Whether you're trying to create a mix of audio tracks to burn to CD as a gift for someone, or you want to put together a cool stream of awesome songs with professional DJ fading, scratches and other effects, it isn't always easy to find high quality DJ mixing software for free.

Jeffry described how you can put together a party iTunes playlist with DJ Song Lists, and Angelina reviewed a couple of cool free apps that you can use to mix up tunes. All of these apps are great, but they don't provide that DJ look and feel - wouldn't it be cool to download a virtual DJ studio you can run on your laptop that gives you a couple of turntables and lets you perform realtime effects on the music as it plays?

Enter OTS Turntables, a very cool, free DJ app that not only gives you the ability to create a playlist of music with professional fading and effects, but it lets you have a little fun with the music as it plays, rotating the turntable for that track and scratching it up a bit - or performing a variety of other effects that would keep the party fluid and high-energy.

Your Own DJ Turntables

The best part of this application is the awesome design. The skin makes it feel like you've got your own personal mixing board right in front of you - complete with two turntables, an equalizer, processor, digital effects and much more. It offers the level of mixing features that you'd only expect with paid software.

download a virtual dj studio

The bottom of the window is where you load in all of your tracks in the order that you would want them to play. They won't necessarily play automatically unless you enable the Auto DJ feature. Otherwise, you can drag any of the tracks in this window onto one of the two turntables. Then, you can play one or both of those tracks, adding effects as they play if you want to.

virtual dj studio

You can load in tracks from anywhere, whether it's a folder or an audio CD. Once you've loaded the track onto your turntable, you can use any of the effects on the turntable to alter just that track, while the other turntable remains unaffected by those changes. These include changing the pitch, tempo or the direction of play (yes, you can play the track in reverse at high speed if you want to).

In the center of the turntables, you'll find the volume controls where you can perform any form of fading that you like.

virtual dj studio

When you click on the "FX" button under the turntable, you'll find different ways that you can alter the playback of that track. Most of the effects are different scratch techniques that you can record and then utilize for any track that you're playing.

virtual dj studio

When you click on the devices that make up your DJ mixer board, a pop-up window opens so that you can modify your overall output sound however you like. Another cool feature of OTS Turntables is the fact that there are preset settings for different "themes" you may be looking for.

For example, click on "Bass Boost" and the Equalizer automatically configures to maximize the low frequency end of the range for each channel.

free mix dj studio

The same goes for the "Dynamics Processor," where you can alter each of the settings to get just the sound that you're looking for. Or click on one of the theme buttons at the bottom, such as DJ, Lounge or Party - and the settings all adjust to the levels that you need.

Best of all, you aren't tied down to performing your amazing feats of special music effects during the party itself. If you want to perform your magic and record it for the fun later, you can do so by clicking on the program icon in the upper right corner and clicking on "Output Configuration."

download a virtual dj studio

Here, you can set up any output device that you may want to feed your music to (such as an amp or some other hardware), or you can feed the entire mix that you're creating to an output wave file, which you can then burn to an audio CD, or convert to an MP3 and post it online (just be careful with copyrights!).

Overall, OTS Turntables is one of the most functional and high quality free DJ mixing apps that I've seen yet. So download a virtual DJ studio for yourself, give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments section below!

Image Credit: Jannes Glas [Broken URL Removed]