP, VST3 or AU) and its preset, with ‹ and › to step through the instrument's presets in the order the browser lists them. SAVE has Save, Save as new…, Rename… and Tags…, which sets what the preset is and how it sounds for the browser's chips. openDJ keeps the plugin's state, so the sound comes back next time. Right-click the cover to choose an image for the instrument, or drop one on the deck.

In 2-Deck the deck shows:

• A scope of what the instrument plays, and its level.
• TRIM and PAN. A safety limiter keeps the deck from clipping whatever the trim.
• Eight knobs for the plugin's settings. When it has more than eight, the page buttons 1 to 4 beside them show the next ones. Right-click a knob to pick the setting it turns; The plugin's own choice puts it back.
• OPEN, which opens the plugin's own window for every setting.
• KEYS ON PADS, which makes the decks' KEYBOARD pads, on screen and on your controller, play the instrument instead of the deck's hot cue (see Keyboard and key shift).
• A row under them with Scale, Chord, Arp, OCT − and +, and a keyboard that lights the notes held.

A 4-Deck strip shows the scope, OPEN, the first four knobs and TRIM, with the preset in its header.

Scale moves each note you play to the nearest note of a scale, so every key sounds in key with the mix. Off plays notes as they are. Auto takes the master deck's key. Or pick a root (C to B) and Major, Minor, Major pentatonic or Minor pentatonic. The keyboard on the deck marks the scale's keys and dims the rest.

Chord plays a chord built on the scale from each key: Triad, Seventh, or Power (root, fifth and octave). For a chord of your own, choose Learn a chord, hold its keys and let go; Mine then plays it from any key. Off plays one note per key.

Arp plays the notes you hold one at a time, on the mix's beat. Pick Up, Down, Up and down, Random or Order played to turn it on (Arpeggiator on turns it off and on), then RATE (1/4 to 1/32, with triplets), GATE (how long each note sounds, 25% to 100%) and OCTAVES (1 to 4). Hold keeps it playing after you let go, until you play new keys. It plays the chords from Chord too.

OCT − and + move the KEYBOARD pads up or down an octave, three at most each way. The pads play the white keys from middle C.

Any MIDI keyboard without a mapping plays the instrument. The keyboard button in the deck's header picks which one (Any keyboard or one by name) and which CHANNEL (Any channel or 1 to 16), and shows which keyboard played it last. See MIDI keyboards for which devices play instruments and which deck each one plays.

Sampler

The SAMPLER pad page plays short sounds over the mix: drops, horns, rewinds, name tags. There are 16 pads, eight at a time: the 1 and 2 in the narrow column left of the pads switch between them. On a DDJ-FLX4 the pads in SAMPLER mode play the same eight the screen shows.

Sample packs

SAMPLE PACK under the pads picks a pack. openDJ comes with the Default DJ Sample Pack; + makes a new, empty one.

What you change on a pad is kept for that pack, and the pack's own files are left alone.

Under the list of packs:

• Export saves the pads as they are now, with their names, levels and play modes, as a .opendjpack file in your Downloads folder, and shows it. Send it to another DJ, or keep it as a backup.
• Import… adds a .opendjpack as a new pack and plays it. Dropping one on a pad does the same.
• Rename… and Delete Pack work on the pack you play (not the Default one). Delete asks for a second click, and moves the pack to a .deleted folder beside the others rather than erasing it.
• Show Folder opens the pack's folder (for the Default pack, the folder all packs live in).

Your own sounds

• Drop an audio file (WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, M4A or OGG, up to a minute) from Finder, Explorer or the track list onto a pad, or right-click a pad and choose Load File….
• Choose Sample… borrows a sound from any pack, with a play button to hear it in the headphones first.

Changing a pad

The pencil shows a level knob and a ••• menu on each pad. The menu (or a right-click) renames the pad, sets how it plays (One shot, Hold, On/Off or Loop), puts back the pack's own sound, or clears it.

Drag a pad onto another to swap them. Shift-click a pad to stop it. Turning a pad's level while it plays glides, so it doesn't crackle.

Groove Box

The Groove Box is a small drum machine that takes the place of a track on a deck. It plays in time with the mix, so you can add a beat under a track, keep a groove going between two tracks, or practise mixing without a second track.

Start a groove

1. Click Jam in the rail at the far left (the keyboard icon) and drag a kit from Groove Box onto a deck. A track on that deck is stopped and ejected first.
2. Press PLAY in the Groove Box. It starts on the next downbeat of the playing deck, so it is in time from the first hit.
3. Pick a genre (Basics, Techno, House, Drum & Bass and more) and then a groove from the menu beside it. Each groove has a line saying what it is.

To go back to a normal deck, load a track onto the deck, or press EJECT on the stopped Groove Box.

Sequencer, Synth and Mixer

The Groove Box fills the whole deck. Along the top are PLAY, the kit menu, the genre, the groove, Chain ▾, A to D, the tempo and three tabs.

SEQUENCER shows eight tracks, each in its own color, with 16 squares for the 16 steps of a bar: kick, snare, closed hat, open hat, clap, rim, cowbell and cymbal. The cymbal track plays the crash or the ride, whichever the groove you load uses. The icon on the left shows the track's sound; click it to hear the sound, and hover over it to see its name. A lit square plays the sound on that step. Click a square to add or remove a hit; when the Groove Box is stopped, the click also plays the sound. Right-click a lit square to make the hit accented (brighter, a little louder), then soft (paler, half as loud), then 50% (it plays about every other time round), then normal again. A track with no hits stays dimmed, and a track's icon lights up as it plays. The brighter column is the step that's playing. M mutes a track, S solos it.

Dice: new ideas from the groove

The ⚄ button in the top bar varies every track that isn't locked; right-click a track's icon to vary only that track, or to lock it. Each change waits for the next bar while the Groove Box plays, so it always lands in time:

• New groove (or New track): fresh hits in the style of the genre picked, learnt from how that genre's grooves use each sound step by step.
• Mutate: moves a hit or two to a nearby step, and now and then adds or drops one. The kick's downbeat and the snare's backbeat stay put.
• Busier and Calmer: one hit more on the strongest free step, or one fewer, the weakest first.
• Even out: the same number of hits spread as evenly as they go (a Euclidean rhythm).
• Shift later and Shift earlier: every hit a step later or earlier.

VARY, at the top of the ⚄ menu, lets the groove change by itself as it plays: turned up, weak hits sometimes drop out, soft ghost notes come in where the genre puts them, and every hit wavers a little in loudness. The kick's downbeat and the snare's backbeat always play. The ⚄ button is outlined while VARY is up. Basics has two grooves made to breathe this way: Living house and Rolling breaks.

Undo in the ⚄ menu puts back the groove as it was, one change at a time.

SYNTH shows each track's sound. Click the sound's name to pick another from the kit. PITCH tunes it up or down by up to an octave, DECAY makes it shorter, and TONE darkens it (turned left) or thins it (turned right).

Under the kick, KEY tunes the kick to the playing track's key. Click it to go from OFF to ROOT (the key's root note) to 5TH (its fifth) and back. The kick moves to the nearest such note, never more than half an octave, and the button shows the note it plays. This suits long, boomy kicks most (Boom, Analog); a short, punchy kick has little pitch to tune.

MIXER has a strip for each track: PAN places it left or right, the fader sets its level beside a meter, and M and S mute and solo it.

4x4, at the bottom left, shows the Sequencer as 16 square pads laid out like a pad controller: step 1 at the bottom left, step 16 at the top right, four steps to a row. The tracks down the left pick which track the pads show, the same track a pad controller edits. Click a pad to add or remove a hit, right-click it to change its level. Click 4x4 again for the eight rows of 16.

Fills and Remix

The bar under the tracks plays fills:

• AUTO 1 plays a fill in the last beat of every 4th bar, the last two beats of every 8th bar and the whole of every 16th bar. AUTO 2 does the same twice as often (every 2nd, 4th and 8th bar). The bars count with the leading track's beat, so the fills land at the end of its phrases. After a fill of two beats or more, the cymbal crashes on the next downbeat. NO FILLS turns them off.
• Hold FILL to play a fill now, for as long as you hold it.
• Hold the REMIX strip and slide along it: the groove plays one of 16 figures while you hold it, and goes straight back when you let go. From the left: hat rolls, rolls over two or three sounds, the tracks' patterns swapped between sounds, and at the far right 16th rolls over everything.

On a Maschine Mikro MK3, PERFORM turns the touch strip into the REMIX strip (press it again for the knob's setting), hold NOTE REPEAT for FILL, and AUTO steps through NO FILLS, AUTO 1 and AUTO 2.

Kits and grooves

The kit menu at the top left has six kits, all synthesised, so they are free to use anywhere:

• Analog and Synthetic: kick, snare, clap and hats from the drum models of Mutable Instruments Plaits, with two toms each.
• Boom: a deep, long kick and soft analogue drums, 808-style.
• Punch: a short, punchy kick and bright hats, 909-style, for house and techno.
• Tin: small, ticking rhythm-box drums, 606-style.
• Dub: a soft kick, a rimshot and a chord stab, for dub techno.

Every kit plays the same eight tracks, so any groove sounds right on any kit. Kits with more sounds (toms, shaker, chord) offer them in each track's sound menu in SYNTH.

A, B, C and D are four grooves you can switch between. A new one starts at the next bar, so the switch is always in time. Picking a groove loads it into the one you picked.

The grooves come in genres. Basics has openDJ's own six; the other genres (techno, house, drum & bass, breakbeat, ambient, dubstep and more, 400 grooves in all) are drum patterns from mpump, used under its licence (AGPL-3.0).

Chain ▾ picks a second groove from the same genre. It goes into the groove after the one you picked (A's partner is B, C's is D), and the two take turns, a bar each, until you set Chain to Off.

Your grooves, kit, sounds and mixer settings are kept when you quit.

Timing

The Groove Box follows, in this order:

1. The deck that SYNC follows, or else the first playing deck with a tempo.
2. Ableton Link, when it is on (see Ableton Link).
3. Its own tempo, 120 BPM, when nothing else is playing.

The tempo button in the top bar shows the BPM, outlined while it follows the mix. Click it for:

• Follow the mix: on by default. Turn it off to keep the Groove Box at its own tempo whatever plays.
• −1, −.1, +.1 and +1: change the BPM. This turns following off, so the tempo stays where you put it.
• Half time, Normal and Double: follow the mix at half or twice its tempo (and turn following back on).
• SWING: delays every other step for a looser feel.

If the leading deck jumps (a hot cue or beat jump), the Groove Box moves to the new beat at its next bar rather than mid-bar.

The Groove Box plays through its deck's channel, so the EQ, filter, effects, channel fader and crossfader work on it as they do on a track.

In 4-Deck

In the 4-Deck layout a Groove Box deck shows its name, kit and tempo, and its PLAY works, but the step grid is only in the 2-Deck layout for now.

Stems

Every track you load gets stems: openDJ separates it with Spleeter as it loads, starting with the part around the cue point, so the stems pads work within a second or two. Nothing needs installing. The first time, openDJ downloads the stems model (about 80 MB).

The stems play over the original track: with every stem on you hear the track exactly as it is, and turning a stem down only takes that stem out. Where a part of the track isn't separated yet, the original plays.

Stems pads

Open the STEMS pad page (right-click a pad tab to put it there). The pads are laid out as in VirtualDJ:

• Vocal, Instru, Bass, Kick and HiHat mute and unmute their stem. A pad is lit while its stem plays.
• Acapella plays the vocals alone; press it again for every stem.
• Instrumental plays everything but the vocals; press it again for every stem.
• Stems FX switches the pads to echo out (the pad is lit while it's on). See below.

Set how loud each stem is with the mixer's knobs in stems mode (the EQ menu above the mixer).

On the DDJ-FLX4, press KEYBOARD twice for the stems pads, in the same layout. SHIFT + a stem's pad plays that stem alone. On the Xone K2 and the FLX4, the EQ knobs turn the stems while the mixer is in stems mode.

Echo out a stem

Press Stems FX and the stem pads echo out instead of cutting:

• A stem's pad sends that stem into an echo and mutes it, so its echo rings on and fades while the rest plays dry. Press it again to bring the stem back (any echo still ringing fades out by itself).
• Instrumental echoes out the vocals; Acapella echoes out everything but the vocals. Press again to bring them back.
• The echo is half a beat, at the track's tempo. Right-click Stems FX to pick Reverb instead.
• The stem keeps playing for half a beat after the press, so the echo has something to repeat.

The pads' corners show the effect, lit on the stems that are in it. Press Stems FX again for the normal pads. On the DDJ-FLX4, Stems FX is pad 7 of the stems pads, as on screen.

Controllers can also use Mixxx's [QuickEffectRack1_[ChannelN_StemM]],enabled to send a stem into the echo, [ChannelN],stem_fx (1 Echo, 2 Reverb) and [ChannelN],stem_fx_mode.

High quality stems

Spleeter is quick but lets a little of each stem bleed into the others. For a cleaner split, right-click a track in the browser, or a stems pad, and choose Prepare HQ Stems. openDJ separates it with HTDemucs in the background (on the graphics card; the first time it downloads the 84 MB model), one track at a time. When it's done the deck crossfades to the new stems in a fiftieth of a second, so nothing clicks even with a stem muted, and the track loads with them from then on.

The top-right stems pad shows which stems are playing: INSTANT for the quick ones made on load, HQ… while high quality ones are being prepared and HQ once they play.

Settings

Settings › Analysis › Stems has:

• Stems on load: turn it off to save CPU on an older computer. Tracks then only get stems you prepare with Prepare High Quality Stems (or from an NI stem file).
• High quality stems kept: high quality stems take about 4 times the space of the track. Once they pass this size (10 GB at first), the stems played longest ago are deleted to make room. Shows how many tracks have them and how much space they take.
• To delete them all, use Manage › Clear high quality stems under Settings › Collection › Storage.
• Whether each stems model is downloaded yet.

NI stem files (.stem.mp4) play their own stems.

Layouts

The menu at the top left of the window switches layouts:

• Player works like a music player and mixes for you. One bar along the bottom of the window shows the track you hear: its album art, title, artist, BPM and key (colored by its place on the key wheel, so keys that mix have neighboring colors), and what Automix plays next. In the middle are Previous, Play/Pause and Next over a thin line through the track: white for what has played, and a dim lilac where the next mix happens. Next cuts straight to the next track in Up Next, as other players do (the Mix now button in the Automix panel mixes into it instead). Point at the line and it turns lilac and shows the time there; click or drag to move through the track. The time played and the track's length are either side. On the right are the master volume, the mini player button, the lyrics button and the queue button, which shows or hides Up Next (the Automix list), and under them the file's quality: format, bit depth and sample rate in lilac for lossless files (FLAC 16-BIT 44.1 KHZ), or the bitrate in grey (MP3 320 KBPS). The heart beside the title puts the track playing in Favorites (a playlist made at the top of Playlists the first time), or takes it out; it is filled lilac while the track is there. Right-click it to add the track to a crate or playlist, or to a new crate. Click the album art on the bar for Now Playing: the art large over the whole library, with the title, artist, album, BPM, key and the file's quality under it, and on the right the track's Lyrics (large, the line sung lit) or its Details (album, track number, year, genre, length, tempo, key, file, rating, plays, when it was last played and added). Up Next stays beside it. The lyrics button opens it on Lyrics; the art again, or the ⌄ at the top left, goes back to the library. The mini player (⇧⌘M, View › Mini Player, or its button on the bar) is a small square window of album art that stays on top of the others. Point at it and the art dims and shows the title, artist, a progress line (click it to move through the track), Previous, Play/Pause and Next; ✕ brings back the main window, which hides while the mini player shows. It has no title bar: drag the art to move it, and the grip in its bottom right corner to resize it (it stays square). The moon on the bar is a sleep timer: after 15, 30 or 45 minutes or an hour the music fades out over ten seconds and stops, or pick End of track to stop when the track playing now ends (Automix switches off so nothing mixes in). Point at the moon to see the time left; Turn off timer in its menu cancels it. Order and Repeat are at the top of Up Next. With Repeat on, a played track goes back to the end of Up Next instead of leaving it, so the list keeps going round. Up Next shows the track playing on top, under Now playing. Each mix follows the panel's Length and Style, unless you pick one for a single track: right-click it in Up Next and choose under Mix into it (Panel goes back to the panel's). A row with its own mix shows it in lilac, such as ⤵ 32 bars · Cut. Click the artist on the bar, an artist in the search box's results, or Go to Artist in a track's menu, and their page opens over the list: their tracks in your collection, most played first, and their albums, newest first. Click an album (or Go to Album) for its page, with its tracks in order. Play plays the page now, Shuffle in a random order, and Mix in the order that mixes best by key and tempo; clicking a track plays it now (on an album, with the rest after it). The arrow at the top left goes back; picking a list closes the page. Player opens on Home: what you played and added lately, your crates and playlists, and mixes made from your collection by genre and decade (each a page of up to 50 tracks in the order that mixes best). Crates and mixes show four of their tracks' covers with their name on a bar. The house button beside the search box comes back to it. Keep going, under them, is Player's cruise control, off at first: while it is on, Up Next never runs dry. When fewer than two tracks wait, a track that mixes with the last one goes on the list (close on the Camelot wheel, close in tempo, not played in the last 3 hours, not the same artist twice in a row), and the next three picks show greyed at the end of Up Next, so you can drag in something else first. From picks where they come from: Everything, or the list the browser shows. Switching it on also switches Automix on. Right-click a track and pick Start Radio (the track plays next, then picks from everything) or Start Artist Radio (the artist's tracks and those sharing their genres), or right-click a crate or playlist and pick Start Radio to keep going from it. The keyboard's play/pause, next and previous keys, the buttons on headphones, and the system's Now Playing (Control Center on macOS, the media overlay on Windows, the desktop's media controls on Linux) work Player as its buttons do, and show the track with its art. The DJ layouts leave them alone unless Media keys in every layout is on in Settings › Keyboard, so a headphone button can't stop a deck in the middle of a set. The top bar keeps to search. The search box (⌘F) is Player's only search box: it filters the track list and shows the best matches as you type: artists and albums first, then tracks (tracks first when a title is the better match). Point at one, or move with ↑ and ↓, and pick Play next, Add to queue (the end of Up Next) or Play now, which mixes into it straight away; on an album these take the whole album in order, and on an artist Show tracks searches for them. The keys are ↵, ⇧↵ and ⌘↵; Esc clears the box and the list's search. There is no MASTER button (the bar's volume is the master volume); REC shows only while recording (start it from File › Record Mix), and there is no MIC button (switch to another layout to use the microphone). Underneath, decks 1 and 2 take turns and Automix mixes from one to the other. Play switches Automix on, Next mixes into the next track straight away, Previous goes back to the start of the track, and Order puts Up Next in order (shuffle, BPM, harmonic and so on). The large waveforms and the FX bar are hidden in Player.
• 2-Deck shows the full decks, with jogs, tempo faders, pads and loops, and the mixer between them (see Decks and mixer).
• 2-Deck Basic shows two lighter decks without jogs or tempo faders, the slim mixer between them and the pads and loops in a bar under them (PADS shows or hides it, JOG adds a jog to each deck). It is off at first: switch it on with the layout menu's pencil.
• 4-Deck shows four decks side by side, in the order 3, 1, 2, 4, as djay Pro does. Each deck is a strip with its own EQ, filter, gain and channel fader, PLAY and CUE, loop, pads and effects. A bar under the strips holds each deck's crossfader side, SYNC and tempo, either side of the crossfader; click a deck's tempo there for key lock, quantize and a tempo reset. With WAVEFORMS lit in the top bar, the four large waveforms are stacked above the decks in the same order. A Groove Box deck shows its step grid only in 2-Deck.
• Prep shows deck 1 alone, for getting tracks ready (see Prep).

The button at the bottom left of the window hides the decks for a compact view in 2-Deck and 4-Deck.

Your layouts

The layout menu offers only your layouts. At first that's Player, 2-Deck, 4-Deck and Prep, in that order. To change them, click the pencil at the top right of the layout menu. It turns the menu into a list of every layout, each with a switch, as the side panel tabs' and the library rail's choosers have:

• Switch a layout on to put it in the menu, or off to take it out. The layout you're on, and the last one on, can't be switched off.
• Drag a row by its grip (the six dots at its left) to move it up or down the menu.
• Reset to default goes back to Player, 2-Deck, 4-Deck and Prep.

Click the lit pencil to go back to the menu. Settings › Layouts shows the same list with a small drawing of each layout: ↑ and ↓ move one of your layouts, − takes it out, and + Add puts one of the others back.

A controller's VIEW button (on the DDJ-FLX4, SHIFT + right LOAD) goes to the next of your layouts, and from the last back to the first. Layouts added to openDJ in later versions start switched off.

In openDJ 0.6 2-Deck was called 2-Deck Pro, and 2-Deck Basic was called 2-Deck. Your layouts carry over.

Appearance

Settings › Layouts › Appearance picks Dark, Light or Match system, and so does the row at the foot of the layout menu (Auto there is Match system). Dark is the default. Light is easier to read in daylight and at outdoor gigs: panels, the library, buttons and Settings turn light, while the big waveforms and the overviews stay on black with their colours, as they read best there. Lilac text turns a deeper lilac so it stays readable on white, and the Player layout drops its striped rows. Match system follows your computer's light or dark setting, also when it changes while openDJ is open. The mini player and the karaoke screen stay dark.

Prep

Prep shows deck 1 alone, with no mixer, crossfader or effects, and opens the browser on In Prep (see Stages). The In Prep list has its own columns, to see what each track still needs: Grid (✓ locked, ✓ edited, ? check when the analysis wasn't sure, the number of tempo sections, or detected), Cues (how many hot cues), Tags (✓ with a genre and at least one of your tags), Cover, Ready (checklist lines ticked) and Score. Pick other columns from the header's menu as in any list; In Prep keeps its own set. Load a track and work through it:

• The large waveform shares the zoom of every other layout (see Waveform zoom); − and + above the hot cues zoom out and in, with the step between them. While the grid is unlocked, dragging the waveform slides the audio under the grid, so you can line the beat lines up with the kicks by hand; one drag is one Undo. With the grid locked, dragging moves through the track as on the other layouts.
• Beat grid has the grid tools from the deck's grid menu: Bar 1 here, Beat here, Tap, Click (a metronome on every beat), move the grid earlier or later, tempo − and +, ½ and ×2, tempo sections, Undo and Detected (back to the detected grid). Lock keeps the grid from being changed.
• CUE and play, jumps of 1, 4 and 8 bars, a loop, and the deck's headphone cue and level.
• Eight hot cue pads with their names and times: click an empty pad to set it, a set one to jump there, Shift-click to clear it.
• The side panel's Cues tab lists the track's hot cues, memory cues and saved loops in track order. Type a name, click the dot for the next color, click a time to jump there, or click the number to move the cue to another pad (the cue on that pad takes its place) or make it a memory cue. + Memory cue (or C) adds one at the playhead; while a loop plays it saves the loop instead. Outside Prep the tab follows deck 1 or deck 2.
• The side panel's Checklist tab lists what makes the track ready. The app ticks its own lines when the track has them: Grid checked (locked or edited), 4 hot cues, Genre, Rating and Cover; tick one by hand when the track is fine without it. Add your own lines, such as "Vocals checked", in Settings › Collection › Stages (or Edit checklist lines… at the bottom of the tab), where you can also turn the app's lines off. Tick a line with a click or Option+1–9. Below the lines, give the track your own score from 1 to 10; it shows in the Score column and doesn't count towards ready.
• Play Ready, next lights up once every line is ticked (the count is beside it). It works before that too, for a track that is fine as it is. It locks the grid, moves the track to Play Ready and loads the next track In Prep. Cmd-Z (Ctrl-Z) takes the stage change back.

A strip under the waveform lists the quick review keys, with how long this track has taken and your average per track sent to Play Ready from Prep.

Keys in Prep: Enter Play Ready, next; Tab and Shift-Tab next and previous phrase (8 bars at a time when the track has no phrases); ← and → four bars; Option+1–9 tick a checklist line; 1–8 set or jump to a hot cue (Shift clears it); B Bar 1 here; T tap; M the click; [ and ] move the grid; − and = tempo; L lock; C memory cue. Space plays and pauses, as everywhere.

Crossfader assignment

In 4-Deck, each deck says which side of the crossfader it is on: LEFT, RIGHT or THRU (not affected by the crossfader). Decks 1 and 3 start on the left, 2 and 4 on the right. Click the label to change it.

Decks 3 and 4 on a two-deck controller

A controller with two decks, such as the DDJ-FLX4, plays decks 1 and 2. In 4-Deck, click deck 3's number to move the controller's left side to deck 3, and deck 1's number to move it back; deck 4's and deck 2's numbers do the same for the right side. The number of each deck the controller plays is lit. Switching to another layout moves both sides back to decks 1 and 2.

Automix always mixes between decks 1 and 2.

Lyrics

openDJ shows the lyrics of the track playing in the Lyrics tab of the side panel (next to Info). When the lyrics are timed, the line being sung is lit and kept in view, and clicking a line plays the deck from there.

Where lyrics come from

openDJ reads lyrics you already have. It looks for them in this order:

1. An .lrc file beside the track, with the same name: Song.lrc (or Song.mp3.lrc) next to Song.mp3. Tools such as LRCGET write these. Plain LRC gives a time for each line; enhanced LRC, with a time before each word (<00:10.40>the), gives a time for each word.
2. The track's tags: timed lyrics in an MP3's SYLT frame, and lyrics in USLT (MP3), LYRICS (FLAC and Ogg) and ©lyr (M4A). Lyrics in these that are written as LRC are read as timed.

openDJ never fetches or sends lyrics on its own. To look them up online, see Find lyrics online.

What the tab follows

The menu beside Lyrics picks the track:

• Playing track (the default): the deck playing, staying with it while it plays. When nothing plays, the deck played last, or the first deck with a track.
• Selected track: the track selected in the browser. Its line is lit when it is also on a deck.
• Deck A or Deck B.

Under the track's name the tab says how the lyrics are timed (by word, by line, or not timed) and where they came from.

In Player mode

The speech bubble button on the Player bar opens Now Playing on its Lyrics: the lyrics of the track playing large, beside its album art. The line being sung is big and white, and when the lyrics are timed by word, the words already sung turn lilac. Lines gone by fade, and a ♪ marks a break in the singing. Click a line to play from it. Press the button again, or the ⌄ at the top left, to go back to the list.

On the waveforms

When a track on a deck has timed lyrics, they run along the bottom of its big waveform, scrolling with the audio, so you can see where the singing is and what comes next while you mix. Each word sits at the moment it is sung, on a faint strip for its line. The word being sung is lit and fills with lilac, and words already sung stay lilac. Lyrics timed only by line have their words spread over the line by length; Time words places them exactly. Turn this off in Settings › Decks › Lyrics on waveforms.

Time words

Lyrics timed only by line (most of what LRCLIB has) light a whole line at once. Time Words, under the track's name in the Lyrics tab, gives each word its own time, so words fill as they are sung on the karaoke screen, in Player mode and on the waveforms.

openDJ listens to the track's vocals with Whisper, on your computer: nothing is sent anywhere. It separates the vocals first if the track has no stems yet, then lines up the lyrics you have with the words it hears. Words it can't make out are placed between those it can. The lyrics are saved as an .lrc beside the track, timed by word.

The first time, openDJ downloads the Whisper model (about 550 MB). A track takes a minute or so on a recent Mac. If Whisper can't make out enough of the words, say for a track sung in a heavy mix or lyrics for another version, the lyrics are left as they were and the tab says so.

Transcribe

A track with no lyrics at all shows Transcribe in the Lyrics tab. openDJ listens the same way and writes down the words it hears, timed by word and split into lines at the pauses. They are saved as an .lrc beside the track, and the tab says Transcribed by openDJ, since words heard by ear can be wrong. Find or your own .lrc can replace them at any time.

Karaoke screen

Karaoke in the Lyrics tab (or Karaoke Screen at the top right of Player mode's lyrics) opens the lyrics in a window of their own, for a TV, a projector or a second display. When another display is connected, the window opens full screen there. Double-click it, or press F, to switch full screen on or off; Esc leaves full screen. Close it with Karaoke again, or its window's close button.

The line to sing is big in the middle, with the line before it faded above and the next two lines below. The word being sung fills with lilac as it is sung. Lyrics timed only by line have their words spread over the line by length, so the fill is close but not exact; lyrics timed by word fill word for word. After a break in the singing, the next line shows early, with dots above it counting in the last four beats at the deck's tempo.

Like Player mode's lyrics, the screen follows the track playing, so it moves over with Automix. While it is open, the Lyrics tab follows the track playing too.

On a TV or another device

The karaoke screen can also be a web page, for a smart TV's browser, a tablet, or a laptop plugged into a projector. With the karaoke screen open, press Share beside Web page in the Lyrics tab. The tab shows the page's address, such as http://192.168.1.20:7487/karaoke: open it in a browser on any device on the same network. The page shows the same lines, word fill and count-in as the window, and keeps time itself between updates. Stop takes it off the network; closing the karaoke screen stops it too. openDJ remembers whether you shared it.

Turning the voice down

While the karaoke screen is open, the Lyrics tab has a Vocals slider: the level of the vocal stem on the deck the screen follows, from none on the left to full on the right. Leave a little in as a guide for singers, or take it all out. The level you set is kept for the next track the screen follows, so a whole night can run with the voice down. Stems are separated when a track loads, and the slider works once they are ready.

Find lyrics online

openDJ can look a track up on LRCLIB, a free community database of synced lyrics. Press Find… in the Lyrics tab. openDJ asks LRCLIB for the track by its artist, title, album and length, and lists what it has, best first: synced lyrics of the same length at the top. Other length marks lyrics for another version of the track (a radio edit, say), whose timing won't fit. Use saves the lyrics as an .lrc file beside the track, where other apps find them too. If the track's folder can't be written, openDJ keeps them in its own settings folder instead.

Only the track's names and length are sent to LRCLIB, and only when you press Find. To stop openDJ asking LRCLIB at all, turn off Find lyrics online in Settings › Collection › Health.

Automix

Automix mixes through a list of tracks for you, on decks 1 and 2. Everything it does goes through the same controls you use, so you see the crossfader and the EQ move, and you can take over at any time.

Start a mix

1. Queue your tracks. The Automix panel is the first tab of the side panel on the right of the browser. Drag tracks into it, or right-click a track and choose Add to Automix. Drag tracks within the list to change their order. The top of the panel shows how long the list runs.
2. Pick a length and a style from the two menus at the top of the panel (see below).
3. Press AUTOMIX. It turns green. If nothing is playing, openDJ loads the first track and starts it; if a deck is already playing, Automix mixes out of it into the list.

Each track leaves the list as it loads. When the list runs out, the last track plays to its end and Automix stops.

Mix length

Mix style

openDJ remembers the length and style you picked.

While it plays

• Mix now starts the next mix straight away.
• Skip drops the track waiting on the other deck and loads the next one from the list.
• Move the crossfader during a mix to take it over: Automix stops and leaves the mix to you. Pausing the playing deck stops it too.
• Start the other deck yourself and Automix leaves that deck alone.
• Press AUTOMIX again to stop. A mix in progress stays where it is, and the EQ and filter Automix moved go back to the middle.

The panel says what Automix is doing, such as which track mixes in next and when.

Good to know

• Automix always mixes between decks 1 and 2, whatever the layout.
• Tracks mix best once they're analysed: Automix uses the beat grid to start bar-length mixes on a bar, and the waveform to find where a track's sound ends. Tracks are analysed the first time they load, or ahead of time with Analyze All.
• Controller mappings that start Mixxx's Auto DJ, fade now or skip a track run Automix.

Phone remote

Control Automix from your phone while you're away from the laptop: see what's playing, change what comes next, skip a track or turn the music down. Your phone opens a page openDJ serves, so there's no app to install.

Pair your phone

1. Make sure your phone and the computer are on the same Wi-Fi.
2. Click the phone button in the top bar and switch the remote on.
3. Scan the QR code with your phone's camera and open the link.

That's it: the phone shows the remote, and REMOTE turns green while a phone is connected. Next time, just open the same page again (add it to your home screen to make that one tap); the phone stays paired.

The QR code works once, for two minutes; a fresh one appears each time you open the panel. If your phone can't scan, open the address shown under the QR code in its browser and type the PIN.

The first time, macOS may ask whether openDJ may accept incoming network connections. Click Allow.

What the phone can do

The remote is built around Automix: it shows what's playing and lets you manage what comes next.

Now playing

The phone opens on the track you hear, with its cover, title, artist, tempo and key. The progress bar shades where the next mix happens, and the card under the controls shows the next track and how long until it mixes in. Tap the card to open the queue.

• Play / pause: pause stops the music and Automix; play picks up where it left off. When Automix is off, play starts it.
• Mix now (⏭) starts the next mix straight away.
• Order puts the queue in order (Shuffle, BPM low to high, Harmonic path and so on), as in the Automix panel (see Automix), with Undo afterwards.
• Mix settings (left of play) sets the mix Length and Style, and has Skip the next track.
• Timer (far right) sets the sleep timer.
• Volume, under the controls, sets the master level with one drag.
• The speaker button at the top opens Levels (booth level and Fade out); ⋯ has the queue, Add tracks, the sleep timer and Stop Automix.

Queue

Tap the queue button at the bottom right. The track playing is at the top, then everything up next, each with its cover.

• Drag a track by its handle to move it, or tap it for Play next, Move to the end and Remove from the queue.
• You can swap the track waiting on a deck for another until 15 seconds before its mix. After that, and during the mix, it shows a lock and stays put.
• Edit lets you pick several tracks at once, then Play next, To end or Remove them all.
• + opens search (see below).
• The bar at the bottom has Mix, Order, Levels and Timer.

Add tracks

Tap + in the queue to see your whole collection, sorted by title; keep scrolling and more tracks load. Type to search it, with the same search as the browser (try bpm:120-124, key:8A or crate:Warm-up). Tap + on a result to add it to the end of the queue, or Next to play it next. Tracks already queued show Added. Tap Done to go back to the queue; the search clears itself for next time.

Levels and the sleep timer

• Levels: the master level, and the booth level when a booth output is set up. Fade out turns the master level down to silence over eight seconds; Bring the sound back puts it back.
• Timer: pick 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes. When time is up the music fades out over 20 seconds and Automix stops. The Timer button shows the time left.

Everything the phone does shows in openDJ straight away, and the other way round.

Phones and safety

• The remote is off until you switch it on, and only works on your local network.
• Only paired phones can control openDJ. Under Paired phones in the REMOTE panel you can see which are connected and Remove any of them.
• After five wrong codes or PINs in a row, pairing stops for a minute.
• The remote uses plain HTTP on your network. On a public network, anyone watching the traffic could see it; use a network you trust (see below).

If your phone can't connect

Hotel, venue and café Wi-Fi often keeps devices apart, so the phone can't reach the computer even on the same network. Either:

• share the computer's connection as its own Wi-Fi network (on a Mac: System Settings › General › Sharing › Internet Sharing) and join it with your phone, or
• turn on your phone's hotspot and join the computer to it.

If the computer is on more than one network, the REMOTE panel lists the other addresses under Other networks.

A phone that locks its screen drops the connection; the page reconnects as soon as you look at it again.

Loudness and broadcasting

openDJ streams your mix to internet radio (Icecast and Shoutcast servers) and measures its loudness as it plays, so you can hit the level your station or platform asks for.

Streaming to a radio station

Your station or streaming host gives you a server address, a port, a mount point and a source password. Put them into openDJ once:

1. Open Settings › Broadcast, switch on Broadcasting, and click Add next to Add a station.
2. Fill in Address, Port, Mount point (Icecast) and Password. Leave User as source unless your host says otherwise.
3. Choose the Format and Bitrate. MP3 at 128 kb/s plays everywhere and shows listeners each track's title. Opus sounds better at low bitrates (96 kb/s is plenty).
4. Click Test. openDJ connects, checks the password and hangs up, without going on air.

The password is kept in your system's keychain (Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows, the Secret Service on Linux), never in openDJ's settings file. Where there's no keychain, openDJ remembers it until you quit.

You can add several stations and switch each on or off: ON AIR streams to every station that's switched on, at once. The ON AIR button only shows in the top bar while Broadcasting is on and at least one station is set up and switched on.

Going on air

Click ON AIR in the top bar, then Go on air. The button turns red and counts the time on air. Each station gets a light:

If the connection drops, openDJ reconnects at once and then every 5 seconds, for up to 10 minutes. A slow upload never makes the music stutter: if it falls more than about 10 seconds behind, openDJ reconnects that station and carries on from now. Icecast servers also report how many people are listening, next to the time.

Click Go off air to stop. Controllers with a broadcast button (mapped to Mixxx's [Shoutcast],enabled) go on and off air too.

What listeners see

Listeners see the track that's heard most (playing, with its channel fader up, on the crossfader's live side), a couple of seconds after it takes over, so a quick cut back and forth doesn't flicker. Change the text in Settings › Broadcast › Title sent to listeners: {artist}, {title} and {dj} are filled in, and plain text such as Live from the club is sent as it is.

MP3 streams update the title on the server, which every player shows. Opus carries titles inside the stream: the first title always goes out, and later ones only with Send each new title in the stream, because starting the stream again at each track stops some players.

Now playing in OBS

Streaming on Twitch or YouTube with OBS or Streamlabs? Switch on Settings › Broadcast › Now playing for streaming software to show the track on screen. It follows the same track listeners would see, once it has been heard for the Changes after time (10 seconds at first), and works without a radio station.

• The overlay page: in OBS add a Browser Source with the address shown under the switch (such as http://127.0.0.1:7487/now-playing), 1920 × 1080. Its background is clear, so only the card with the cover, artist and title shows, and it fades from one track to the next. Pick Lower third, Corner or Ticker under Overlay style; the page follows without being reloaded. It is read only, and only this computer can open it unless you switch on Open to other devices.
• The text file: in OBS add a Text source, tick Read from file and pick now-playing.txt in the Files folder (Music/openDJ/Now Playing at first). Its line is {artist} - {title}; change it under Text file line, with {album}, {label}, {genre}, {bpm} and {key} too.
• now-playing.json, beside it, has the track, its BPM, key, deck and start time, and the ten tracks before it, for chat bots and other tools. The same JSON is at /now-playing.json on the overlay's address.

Scrobbling to ListenBrainz

Switch on Settings › Broadcast › Send plays to ListenBrainz and paste your user token (from listenbrainz.org, under Settings) into ListenBrainz token. Each track the audience hears then goes to your ListenBrainz profile, from any layout, as a music player's plays do: it shows as playing now after a few seconds, and counts as a listen once half of it, or four minutes, has played (tracks under 30 seconds never count). Tracks you only cue in the headphones are left out. Without a connection, plays wait and go once ListenBrainz answers again. Under the token it says who you are signed in as and how many plays were sent.

Scrobbling to Last.fm

The same plays can go to Last.fm. It needs a free API account of your own: make one at last.fm/api/account/create (any name and description; leave the callback empty), then switch on Send plays to Last.fm, paste the API key and shared secret, and press Sign in. Last.fm opens in the browser; allow openDJ there, and Settings says who you are signed in as. Sign out forgets the session. Both services can be on at once.

Licences

Playing other people's music to the public needs licences in most countries, from bodies such as PRS, GEMA, SACEM, ASCAP, BMI and SoundExchange. Many radio hosts include them; check yours before you go on air.

The loudness meter

Open the ON AIR button in the top bar. Under Go on air, Loudness shows:

The readings are green within 1 LU of your target, amber within 3 and red further off. Reset starts integrated loudness, the range and the true peak again. They also start again when you press REC or go on air.

While recording, the REC button in the top bar shows the short-term loudness next to the time.

Choosing a target

Pick the target in Settings › Audio › Loudness:

The target only colors the meter: it doesn't change any level. To move your mix, turn the master down (or up) until the short-term reading sits green most of the time. With Auto gain on (Settings › Mixer), every track already starts at the same loudness, so the mix stays close once it's set.

The limiter while recording or on air

The master always runs through a limiter, so the mix never clips. While you record or are on air, it also keeps the peaks between samples under −1 dB true peak, which MP3, AAC and Opus need so they don't distort. For streams at low bitrates (96 kb/s or less), choose −2 dBTP in Settings › Audio › Loudness.

The headphones and booth don't go through the limiter (they would lag behind the master), so they have a soft clipper instead: nothing changes below −1.5 dBFS, and louder peaks are bent smoothly under full scale rather than squared off.

For controllers

Controllers

openDJ uses Mixxx's controller mappings, so most MIDI controllers that Mixxx supports load their mapping as soon as they're plugged in. There's nothing to set up.

Settings › Controllers lists the controllers plugged in that openDJ has a mapping for, each with its mapping, Edit and ×. To add another MIDI device, such as gear without a mapping, press + under the list and pick it in the new row; the computer's own ports (macOS's Network Session and IAC Driver) come last. × takes a controller off the list and stops using it until you add it again.

If a controller is missing or stops answering (after the computer slept, or a USB hub was unplugged), press Reconnect controllers · Refresh at the bottom of the list: openDJ closes every controller and connects them again. When a controller goes away, openDJ lets go of whatever it held on a deck: a touched jog, a brake or spinback, reverse, or a pitch bend button.

USB HID controllers work too: Native Instruments' Traktor Kontrol S2 (MK1, MK2 and MK3), S3, S4 (MK2 and MK3), F1, Z1 and MX2 run Mixxx's HID mappings, picked by the device itself rather than its name. They're listed with the MIDI controllers, can be turned off there, and have no picture or list in the Controller Editor: an HID mapping is all script. The S4 MK3's screens stay dark. On Linux they need openDJ's udev rule first; see the Traktor Kontrol S2 MK3 page. The Traktor Kontrol X1 (first model) is a MIDI controller and has a MIDI mapping.

The Pioneer DDJ-FLX4 has a page of its own: Pioneer DDJ-FLX4.

MIDI keyboards and decks

A MIDI device with no mapping, such as a keyboard, plays the instrument plugin on a deck (see Instruments). Its row in Settings › Controllers says Plays instruments. A controller running a mapping never plays instruments. Neither do a keyboard's DAW or Mackie Control port (marked DAW port: not used), the computer's own ports, or the MIDI side of an HID controller running its HID mapping. To make any of them play instruments, pick Play instruments in its mapping menu.

The menu before the mapping picks the deck the device plays:

• Auto: follows the instrument for a device that plays instruments, and as mapped for the rest. The menu shows which, Auto · Follow or Auto · Mapped.
• As mapped: the decks its mapping names.
• Follow instrument: the deck that holds the instrument plugin, or else the Groove Box. Drag the instrument to another deck and the device goes with it.
• Deck 1 to Deck 4: that deck. A keyboard set to a deck plays the instrument only while the instrument is on that deck.

With Follow instrument or a deck, the mapping moves along so that its deck 1 is that deck, lights and all. openDJ keeps these choices.

The first time a keyboard plays the instrument, a message names it, so a device that shouldn't play it is easy to spot. The keyboard button in the instrument deck's header shows which keyboard played it last.

Controller Editor

To see what every control does, press Edit next to a controller in Settings › Controllers. The editor opens on that controller's mapping; pick another at the top. Its controls are listed in three columns: the control you press (with the layer it works in, such as SHIFT, a pad mode or a bank), what it does, and the MIDI message it sends. They're grouped into sections (Deck, Pads, Mixer, Effects, Browser, More) with smaller sections inside, such as Hot cues and Loops under Pads. Click a heading to open or close it. Search the list by any of those words.

• Picture. For the popular controllers, a drawing of the controller is on the left, with every control in about the place it sits. Point at a part to name it, and click it to list only what it does, with the messages it sends and the lights it shows.
• Press to find. With the controller plugged in, press or turn a control and the list jumps to it.
• Lights lists what each LED shows, and Options how the controller plays with this mapping (Knobs and faders: Pick-up waits for the hardware to reach a knob moved on screen, Scale takes over at once and closes the gap) and the mapping's own settings with their defaults.
• Your own mappings. The Mapping menu next to the controller has the original mapping, which never changes, and your own copies of it: choose Duplicate… to make one, and Rename… or Delete… to tidy up. The controller runs the one picked.
• Change a control. Click a row and the panel under the list shows what it does. Change… opens every function by category, with a search; pick one and the controller uses it at once. Pick the deck or effect unit beside it. Does nothing turns the control off, and Back to original puts the row back as the original mapping has it. Changed rows are marked in lilac. Changing the original makes your own copy first, called "My" and the controller's name, so the original stays as it is.
• Advanced, folded under the function, sets when the row acts (press, release, long press, tap or double press, so one button can do more than one thing), how a button is read, the knob type (absolute, or one of the endless kinds), pick-up for knobs and faders, and invert. Each has a short hint. A row run by the mapping's script can be given a plain function too; the script keeps running the other controls.
• Scripts, shift and modes. Does, at the top of the panel, picks what the control does: A function, An openDJscript line (the same one-line actions as keyboard shortcuts, checked as you type and used when you press Enter, such as var 'shift' ? sync : play_pause), Shift: on while held or Mode: on/off each press. A shift or mode button sets a variable, shift or mode unless you name it otherwise. Only when makes any row work only while variables are on: shift, or mode=2 & shift. Type it and press Move to put the row there, or Copy to keep it where it was too. So to make SHIFT + CUE sync: make a button Shift: on while held, select CUE, type shift in Only when, Copy, and change the copy's function to Sync.
• Import… in the same menu brings a mapping across from another DJ app: VirtualDJ (.xml from Documents/VirtualDJ/Mappers), Traktor (.tsi), rekordbox (.midi.csv), djay Pro (.djayMidiMapping) or an openDJ .opendj-mapping. Each file becomes a mapping of your own, built on the controller's original mapping. Controls openDJ can't do yet are kept but greyed, with the reason, and the original keeps working for them; a report says how many came across. A VirtualDJ keyboard file becomes a keyboard shortcut set instead (see Keyboard shortcuts).
• 2 or 4 decks. A mapping with a layout for two decks and one for four, such as VirtualDJ's Xone K2, adds Used with to the editor's Options tab, and with four decks Deck order: which deck each column is from left to right (3 1 2 4 to start, as on the 4-Deck screen).
• Export… writes the mapping as one .opendj-mapping file that works on another computer, and Export for Mixxx… writes a .midi.xml with its scripts; a report lists anything Mixxx can't do.

Map mode

The quickest way to change a few controls: open the Controller Editor (Settings → Controllers, Edit) and press MIDI map. The editor makes way for the main window, and every control on screen that can be mapped turns lilac, brighter where the controller already does it. Click one, then press, turn or move a control on the controller, and from then on it does that. The bar says what changed and what the control did before. Keep both makes it do both, Undo (or ⌘Z, Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux) takes the last one back, and Done or Esc ends Map mode and brings the editor back. While Map mode is on, the controller only teaches: pressing PLAY doesn't start a deck.

Besides the deck and mixer controls, the effects (ON, D/W, the second control's slider and the ‹ › that step through effects), the pad mode tabs over the pads and the headphone cue buttons can all be mapped.

Map mode works out endless encoders and 14-bit faders by itself. The changes go into your own mapping, as in the editor ("My" and the controller's name the first time), so the original stays as it is.

Mappings that run a script are tried out in a sandbox to see what each control does, so even those read in plain words.

Mapping wizard

For a controller openDJ has no mapping for, or to map one from scratch: press Map it next to it in Settings › Controllers, or Mapping wizard in the Map mode bar. From the bar it first asks which controller, with a button for each one plugged in (or press a button on one that already runs a mapping); the computer's own MIDI ports, such as macOS's Network Session, are never offered. Then it asks whether the controller is used with two decks or four, then walks through the usual controls one at a time, lighting each up on screen: deck 1's PLAY, CUE, SYNC, jog wheel, tempo fader, headphone cue, gain, EQs, filter, channel fader, pads 1 and 2 and LOAD, then the crossfader and the browse knob. Press or move each on the controller, or Skip one it doesn't have. Pads 3 to 8 follow on from pads 1 and 2.

The other decks aren't walked: pressing PLAY on deck 2 (and 3 and 4) shows how they differ from deck 1, usually another MIDI channel, and deck 1's controls are copied over. With four decks, Used with and Deck order in the editor's Options then work for it as for any four-deck mapping.

The wizard makes a new mapping called "My" and the controller's name and puts it in use; the mapping the controller ran before stays in the menu next to it. When the walk is done Map mode stays on, so you can try it and change anything by clicking a control on screen.

Popular controllers

openDJ looks after a list of popular controllers itself: the DDJ-FLX4, DDJ-FLX6, DDJ-400, DDJ-200, DDJ-SB3, Mixtrack Platinum FX, Mixtrack Pro FX, DJControl Inpulse 500, Xone K2 and Midi Fighter Twister so far, with the DDJ-REV1, DDJ-1000, DDJ-FLX10 and Traktor Kontrol S2 MK3 coming. Each has a drawing in the Controller Editor and a guide page.

They're marked Beta in Settings › Controllers and the editor until someone has tried the mapping in openDJ on the real controller, and Supported once that's done and the mapping is settled. If you have one of them, try it and tell us how it goes.

Supported controllers lists every controller with a mapping, and what each control does where the mapping describes it.

If your controller doesn't work right, tell us which one. Beta testers' controllers are fixed first.

Pioneer DDJ-FLX4

The DDJ-FLX4 is a two-deck controller, and the one openDJ is tested with most. Plug it in over USB and it works: openDJ loads its mapping by itself, and the pads, sync and effects follow what's on screen.

On Windows, quit rekordbox or any other DJ app first, since only one app can use the controller at a time.

Decks

• PLAY/PAUSE and CUE work as on any Pioneer deck. SHIFT + CUE jumps to the start of the track. SHIFT + PLAY/PAUSE plays backwards while held, and the track carries on where it would have been (censor).
• The jog wheel: the top of the platter scratches, the rim bends the tempo to nudge a mix back in line. SHIFT + jog searches through the track quickly.
• TEMPO: up is slower, as on Pioneer gear. To have it the other way, turn on Tempo fader direction in Settings › Decks.
• BEAT SYNC turns sync on, and a second press turns it off, as SYNC on screen does. Hold it to make that deck the master. SHIFT + BEAT SYNC changes the tempo range.
• SHIFT + a channel's CUE turns quantize on or off for that deck.

Loops

• LOOP IN and LOOP OUT make a loop of any length. With SHIFT, the jog wheel moves the loop's start or end.
• RELOOP/EXIT starts a loop of the length shown on screen where the track is playing, or leaves the loop that's playing.
• CUE/LOOP CALL ‹ and › halve and double the loop.

See Looping.

Pads

The pad mode buttons open the deck's pad tabs on screen, and the pads play whatever page is in that tab:

Stems: press KEYBOARD twice to turn its pads into the stems pads, in the same layout as on screen, and again to go back. SHIFT + a stem's pad plays that stem alone. You can also right-click a tab on screen and put STEMS in it, for example in place of the sampler, and that button then gives you stems.

In SAMPLER mode each side's pads play the eight sounds on screen for that deck (see Sampler).

Mixer

TRIM, EQ HI/MID/LOW, the channel faders and the crossfader work as expected. CUE sends a channel to the headphones, HEADPHONES MIXING blends cue and main in the headphones, and MASTER LEVEL and HEADPHONES LEVEL set those levels.

When the mixer on screen is switched to STEMS or SCULPT (the menu over the meters), the controller's EQ knobs follow it.

Effects

• The CFX knobs play each channel's Color FX. SHIFT + SMART CFX steps through them.
• The BEAT FX section plays openDJ's Beat FX: BEAT FX SELECT steps through the effects (SHIFT goes back), BEAT ‹ › halve and double its length, CH SELECT picks deck 1, deck 2 or both, LEVEL/DEPTH sets how much you hear, and ON/OFF turns it on. SHIFT + ON/OFF releases it, letting its tail ring out.

Browser

• Turn BROWSE to move through the track list, and press it to move between the list and the tree on the left. SHIFT + press zooms the waveforms.
• LOAD loads the selected track onto that deck.
• SHIFT + left LOAD shows the tracks linked to the selected one.
• SHIFT + right LOAD goes to the next of your layouts (VIEW; see Your layouts).

Decks 3 and 4

In the 4-Deck layout, click deck 3's number to move the controller's left side to deck 3, and deck 1's number to move it back. Deck 4 and deck 2 do the same for the right side. See Layouts.

Every control

Pioneer DDJ-FLX4 in Supported controllers lists every control of the mapping and what it does, with and without SHIFT. The Controller Editor in openDJ shows the same with a picture of the controller: press a control and the list jumps to it.

Something not right on your FLX4? Tell us.

Supported controllers

openDJ uses Mixxx's controller mappings, so these MIDI and USB HID controllers load their mapping as soon as they're plugged in.

Popular controllers

openDJ looks after these itself: each has a picture in the Controller Editor and a guide. Beta means nobody has tried it in openDJ on the real controller yet; if you have one, tell us how it goes. It becomes Supported once it has been tried and its mapping is settled.

Every mapping

Don't see yours, or does it misbehave? Tell us which one.

Akai LPD8

Mapping by Rob K, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

This is a mapping for an Akai LPD8. Provides access to transport controls, 30 hotcues, loop controls, basic beat jumping, for two decks and two samplers. Prog 1 = Deck 1; Prog 2 = Deck 2; Prog 3 = Sampler 1; Prog 4 = Sampler 4. PAD controls hotcues, CC controls Loops, PROG CHNG provides transport controls. Intended for use as a supplementary controller on top of a standard DJ controller to give access to more hotcues, etc. but could be used as a standalone controller in a pinch. Created Jan 1, 2013

openDJ supports 4 of the 8 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Akai-LPD8-RK.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Akai MPD24

Mapping by klico, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

MIDI mapping for Akai MPD24

openDJ supports 33 of the 49 controls this mapping sets directly.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Akai MPD24.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Allen & Heath Xone:K2 - 2 Decks

Beta. This mapping works on paper and has a picture in the Controller Editor, but nobody has tried it in openDJ on the real controller yet. If you have one, tell us how it goes: what works, and what doesn't.

Getting started

openDJ's own mapping for one Xone:K2 playing two decks. It picks itself when the K2 is plugged in; Mixxx's K2 mapping (Allen&Heath Xone K1/K2/K3) is still in Settings › Controllers for anyone who wants it.

The K2 needs its factory settings, which most are already on:

• Latching Layers off. openDJ lights the buttons and does the SHIFT layer itself. To check: hold the bottom right encoder (SETUP) while plugging the K2 in, press the second matrix button (LATCHING LAYERS), turn the encoder until no button is lit, and press the encoder to store.
• MIDI channel 15, the factory channel.

The bottom right button is SHIFT. The left half is deck 1 and the right half deck 2, mirrored:

PLAY is green while the deck plays and blinks green while a track is loaded and paused. The kill buttons and the light under the gain encoder are the deck's level meter, bottom up: green above 35% and 50%, amber above 75%, red above 95%. A kill that's on stays red.

Every button, encoder and light is an openDJscript line, so any of them can be changed in the Controller Editor: Mapping › Duplicate makes your own copy to edit.

When you try it

• Check Latching Layers is off: the bottom buttons should stay dark until a track is loaded.
• Load a track on each deck with the bottom encoders and play both.
• Turn every encoder both ways, with and without SHIFT, and check nothing jumps.
• Set, play and delete hot cues; jump back and forward.
• Move every fader and knob, and turn each FX on and off.

openDJ's own mapping, res/controllers/Allen and Heath Xone K2 - 2 Decks.opendj-mapping. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Allen & Heath Xone:K2 - Mixer

openDJ's own mapping, res/controllers/Allen and Heath Xone K2 - Mixer.opendj-mapping. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Allen&Heath Xone K1/K2/K3

Mapping by Be, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

This mapping can be used with one or multiple Xone K1s/K2s/K3s. Multiple Xone K1s/K2s/K3s can be connected to each other via X-Link with one of them connected to the computer via USB. Alternatively, when using 2 K1s/K2s/K3s, they can both be connected with their own USB cable and this same mapping can be loaded for each. The layout of the mapping depends on the configured MIDI channel of the controller. Change the MIDI channel of the controller by pressing the bottom right encoder (labeled "Power On Setup/Scroll/Set") while plugging in the controller. Scroll with the encoder to select a MIDI channel. The letter in parentheses corresponds to the last lit button when selecting the channel: Channel 15 (O, default out of the box): two decks + two effect units with decks in the middle Channel 14 (N): two decks + two effect units with effect units in the middle Channel 13 (M): two decks + two effect units with decks on left Channel 12 (L): two decks + two effect units with decks on right Channel 11 (K): four decks ordered 3 1 2 4 Channel 10 (J): four decks ordered 1 2 3 4 Channel 9 (I): four effect units ordered 3 1 2 4 Channel 8 (H): four effect units ordered 1 2 3 4 If you are using K2s, they must have Latching Layers turned off, which is the default (the K1 does not have Latching Layers). If you are using the Xone K3, update it to firmware v1.0.4 r 93846 before using this mapping. Refer to the Mixxx manual for details.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Allen and Heath Xone K2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

American Audio Radius 2000 CH1

Mapping by Markus Steinbauer, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

American Audio Radius 2000 mapping for Deck 1

openDJ supports 18 of the 21 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/American Audio RADIUS 2000 CH1.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

American Audio Radius 2000 CH2

Mapping by Markus Steinbauer, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

American Audio Radius 2000 mapping for Deck 2

openDJ supports 18 of the 21 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/American Audio RADIUS 2000 CH2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

American Audio VMS2

Mapping by Stefan Nuernberger, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

MIDI mapping for the American Audio VMS2 controller.

openDJ supports 64 of the 82 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/American Audio VMS2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

American Audio VMS4/4.1

Mapping by Anders Gunnarsson & Sean M. Pappalardo, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

2-deck control/4-deck mixer preset for Mixxx 2.1. Assumes "Post EQ" mode. (See Wiki for full setup instructions.)

openDJ supports 107 of the 131 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/American Audio VMS4.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Arturia KeyLab Mk 1

Mapping by Sam Whited, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

MIDI mapping for the original Arturia KeyLab Mk 1

Mixer

Decks

Other

Effects

1 more controls in this mapping have no description, so they aren't listed.

Generated from res/controllers/ArturiaKeyLab.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer BCD2000

Mapping by Golzo, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

MIDI mapping for Behringer BCD2000 mixer

openDJ supports 29 of the 48 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer BCD2000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer BCD3000

Mapping by Aposto, from Mixxx · Forum thread

MIDI Mapping for Behringer BCD3000

openDJ supports 28 of the 46 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet.

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer BCD3000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer BCD3000 Advanced

Mapping by Joachim, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Advanced preset for BCD3000. See forums for more information.

openDJ supports 47 of the 67 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer BCD3000 Advanced.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer BCR2000

Mapping by Christian, from Mixxx

Mixxx controller preset for a Behringer B-Control BCR2000 controller.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet.

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer BCR2000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer CMD Micro

Mapping by tecywiz121, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

openDJ supports 40 of the 40 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer CMD Micro.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer CMD MM-1

Mapping by Swiftb0y, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

4 deck mapping with options for controlling effect units. Refer to the Mixxx wiki page for how to configure it to control effect units.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer CMD MM1.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer CMD STUDIO 4a

Mapping by Craig Easton, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Controller mapping for the Behringer CMD STUDIO 4a. V 1.4 Created Jan 2016 for Mixxx 2.0.0

openDJ supports 106 of the 110 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

Lines marked Not in openDJ yet don't do anything yet.

Browser

Decks

Effects

Mixer

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer CMDStudio4a.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Behringer DDM4000

Mapping by Christian, from Mixxx

Mixxx controller preset for a Behringer DDM4000 mixer.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet.

Generated from res/controllers/Behringer DDM4000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Denon DN SC2000

Mapping by Jan Riewe, Moba, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

openDJ supports 6 of the 14 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Denon DN SC2000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Denon HS5500

Mapping by Owen Williams, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

openDJ supports 52 of the 62 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Denon DN HS5500.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Denon MC3000 v0.995

Mapping by BeMixxx, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

Optimized for Denon MC3000 - Default Midi Channel

openDJ supports 38 of the 50 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Denon MC3000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Denon MC4000

Mapping by Tim Rae, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

2-deck mapping for Denon MC4000 controller

openDJ supports 104 of the 112 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Denon MC4000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Denon MC6000MK2

Mapping by Uwe Klotz a/k/a tapir, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

openDJ supports 28 of the 28 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Denon-MC6000MK2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Denon MC7000

Mapping by OsZ, JL, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

A professional 4-channel DJ controller featuring 2 separate audio interfaces. Please refer to the Mixxx user manual to get the audio interfaces working on Linux.

openDJ supports 129 of the 140 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

Lines marked Not in openDJ yet don't do anything yet.

Decks

Effects

Mixer

Samplers

Browser

Other

172 more controls in this mapping have no description, so they aren't listed.

Generated from res/controllers/Denon-MC7000.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter

Mapping by RJ Ryan, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

Mapping for DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter Classic Controller

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/DJTechTools MIDI Fighter.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter Spectra

Mapping by Sam Whited, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Multi-layer mappings for the Spectra.

Decks

Samplers

Generated from res/controllers/DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter Spectra.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter Twister

Beta. This mapping works on paper and has a picture in the Controller Editor, but nobody has tried it in openDJ on the real controller yet. If you have one, tell us how it goes: what works, and what doesn't.

Mapping by tock203, Sam Whited, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Control 4 decks with the MIDI Fighter Twister.

Decks

Effects

Mixer

26 more controls in this mapping have no description, so they aren't listed.

Generated from res/controllers/DJ TechTools MIDI Fighter Twister.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ-Tech CDJ-101

Mapping by zestoi, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Select midi channel 1 or 2 on the CDJ-101 to select which deck to control in Mixxx. Hold down the push encoder for additional controls.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/DJ-Tech CDJ-101.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ-Tech DJM-101

Mapping by zestoi, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Mapping with full led feedback for the DJ-Tech DJM-101

openDJ supports 8 of the 16 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/DJ-Tech DJM-101.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ-Tech i-Mix Reload

Mapping by vininim, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

MIDI mapping for DJ-Tech i-Mix Reload

openDJ supports 44 of the 61 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/DJ-Tech i-Mix Reload.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ-Tech Kontrol One

Mapping by Rob K, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Mapping for the DJ Tech Kontrol One modular scratch controller. Provides controls for Channel1 through Channel4. March 2013.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/DJ-Tech Kontrol One.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ-Tech MIX-101

Mapping by rasda, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

MIDI mapping for DJ-Tech MIX-101

openDJ supports 22 of the 30 controls this mapping sets directly.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/DJ-Tech Mix-101.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

DJ-Tech Mixer One

Mapping by Rob K, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

DJ-Tech Mixer One preset. Pretty straightforward - all controls do what they're labelled to do on the controller, except (1) the Xfader slope knob controls master balance; and (2) the Inverse button mutes the master output momentarily.

openDJ supports 16 of the 44 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/DJ-Tech Mixer One.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Electrix Tweaker

Mapping by Be, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

4-deck mapping for Electrix Tweaker with EQ and loop modes

openDJ supports 1 of the 1 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Electrix Tweaker.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Evolution X-Session

Mapping by Amias Channer, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

MIDI Mapping for Evolution X-Session

openDJ supports 21 of the 37 controls this mapping sets directly.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Evolution_Xsession.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

FaderFox DJ2

Mapping by Sacha Berger, Gosseyn, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

MIDI Mapping for FaderFoxDJ2

openDJ supports 114 of the 115 controls this mapping sets directly.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/FaderFoxDJ2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Gemini CDMP-7000 L

Mapping by djtrinidad, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Gemini CDMP-7000 mapping for Deck 1

openDJ supports 25 of the 30 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Gemini CDMP-7000 L audio.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Gemini CDMP-7000 R

Mapping by djtrinidad, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Gemini CDMP-7000 mapping for Deck 2

openDJ supports 25 of the 30 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Gemini CDMP-7000 R audio.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Gemini FirstMix

Mapping by mcsquared88, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

openDJ supports 25 of the 31 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Gemini FirstMix.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Console 4-Mx

Mapping by josepma, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Hercules DJ Console 4-Mx 2017-12-16

openDJ supports 18 of the 26 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Console 4-Mx.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Console Mac Edition

Mapping by Daniel Svensson, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

MIDI Mapping for Hercules DJ Console (Mac Edition)

openDJ supports 19 of the 29 controls this mapping sets directly.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Console Mac Edition.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Console Mk2

Mapping by Garth Dahlstrom, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

This is a complete mapping for a Hercules DJ Console Mk2.

openDJ supports 11 of the 21 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Console Mk2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Console MK4

Mapping by Dj kork, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

This is a complete mapping for Hercules DJ Console mk4 controller. Requires scripting.

openDJ supports 10 of the 20 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Console Mk4.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Console RMX

Mapping by Anders Gunnarsson, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

Hercules DJ Console RMX controller mapping, v1.9.0. Requires script v1.9.0

openDJ supports 10 of the 10 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Console RMX.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Console RMX Advanced

Mapping by Anders Gunnarsson, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

Hercules DJ Console RMX controller mapping with hotcues and loops, v1.9.0. Requires script v1.9.0

openDJ supports 6 of the 6 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Console RMX Advanced.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Console RMX2

Mapping by Circuitfry, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

This console's mapping comes with a script.

openDJ supports 78 of the 104 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Console RMX 2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Control AIR

Mapping by rojaro, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Mapping for Hercules DJ Control AIR

openDJ supports 40 of the 50 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

Lines marked Not in openDJ yet don't do anything yet.

Decks

Mixer

Other

Browser

16 more controls in this mapping have no description, so they aren't listed.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Control AIR.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Control Instinct

Mapping by Mich Wyser, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

openDJ supports 81 of the 94 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Control Instinct.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Control MP3

Mapping by Vittorio Colao, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

Complete mapping for Hercules DJ Control MP3.

openDJ supports 15 of the 25 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Control MP3.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Control MP3 e2 / MP3 LE / Glow

Mapping by Gianfe, Taucher and SBlaisot, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page · Forum thread

Hercules DJ Control MP3 e2 / MP3 LE / Glow mapping. These three controllers have identical controls and share the same mapping.

openDJ supports 1 of the 1 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet. The Mixxx manual page above shows the layout.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Control MP3 e2.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJ Control Steel

Mapping by Stephane List, from the work of Anders Gunnarsson, from Mixxx

Hercules DJ Control Steel controller mapping, v1.8.1. Requires script v1.8.1

openDJ supports 4 of the 4 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

This mapping doesn't describe its controls one by one, so there's no list here yet.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJ Control Steel.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJControl Compact

Mapping by Owen Williams, from Mixxx · Mixxx manual page

Controller mapping for Hercules DJControl Compact. Users who want the labeled "mid" knob to adjust high eq instead may use the MIDI wizard to remap it, or edit the controller XML file directly to change this setting.

openDJ supports 67 of the 67 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

Decks

Effects

Samplers

Mixer

35 more controls in this mapping have no description, so they aren't listed.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules DJControl Compact.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJControl Inpulse 200

Mapping by DJ Phatso for Hercules Technical Support, from Mixxx · Forum thread

MIDI Preset for Hercules DJControl Inpulse 200

openDJ supports 89 of the 92 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

Lines marked Not in openDJ yet don't do anything yet.

Browser

Decks

Other

Effects

Samplers

Mixer

7 more controls in this mapping have no description, so they aren't listed.

Generated from res/controllers/Hercules_DJControl_Inpulse_200.midi.xml. If something here is wrong on your controller, tell us.

Hercules DJControl Inpulse 300

Mapping by DJ Phatso for Hercules Technical Support, from Mixxx · Forum thread

MIDI Preset for Hercules DJControl Inpulse 300

openDJ supports 174 of the 178 controls this mapping sets directly. The rest of the mapping runs as a script, which isn't counted here.

Lines marked Not in openDJ yet don't do anything yet.

Browser

Decks

Effects

Other