Active DJ Studio (amp3dj.ocx) is an ActiveX control developed by MultiMedia Soft that makes it easy adding sound and video playback and mixing capabilities to applications written with the most diffused development environments that accept ActiveX controls such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio.NET.
Active DJ Studio comes with built-in decoding capabilities in order to decode most common sound formats like MP3, WAV, Ogg Vorbis and many others: it can load different sounds at the same time on different virtual decks , usually defined as "players" (*), and, thanks to the use of DirectSound, allocated players can have separate Volume, Tempo, Playback Rate, Pitch and Equalizer values: each player comes with a set of embedded and configurable visual feedbacks like VU-Meter, Spectrum Analyzer, Oscilloscope and Waveform. An embedded automatic fader can easily mix audio tracks loaded inside a playlist with an accurate and configurable fade-in/fade-out.
Thanks to the integration with DirectShow, Active DJ Studio can load and play video files using formats whose specific codec is available on the target machine and, through the mentioned players, it can apply different sound effects (equalization, volume, DMO effects, etc.) to the sound portion of a video file.
Active DJ Studio is open to the external world of DSP effects: it can work with custom DSP effects developed by the developer himself and also with the multitude of VST effects available on the Internet.
Let's see a brief summary of available features:
| • | Playback of several audio formats: MP3, WAV, OGG Vorbis, MP4, AAC, M4A, AC3, FLAC, WavPack, ALAC, W64, AU, PAF, SVX, NIST, VOC, IRCAM, PVF, CAF, Speex, Musepack and Monkey's Audio (APE) |
| • | Playback of PCM audio RAW formats |
| • | Playback of Windows Media formats (requires the availability of Windows Media Player modules on the target PC) |
| • | Playback of video clips whose DirectShow compatible codecs are installed inside the target system, with support for multiple output windows |
| • | Mixing/blending of video clips inside a video mixer output window, with support for separate preview windows |
| • | Support for customizable On-Screen-Display (OSD) on the video mixer window |
| • | Playback of audio files stored on an Internet server (not available for MOD music files) |
| • | Playback of Internet radios Shoutcast/Icecast streams |
| • | Support for ASIO drivers with the possibility to directly playback the sound stream coming from ASIO input channels of the sound card |
| • | Support for acting as a source for ShoutCAST, IceCast and Windows Media Services streaming servers |
| • | Possibility to change each player's volume separately and sound card volumes. |
| • | Multi-player features: allow playing more sounds at the same time, each of them having separate volume, special effects and output redirection |
| • | Possibility to mix songs at application level, through custom stream mixers, allowing to save mixing results through the integration with our Active Sound Recorder control or to send mixing results to a streaming server |
| • | Support for PCM stream queuing, allowing to play sound streams coming from an external source |
| • | Real-time embedded visual feedbacks (VU-Meter, Oscilloscope, Spectrum, Waveform display) |
| • | Support for configurable normalization of sound level |
| • | Support for reverse playback of audio tracks |
| • | Sound card output choice and speakers assignment |
| • | Support for volume automation with possibility to design volume curves |
| • | Support for new proprietary playlist format (PDJ), allowing to predispose mixing automation and volume automation on each single song and to play encrypted sounds |
| • | CDDB database queries (through FreeDb servers) |
| • | Load sound files from memory buffers |
| • | Exporting of loaded sound in WAV format (on both disk file or memory buffer) |
| • | Advanced equalizer and auto-equalization of audio tracks through formatted XML files |
| • | BPM (Beats Per Minute) detection |
| • | Beats position detection |
| • | Tempo, Playback rate and Pitch support |
| • | Position triggers management |
| • | Support for DirectX Media Objects (DMO) effects |
| • | Support for custom DSP effects |
| • | Support for extraction of the audio track available inside a video clip, allowing to perform silence detection, BPM detection and waveform analysis |
| • | Support for delayed playback of loaded sounds |
| • | Support for encrypted sounds |
| • | Lyrics synchronization through LRC files |
| • | Creation of graphic bars for custom displaying of Vu-Meters, Spectrum and Progress bars |
| • | Support for common filters (low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and stop-band) |
| • | Support for vocal remover filter |
| • | Frames grabbing from video clips |
| • | Under Windows Vista and higher versions support for managing audio endpoints (CoreAudio) |
| • | Real-time DC Offset removal |
| • | Support for reading most common frames of the following tag formats: ID3V1, ID3V2.2, ID3V2.3, ID3V2.4, LYRICS3, WMA, APE, OGG Vorbis, MP4, FLAC |
| • | Support for reading most of the frames of the ID3V2 tag format |
| • | Support for reading CART, BEXT and LIST INFO chunks in WAV files |
| • | Support for drawing the waveform representation inside a graphical device context (HDC) allowing to render a scrolling waveform during playback |
A number of tutorials that will certainly help you beginning your developments with this powerful control can be found here.
The full list of new features in this version can be found inside the Product history page.
Active DJ Studio can be fully integrated with our existing audio related ActiveX controls Active Sound Editor and Active Sound Recorder and, for your convenience, this product is currently available inside the following convenient suite of products:
Supported target systems:
x86 versions of Windows 2000 / XP / Server 2003 / Vista / Server 2008 / Seven (7)
x64 versions of Windows XP / Server 2003 / Vista / Server 2008 / Seven (7)
IMPORTANT NOTES:
For redistribution of the control with your application, we recommend you to take a close look to the Files to be included with your application section.
(*) A "player" can be compared to a physical "deck" on a DJ console, the place where you put the vinyl/CD to be played; the developer can create a console with many virtual decks that can play simultaneously many different songs on one or more sound cards, each deck having its own volume/tempo/pitch settings. The availability of a certain number of players (decks) will enable the container application to mix several songs on different output channels, giving for example the ability to play advertising spots while songs are being played/mixed on different output channels: this is very useful for multi-channel radio stations automation software.
