djay (the little d is maker Algoriddim's choice, not ours) has landed a pretty big prize, being awarded iPad App of The Year by Apple.

So, despite us retiring from the decks back in 2001 following the pain of DJ Luck and MC Neat's disappearance from the pop mainstream, we thought we better give it a spin (or rather, a few spins) to see what all the fuss is about.

djay

Platform

iPad

Price

£13.99

Where

iTunes

If you've any knowledge of the Mac flavour of djay then you'll be right at home on the iPad version. It's ported across to Apple's tab without much difference and it should be easy enough for newcomers to pick up as well.

The idea is that you can hit the decks, without actually hitting any decks - simply by using gestures on djay's intuitive UI. It gives you access to your iTunes library on your iPad and lets you mix away to you heart's content; complete with a "hyper-realistic low-latency turntable interface", automatic tempo and BPM matching, sound effects, loops and live recording.

Scratching is also supported for those wanting to take their tunes old skool and you can also pitch bend and mess around with the mixer and tempo controls. Wickedy-wickedy-wack, as someone, somewhere probably once said.

There's cute little touches such as the way it zooms in to the waveform when you touch one of the virtual records, making it simpler to set cues, and preset effects such as the Automix function that throws over a traditional vinyl scratching sound.

djay recently got upgraded to version 1.4, throwing in AirPlay support, iCloud integration and the ability to sort tracks by their BPM.

Our only major issue is that, in order to properly mix, you need to be the owner of a split audio cable from Griffin, otherwise you can't hear one channel through headphones and the other through the speakers. Also, it would also be nice to have an easier way to store playlists.

But we're being fussy now, djay is an awesome app and we're fully behind Apple's decision to award it iPad App of The Year (although we did prefer Sky Go, hence its Pocket-lint Awards win).