TIMBAP is a new solution for the digital DJ, developed by students and assistants of the University of Ulm. It provides a rugged tangible interface for browsing your music collection AND manipulating playback by scratching, pitching, skipping etc. Like many others it is based on an acoustic timecode signal recorded to vinyl records. In contrast to existing digital solutions however, it completely releases the DJ from mouse, keyboard and monitor. Instead it relies on physical interaction with the standard club turntable only.

The rotation of the turntable serves as a means for scrolling through the music collection automatically. The user stays in control though and can always intervene manually - for example by holding the record or winding it back. In order to provide goal-oriented search, we also support a direct absolute positioning using the tone arm.