Numark CUE Digital DJ Software
by Chris Hafner | Published May 2007 | In the Mix Archives

When Numark, one of the top manufacturers of quality audio hardware, announced this package in October 2006, it was billed as the "new standard" for professional club mixing with digital source material. As a bedroom DJ, I didn't have the opportunity to use it until recently, when Numark released a Mac OS X-compatible version. My experiences with DJ software in the past ­ especially "all-in-ones" that promise to do everything but threaten people to dance for you ­ left me pessimistic. But Numark's CUE is absolutely everything it was cracked up to be.

CUE is actually not a new product, but the latest evolution of Virtual DJ. What this means is that unlike most new audio software (which usually takes a few upgrades to get the worst bugs out), CUE is essentially a product that has been tested, tweaked, and really used by DJs in the field for years.

CUE lets you mix, scratch and even add "live" audio samples without any additional equipment. This is a big promise, and to be honest, I don't know if anyone will be required to do everything that CUE says it can do. For instance, it allows DJs to "video mix" DVDs, DIVX, MPG and other digital files, which is of little use to most House Music DJs. I also found the video portion an absolute hog of my computer's resources, and I have a pretty good computer. It slowed my machine down to a crawl. But on the plus side, there are few audio files that CUE can't recognize in addition to CDs and CD-Rs.

I put the automatic beat-matching software to the test and was genuinely surprised by how good it is. Beat-matching is part of the "art" for me, but to test the limits of the software, I threw all kinds of uptempo and downtempo tunes at it. CUE handled them without so much as a hiccup. The instant pitch-adjust I found very useful, and the "hot-cues" automatically delay to beat-match with the BPM of the song currently playing when launched. All of CUE's features are highly customizable: you can simply ignore (or try to ignore - it's a bit like sitting in a cockpit of a plane with all of the gizmos in front of you) anything you're not interested in. The most interesting aspect of CUE is the visual waveform; once you get the hang of "seeing" music, the timing isn't hard to handle at all.

It's a whole new game to go from tables or even CDJs to using a mouse and keyboard with the "virtual decks" that CUE uses. DJs with years of experience with tables are going to miss the "feel" that you don't get here. But for anyone that wants to move into a totally digital world of DJing, I'd recommend picking up CUE. There's a functional demo version available on Numark's website, so what do you have to lose?

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