Whether you want to rock your bedroom or the club, Traktor Pro is a very complete program that does pretty much everything you might want. It's highly configurable, which makes it very flexible but also pretty inaccessible to beginners. There is extensive documentation for Traktor Pro, but even that is pretty scary!

As well as controlling external sources, Traktor Pro allows you to mix from your computer on up to four decks at once. Importing your music library is really simple, and it works with iTunes libraries too. Tracks are analyzed when loaded into a deck, and appear as a wave form that can be moved with the mouse, alongside the beats per minute (BPM) and much more information. Traktor Pro is pretty accurate when it comes to finding BPMs, but if it is wrong, you can set them manually.

All the usual mixing tools are present, with pitch control, crossfader effects, and levels. There is extensive hotkey mapping, which is fully configurable, but takes a lot of time to do. Once you get used to Traktor Pro, it reveals itself as an incredible DJ tool. With some practice you'll be able to create fantastic mixes, which you can record from within the program.

Traktor Pro is an excellent and incredibly powerful DJ application with a steep learning curve that is worth climbing.

Download Traktor Pro 2.5.1 in Softonic

Tap Tempo is a very simple tool for manually calculating the beats-per-minute of music. With programs like Audacity and WavePad, you can mix music together, but they don't calculate BPM for you, which is awkward.

If you want to know the BPM of a song, simply start it, open Tap Tempo and tap the beat on the space bar. After 10 - 20 taps you'll have an accurate figure for the beats-per-minute.

Tap Tempo is useful if you need BPM, though obviously not if you can't keep time very well! On some Keyboards it's difficult to input a regular beat and while it does calculate tempo, it's a little too basic. It is missing a reset function, and you can only view one calculation at a time. This reviewer has been looking for a tool like this for some time, and despite the lack of features, it does the job.

TapTempo is a very simple app, performing a simple function, but it's only as accurate as you are.

Download Tap Tempo 1.03 in Softonic

Pistonsoft BPM Detector analyses your MP3 collection to determinate the bitrates of each song. Beats per minute (BPM) is a unit typically used as either a measure of tempo in music, or a measure of one's heart rate. A rate of 60 BPM means that one beat will occur every second. The idea is that, the higher BPM a song has, the faster it should be. Hip-hop typically uses a BPM tempo of 80-100, while house music is faster: 110-140 BPM. Jungle music goes even faster: 160-185. Gabba and Speedcore exceed 200 BPM.

This information should come handy, not only to DJs having to choose the right song on the fly but also to home users. They may want in fact to play slow songs after coming back home from a tiring day, or they may prefer something more energetic as the soundtrack for their spring cleaning!

The program automatically analyses selected files and saves the beat per minute information to the music file's ID3 tag so that you'll be able to know the song's BPM with every player you use. I'm not sure about the efficiency of BPM in order to decide what a fast or a slow music is though. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, for example, had a BPM rate of zero while Quien Fuera by Silvio Rodriguez received a rating of 150.75. Personally, I would use the latter for relaxing moments and the former when I need to listen to something faster.

The idea of an application that can understand the type of songs we have and classify them accordingly is great but I don't think we have achieved that level with this application.

Download Pistonsoft BPM Detector 1.0 in Softonic

I have a confession to make - when I see an audio mixing program to review, I usually try to pass it on to someone else. They're just so complicated, especially for a tone-deaf writer like me! When I saw trakAxPC, however, I noticed that it is supposed to be especially suitable for beginners. This has to be the one for me, right?!

Well, trakAxPC might just have cracked it. This application is very user-friendly, which is half the battle. The whole interface can be customized, from the position and size of the panels, to which elements show up when you are using the application. Even managing your tracks is simple, with drag and drop capabilities and extensive context menu options. trakAxPC also comes with a great selection of online videos, tutorials, guides and help, so you'll have plenty of support if it is your first venture into the world of audio mixing.

Even though the program is especially suitable for beginners, that doesn't mean that it's a soft option - trakAxPC has all the audio (and video) editing options you would expect, although the effects don't quite stretch to the same levels as some editing apps aimed at more advanced users. Even so, trakAxPC allows you to do all the cutting, copying, mixing and synching that you would expect in any other editing program.

trakAxPC provides a gentle but professional gateway to the world of audio and video editing.

Download TrakAxPC 3.01.1 in Softonic