DJs will be well familiar with the name Serato. It’s one of the — if not the — leading software products around for DJs that make the hop from vinyl to digital sets (and that’s most of them these days). But the company hasn’t had a huge presence on iOS devices outside of that world — save for its Remote companion app for users of a Serato desktop setup. That’s where Serato’s new Pyro app comes in, but it’s not exactly the scaled back version of the company’s desktop offering you might have been hoping for.
Instead, rather than act as a suite for mostly professional DJs and their mixing and controller hardware like on the desktop, Pyro is aimed at all users and meant to act like the DJ for you, using Serato’s technology to automatically mix songs from one to the next by changing the tempo and doing a real mix like a professional DJ would:
If it works well, that sounds like a feature that would be an excellent and really fun addition to services like Apple Music and competitors. But for now the app lets you use the music in your device’s library and also integrates with Spotify so you can easily bring your playlists in to be mixed. In addition, Serato tapped into some of the DJs that use its products to offer playlists to get you started. You’ll find mixes preloaded in the app from DJ Jazzy Jeff, A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold Records, Diplo’s record label Mad Decent, Steve Aoki’s brand Dim Mak and GRAMMY® Award winners, The Roots.
The powerful Serato algorithms inside Pyro allow it to break down each song, finding every beat, then blending them smoothly so it’s hard to tell where one song ends and the next one begins. Serato Pyro actually changes the speed of the incoming song to match the one currently playing for an unbelievably smooth listening experience. If the tempos of the two songs are too far apart, Pyro uses an old DJ trick called the “echo out” to make a smooth transition.
While the app does everything automatic, you can have some say in the mix by influencing the playlist that the app also helps you intelligently track out:
And Pyro includes an Apple Watch companion app that lets you view, rearrange, and control currently playing and upcoming tracks in your mixes.
Pyro doesn’t just play through an existing playlist; rather each music session is created on-the-fly, built from existing playlists and searches on the whim of the user at the time. It is easy to rearrange and edit the upcoming songs while the music is playing, so there is never any need to prepare before the party starts.
The new Serato Pyro app is available on the App Store now for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
And the company offered a look at the technology it’s using in the app in the video below:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EyUx41M3tM]
