This time last year, I witnessed the birth of a potentially game-changing piece of software. Over breakfast, I became the first media outlet to see a fledgling version of The One. It was basic but the idea of real modularity was there. So 12 months on, what are Audio Artery doing with The One? We grabbed them for a progress report.

After the initial gold rush to get accepted into the beta program, Audio Artery have had a long hard look at the feedback received. While there were the expected number of bugs, it was clear that some key areas needed work. Broadly breaking them down:

Overview – the modular nature of The One means that you can add elements – decks, channels, effects racks etc and pretty much anything you can add on screen can all be hooked up to each other. As you can imagine, this could get quite complex, so The One now has what is known as the Overview – a very visual representation of what is hooked up to what. And you can drag and drop between elements on the fly too.

Improved UI – it can a bit busy on-screen, so The One now allows you to shut down individual elements but still have them running. Layouts can also be saved and loaded from a drop down menu.

MIDI Learn – if an element can be mapped, it’ll appear as such on-screen, along with all the necessary parameters displayed along side it. It looks like it’ll come pre-mapped for a number of controllers, but then you’ll be able to tweak and fine tune to your own requirements.

Beat Grids – you can now selectively change parts of a track to cater for variations in BPM.

Timeline improvements – As well as dropping tracks into a timeline, you can now also totally replace a whole element, indicated by a very obvious “replace all” notice.

So just like Virtual DJ 8, The One is making slow but steady progress. They’re quite rightly adopting the stance of “it’ll be out when it’s ready”, with a not-at-all specific date of “early next year”, and I have no problem with this at all. Designing new software from the ground up is a daunting task, especially in a market where there are a number of remarkably similar applications. Making one stand out is hard, especially when you’re trying to do something different to the others. So I completely appreciate that The One is taking time to come to market.

As Sulevi said, The One is now feature complete and going through the QC cycle to make sure that it’s fit for sale. When that will be is anyone’s guess, but when it comes, I’m confident that waves will be made.