VirtualDJ‘s new 2021 Summer Edition of its flagship software has arrived – and with it, a few major features that will make DJing quite interesting for its users. For starters: VirtualDJ PRO now enables you to export separated track stems onto your USB.
The big one: track stem exporting
As a refresher: last summer, VirtualDJ released an update that offered real-time track separation into 3 or 5 mixable stem parts (psst: check out our review on that update). Now, this summer’s update takes it a step further. You can take the individual stems you’ve pulled from any given track, create playlists, and export them onto a USB for your set. That means no more need for a computer to utilize the stems during a performance, which is fantastic news for USB-focused DJs.
Worth noting, though, that the stem exports will only work on Pioneer DJ gear – particularly their CDJ players and controllers that support USB usage. We’re curious to see if this will expand to other product families (Denon, perhaps) down the road.
Atomix Productions’ CEO, Stephane Clavel, explained:
“Traditionally, VirtualDJ’s core market has spanned all types of DJs, from bedroom beginners to festival superstars, but with a bigger market-share in the professional “working DJs” segment. With the introduction of our new Instant Stems Separation technology, we wanted to also bring this to the high- level “festival DJs”, to let them discover too this new way of DJing and the future it’s paving.
But most of these DJs do not use a laptop when they perform, so we had to step outside of our traditional DJ software paradigm, and add in VirtualDJ Pro a preparation mode so that users can export their libraries onto USB sticks, that can then be plugged into any CDJ on stage, and perform live. Though it doesn’t give all the bells and whistles of using the full VirtualDJ Pro software, it still enables instant access to play the separate stems of the tracks, for unlimited creativity and live remixes.”
More features: sorting capabilities & stem effects
The Summer Edition also comes with a number of other handy features worth noting, including:
- Stems FX: Building off the primary Stems feature of VirtualDJ, Stems FX gives you the ability to apply tricks and effects to your stems. It opens the door to even more creative options to utilize your stems with looping, scratching, and adding audio effects.
- Hashtags & Quick Filters: The browse & search features have been updated with quick filters, color-coding capabilities, and a new #hashtag ability. You can type a hashtag (or multiple, if you’d prefer) into the comment field to sort your library via your own organizational preference. It’s a solid improvement for on-the-fly library digging (I’ve been doing a similar concept via iTunes’ comments-and-smart-playlist combination, so it’s great to see it streamlined more here), as it provides a quick way to sort and categorize tracks for easy access when you need them. You can combine the hashtags with Quick Filters to find tracks with the same tags, too.
VirtualDJ’s base software is free to use. To get full access to all features, you’ll need a VirtualDJ Pro membership, which runs at $19/month. They also offer a lifetime license, deemed VirtualDJ Pro Infinity, for a one-time cost of $299.
VirtualDJ’s 2021 Summer Edition is out now, and you can grab the download for Windows and MacOS here. If you test out the stem-exporting, let us know how it goes – we’d love to hear from you.
