How is this better than earlier generation Digital Vinyl Systems?

The key improvements are: no laptop, and true hybrid DJ features. No laptop means at home you have instant & clutter-free digital playback, and in the club your full attention is with the decks and the audience. Additionally, the loop feature and the option to pre-pitch to a locked BPM mean you can focus on the mix in a new way, and even consider mixing with 3 or 4 turntables.

Do I need a laptop?

All you’ll need a computer for, is to copy music files to your USB drive.

How do I manage my music library?

No proprietary software required - just organize your files in folders and copy them to your USB. Devious Pocket reads ID3 tags and offers to sort by title, artist, album, BPM, key, or genre. It also offers search within folders.

What file formats are supported?

Devious Pocket reads mp3, flac, wav, aif, caf, and ogg.

How do I use this to mix with multiple decks?

This system is built with the idea of one unit per turntable. If you want to play multiple decks, you have to get multiple units and pair them each with one turntable.

What time code formats do you support?

We support Serato 2, Serato CD, Traktor 1, Mixvibes V2, Mixvibes 7 and Pioneer time code formats.

Does it support Phase DJ?

Absolutely, you can use Phase DJ to adjust the pitch and our track view to move the playhead. Cueing and looping are fully supported as well.

Can I use an SSD?

We currently support all USB attached SCSI drives, including solid state drives, hard drives and sticks.

Can I update it?

Yes, the firmware can be updated over USB by plugging in a drive with the firmware update. The system will run the update on startup when found. This allows us to introduce new features, improve performance and, if necessary: push a fix.

What about latency?

The Devious Pocket significantly outperforms traditional USB solutions. This advantage comes from its direct CPU connection, eliminating the need to package and unpack audio data through USB frames. Internal processing latency is 0.666 ms, which doesn't account for latency introduced by transmission, which varies but 'averages' around 1-2 ms, as explained here: https://www.hifiberry.com/blog/techtalk-latency But there's more to latency than just numbers: the Devious Pocket avoids running a full desktop environment, resulting in a snappier, more responsive experience. Its hardware-accelerated GUI is faster than most alternatives and we use real-time audio scheduling for improved timing and stability. The software is written in C++, using our own in-house developed real-time control and visualization platform NAP Framework, which has been battle tested in production for years and is used by us and our partners to power performance critical, large scale interactive installations and embedded solutions world-wide.

Why no physical buttons?

We’re passionate about our record player and chose it as the central instrument and control medium, instead of a MIDI controller. This approach also reduces the overall cost of the unit, since we avoid the need to design and produce an expensive hardware interface — speeding up in-house manufacturing and delivery. The touch interface is intuitive and highly responsive, built for real-time use: triggering loops, adjusting the playhead, setting cue points, and browsing or loading files.

Is it fast?

Yes, it is. We have been testing and optimizing the system for months now, and we're known for making highly optimized software for embedded real-time environments. The system that powers the unit (NAP Framework) has been completely developed in house and battle tested for years, not only by us but many others all around the world.

Do you support Rekordbox tags?

Currently we don't, this might become available in a future update. We wanted to shorten the time it takes from getting a track to playing it, and therefore removed management middle-ware and decided to support well-proven file systems instead.

Why 2 seperate devices?

Because we wanted to tie 1 device to 1 turntable, which minimizes the risk of making mistakes by removing any form of modality, which is a main source of confusion and leads to frustration when you're in the moment having fun. We like dedicated, single purpose machines. This also lowers the cost for people that do not need 2 devices for mixing.