Total Digital novice with lots of questions

Such a pity that you didn’t come to use BEFORE buying the controller. Had you gotten a 4-channel controller that is also a standalone mixer, you could have ditched the Behringer (always a good thing, imho 🙂 ), hooked up the SLs (should you still want to use them and the UCD200. Although I have to say, once you get used to the controller, you probably won’t want to use either the SLs or the UCD anymore.

Also the MTP2 is not the best of controllers for Traktor. If Traktor is really what you want to use, the S2 or S4 would have been far better options.

To run the audio from Traktor through your Behringer, you would need an external soundcard, but this would degrade your MTP2 to nothing more than two midi deck controllers, the mixer part would be there just for fun. And space wise … this will take up a LOT of space and probably not make much sense from a workflow sense.

In short, make up your mind what it is you really want to do (be a traditional vinyl or CD DJ, a DVS DJ = controlling DJ software with timecode vinyl or CD or a digital DJ who does all of his stuff on the controller with his laptop. Frankly, the MTP2 can do more on it’s own than the other stuff combined.

It’s not so much about that as it is that you have a mishmash of stuff now with some overlap in functions. Having a controller in a setup with also a regular mixer is a bit like hooking up a car behind another car instead of a trailer. It has steering and an engine. All stuff you don’t need.

Personally I don’t care if you do traditional vinyl, DVS, CD, CD with Timecode, just laptop, controller DJ-ing, whatever suits you is what you should be doing.

I just wish everyone the best possible experience with the right gear. And sometimes “transitions” needs to be a plunge.

Actually, having said that, I’d use what you have as two different setups and not integrate. You can still do your thing the “old” way, but if you work/play/practice with the laptop/controller (and you can always run the master output from the controller through an Aux channel on the Behringer (can’t believe I am saying this LOL) to use the same speakers without having to unplug anything. But the Behringer would just act as a big PA volume control, everything else done on the Numark.

It’d be interesting to see how long it takes before you don’t go back to vinyl or CD (funny how you mention digital CD on one side of the spectrum and vinyl on the other, imho its vinyl and CD on one side and digital on the other), I am guessing not too long.

Thanks, I should after 38 years at the game. I started at age 14 with vinyl and used everything under the sun (well, almost) since.

It’s not all that complicated, but it is something a bit of a moment of having the general concept “land”.

If you split the two setups, you don’t need anything else. Just run master output into your Behringer (so you can leave all your speakers hooked up) and indeed use the master volume on the controller to control the right (0dB) level of output going into your Behringer mixer. You use the gain on the channels you are using on the Behringer to keep it on 0dB as well. Then you can use the channel fader and the master volume on the mixer to control how much sound comes out of your speakers.
Once you have that setup (as you clearly have done before), you do everything on your controller, not touching it’s master volume anymore, but using the mix functionality of the controller and the decks there. This way you can still add in your vinyls or CDs, but you’d have to use two different “mixers”, the one built into your controller for mixing the tracks in Traktor and the Behringer for the rest. Very unpractical, imho.

If you want to integrate both setups, so you have the decks from the software come in as seperate channels on your behringer, you’d need to add an external sound card (clearly the Numark can’t split the output that way even if it does have a sound card on board). With an external sound card hooked up to two channels on the Behringer, you can now control everything (soundwise) on the Behringer, while using the decks on the controller to control the actual tracks. Now you are not using the mixer bit of the Numark, nor it’s built-in sound card and you are using controllers on one unit and have to mix on a separate unit (Behringer) that sits to it’s side, or below it or whatever setup you picked. Again, that is a waste of stuff that is already available in the controller, not very logistically sound and finally you will lose out on some functionality if you don’t use the mix function on your controller.

Bringing us back to the relevant question, do you really want an integrated solution with everything hooked up together and all mixing done solely on the Behringer, or is it fine to have a laptop/controller setup that you use, where it’s master output is routed through your Behringer so it can then come out of the speakers and keeping your analogue setup intact while not using the controller and doing things as you were used to.

Hope that clarified things some. If not, let me know what part you are having trouble with.

Well the Audio 2 Mk2, while a good OUTPUT sound card, has no inputs so can’t be used to hook up your turntables to digitize your vinyls.

The problem seems to be that you don’t have all your music digital yet, prohibiting a quick switch to digital. If you plan on manually converting (as I said earlier) this will take a long time, especially if you have lots of vinyls you want to convert. There is no shortcut with recording vinyl in that you HAVE to play the entire track/album in order to record it, then you have to do the work on the recorded digital track (getting rid of hiss, crackles and pops, ticks, etc.). In my experience, a 5 minute track takes up to an hour to get ready, with a minimum of 15 minutes (putting it on the deck, cueing up the needle, setting your recording software, recording 5 minutes, listening back 5 minutes, saving the track.

You can see how that adds up in time.

Would it be an idea to sign up to one or more DJ/Record pools and search for the tracks in your vinyl collection and download those? It will, again, save you countless hours and days and have you on the digital track so much faster.

trade the mixtrack in and get an old S4, IMO