In 2007, the Tonium Pacemaker – described as the “world’s first portable DJ system’ – was introduced at the 2007 Sónar music festival in Barcelona.
It was an interesting device – it offered a 120 GB hard drive, dedicated jacks for line out and headphones and support for most digital DJing techniques.
But the Pacemaker also had two strikes against it:
- bizarre marketing, right, that featured dancers in ‘gimp suits’; and
- terrible timing, hitting stores just as the iPhone started disrupting the market for dedicated mobile devices.
Tonium, the parent company behind Pacemaker, shut down in June 2011. But the Pacemaker lives on.
The original inventors of Pacemaker, Jonas Norberg and Daniel Wallner, plus a new recruit, Olof Berglöf, bought the IP for the Pacemaker back and have now reincarnated the Pacemaker as an iPad DJ application.
The Pacemaker application is unique in that it lets you mix tracks from both iTunes and Spotify. Using Spotify tracks comes with some limitations, though, like not being able to record and share mixes, as noted by CDM.
Here’s the official intro video:
Pacemaker is a free download from the App Store – but many features, like Loop, Beatskip & Roll, are in-app purchases. Pacemaker is also available for Blackberry.
If you’ve used the Pacemaker app, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!
i would have liked to see a video so i can hear how it sounds
Josh – as a DJ app, it shouldn’t have a ‘sound’ per se – but I added the official intro video, which offers a peak at the user interface.
lol, wanna see the vid to hear how a dj app sounds? its sounds like the tracks that you load into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSWXkecVsgo#t=44
thats the horrible promo.
doubt anyones gonna spend the time to film a demo.
Woah, woke up on wrong side of bed apparently. apologies
Downloaded it and bought additional features. Linked with Spotify. The most musical fun I’ve had in ages.
Nice app, clean immediate interface and very useable. Would be great for mangling and making loops, but………..cannot copy paste/export to other destinations. Not interested in Spotify at all. For $10 for all the IAP’s its just not worth it IMO.
the pacemaker was the worste case of theft ive ever experienced. the first customers ,i was one ,all preordered their product . a few months later we got them ,
the first day the phones were jammed , and this followed for months.
the product was so badly tested . the first customers were blatently their R&D .
we all spend weeks battling with constant crashes and issues which made it unusable.
i played out with mine a few times , but the effort required just to get the thing full of music was a
ball breaker.. so many just sold them or gave up with it..
most possibly the worst dj kit ive bought in all my 25 years of djing, all down to software issues.
the hardwear was really good. sound quality amazing , such a shame.
i dont know if tonium ever got the thing working well , as i too lost pateients after 6 months of broken promisis to fix bugs and update features neeeded..
dont believe the hype