What’s new in DJ Studio 4.0

Since its release, DJ Studio has occupied a great sweet spot in the DJ software world. It’s designed to make DJ edits, mashups and mixes, without the extra production complexities of a full-blown DAW like Ableton. Instead, it’s always felt like something that was designed by DJs for DJs, and its workflow and tools really narrow in on helping you make edits and mixes quickly and easily. 

Now, DJ Studio have released their latest update, 4.0, which brings in a whole heap of new updates, all aimed at making that mix process even more streamlined and powerful. Let’s break down what’s new.

Mix Mode vs Mashup Mode

DJ Studio’s always been about making both full-on DJ mixes, as well as custom edits and mashups. Now those two distinct use cases have their own separate modes that make each workflow more straightforward. 

Mix Mode is built for arranging tracks into DJ mixes and sets. There are a couple of tweaks here, like the new handles on tracks that make it easier to move things around and change the order.

Mashup Mode is all about deeper, more creative editing. Here you’ve got more tools to customise your edits like stems and sample lanes, and detailed automation views.

Improved Stems

Stems are a key part of DJ Studio and are super powerful for making both mixes and edits. Now, in DJ Studio 4.0, they’ve been given a major upgrade. 

The main thing is that the audio quality has been significantly improved, with the isolated elements now sounding much cleaner than before, which is great when you’re making mashups or 

The other big change is that the processing speed has been noticeably improved. Whereas before this could sometimes be quite sluggish, especially on older computers, that’s less of an issue. 

You can switch between waveform, vocal, instrumental, or full stem views depending on what you’re doing. Each stem can be muted, soloed, adjusted, or copied without diving through menus.

You can now also copy stems straight into sample lanes to quickly and easily make things like acapellas.

Tempo and Beatgrid Editing

This is a big upgrade that brings DJ Studio in line with more fully-featured DAWs. Now, there’s a proper beatgrid editor built in. You can now:

• Move the entire beatgrid

• Adjust only part of the grid without affecting earlier beats

• Move individual beats

• Set downbeats and first-beat markers directly on the timeline

This is especially crucial if you’re working with older tracks, such as disco records, that weren’t recorded to a constant click. 

The tempo lane has also been expanded with clearer control modes:

• Auto for standard DJ-style tempo adjustment

• Manual for detailed tempo shaping

• Fixed for locking the mix between two BPM values

DJ Studio 4.0 also introduces the Elastic Pro algorithm for high-quality time-stretching and repitching. This is designed to preserve audio quality, especially on vocals, and sits alongside existing beat-slice and final modes, depending on how you want audio handled.

FX and automation

Effects in DJ Studio 4.0 work very differently from before, and have been really expanded, giving you loads more ways to make your tracks come to life. 

You can now play around with effects using the XY pad while the track is playing. Once you find something you like, you place that effect directly onto the timeline as its own editable section, rather than just drawing automation over the audio.

These effect sections can be moved, resized, and crucially, dragged beyond the end of a clip. Crucially, this now finally lets you create proper echo and reverb tails, which were lacking on the previous version. 

Each effect section can contain multiple parameters, and once you’ve found a setting you vibe with, you can right-click and save it as a preset, so you can reuse it across tracks or projects without rebuilding it from scratch. 

Automation lanes can now be soloed, either from the effects panel or via a dedicated automation menu at the top of the interface.

Music Integration

One big upgrade for DJ Studio is that streaming sites and music platforms are now neatly integrated right into the app. That means that, as well as your regular libraries you had before, you can now also pull in tracks straight from Beatsource and Beatport, 

On top of that, you now also get built-in charts from Apple Music, Shazam, Billboard, and others. These charts pull in a preview, shorter-length version of a track, which can be great for testing stuff out in your mixes or trying out new mashups, but may well be too limited to actually properly use. 

Final Thoughts

DJ Studio is still in a bit of a class of its own when it comes to building out your own DJ mixes and edits without having to either record them on decks or dive into a fully-fledged DAW. Instead, it’s always been focused on accessibility and ease of use, and that’s only been improved here, even as more powerful tools are brought in. Even DJs who’ve never tried any production before will quickly figure out their way around DJ Studio.  

The updates here aren’t completely revolutionary, but generally, they just lead to a smoother experience, whether that’s through the performance upgrades or workflow tweaks. 

If you’re looking to go a step beyond the sort of production that DJ Studio offers, and really start making your own music, whether that’s edits, mashups or original tracks, we’ve got a perfect DJ to Producer course, where you’ll learn all the tricks the pros use to create their own unique sound. 

You can check out a free lesson in the link below.