DiscoverTube DJ

DiscoverTube DJ is a powerful, desktop-based DJ application built with Electron, React, and Vite. It bridges the gap between hardware MIDI controllers (like the ION Discover DJ) and digital mixing, offering a seamless interface for local audio file playback, AI stem separation, on-the-fly music searching and downloading from YouTube.

Screenshot

Compatible with

ION Discover DJ

🎛️ Features

• Dual-Deck Audio Engine: Real-time scratching, pitch bending, EQ (Treble/Bass), and crossfading powered by the Web Audio API.
• AI-Powered Stem Separation: Instantly isolate Vocals, Drums, Bass, and Other instruments from any track on the fly (powered by Demucs).
• Advanced FX Engine: Built-in dynamic audio effects including Echo, Reverb, Filter, Modulation, and Repeat.
• Hardware MIDI Integration: Connect your USB DJ Controller. Features an intuitive MIDI Learn system to instantly map physical knobs, jog wheels, and buttons to software actions.
• Smart Browse Modal: Advanced file system browsing, tag searching, and modal-based library management.
• Synced Lyrics (Subtitles): Real-time karaoke-style lyrics display synchronized with track playback.
• Settings Configuration: Customize storage paths and toggle auto-processing behaviors via a dedicated settings modal.
• Dynamic Track Library: Load music directly from local folders or individual files.
• Instant YouTube Fetching: Search for any song on YouTube and download it directly into your deck without leaving the app.

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🎛️ Controller Support & MIDI Mappings

The application features a universal MIDI Learn overlay, allowing it to work with virtually any USB MIDI controller. Custom mappings you create are automatically saved securely to your OS's AppData/Roaming/discovertubedj directory.

Pre-configured Mappings

If you own an ION Discover DJ controller, we have provided a pre-configured mapping file for you!

1. Look in the mappings/ directory of this repository for ion-discover-dj.json.
2. Copy this file into your AppData directory:
   • Windows: C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\discovertubedj\midi-mapping.json
3. Restart the application. Your controller will instantly work with full LED feedback and scratch support!

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📥 YouTube Download Flow & Quality

One of the standout features of DiscoverTube DJ is its ability to instantly pull tracks from YouTube without requiring an official API key or external encoders.

How it Works

1. Search: The app uses yt-search to quickly scrape YouTube for your search query and fetch the correct video URL.
2. Download: We use youtube-dl-exec (a Node.js wrapper for the industry-standard yt-dlp) to stream the audio directly from YouTube servers.
3. Storage: Songs are automatically saved permanently into the DiscoverTubeDJ/songs/ directory so they are cached for instant future playback.

Audio Quality (Resolution) & Format

• Format: Tracks are explicitly downloaded as WebM (Opus).
• Quality: The audio stream is pulled at ~160 kbps (48kHz). This is the absolute highest audio quality natively provided by standard YouTube. Because the Opus codec is incredibly efficient, this 160 kbps stream is perceptually identical to a 256–320 kbps MP3.
• Why WebM? YouTube serves its high-quality m4a streams as fragmented DASH files. Normally, fixing these fragments requires installing FFmpeg on the host machine. By downloading the WebM/Opus stream instead, the audio plays natively and perfectly within Chromium's Web Audio API, making the app 100% plug-and-play without requiring users to install external media encoders.

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📦 Downloads & Releases

You don't need to build the app from source to use it! You can download the pre-packaged, ready-to-run Windows installer directly from the GitHub Releases page:

Download DiscoverTube DJ v2.0.0 Setup (.exe) ⬇️

Looking for the previous version? Download DiscoverTube DJ v1.0.0 Setup (.exe) ⬇️

(Simply download, run the installer, and plug in your controller!)

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🚀 Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v16 or higher recommended)
• A connected MIDI DJ Controller (optional, but recommended)

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/discovertubedj.git
   cd discovertubedj

2. Install dependencies

   npm install

3. Run the application

   npm run dev

   This will concurrently spin up the Vite React frontend and the Electron backend.

4. Build for Production

   npm run build

   This packages the application into an executable using electron-builder.

🛠️ Technology Stack

• Frontend: React, Vite, Zustand (State Management)
• Backend: Electron (Node.js)
• Audio Processing: Web Audio API
• MIDI: Web MIDI API
• Scraping/Downloading: yt-search, youtube-dl-exec (yt-dlp)

⚠️ Disclaimer

This is an independent, community-developed project for the ION Discover DJ. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by ION Audio.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.