We caught up with the Hercules team at NAMM 2014, and got a quick demo of one of the more intriguing controllers released recently, the Hercules DJControlWave.
This is a totally wireless controller: Once charged, you can disconnect the controller itself from power, your iPad isn’t plugged in to anything either (so they communicate wirelessly), and you don’t even need wired speakers if you use a Bluetooth speaker like the Hercules model in the video.
While I can’t see this not causing problems (latency, dropouts), they did at least show it working, and the system cleverly uses the iPad’s sound card with a splitter to also push a pre-cue signal into a pair of headphones if you (wisely) wire the last stage of the flow, ie from iPad to audio devices.
It’s clearly a consumer-product (think house parties and living room mix sessions), and it’s definitely stylish, in a shiny, plasticky kind of way. Anyway, the video’s above, so take a look…
Do you think an iPad wireless controller is a pretty neat idea, of a bit of a baffling one? What do you think of the rather futuristic design of this controller? Please share your thoughts on it in the comments.
Phil Morse
