Memory Stick (it to 'em)…

Hi!

I’ve always favored SanDisk product. They are one of the leaders in memory cards, and offer a vast assortment of sizes and durability options. Unless you use the memory sticks as Swiss Army Knives, I don’t see why you would need a very rugged one. If you keep it in a casing with your DJ gear, it’s more than enough. The “rugged” part is usually the wrapping, extra layers of protection against moisture and stuff like that – it doesn’t really mean that the drive itself is more rugged.

There are many providers of hardware encrypted memory drives. Several of them are, according to the Pioneer DJ boards, not compatible with CDJs.

Also, keep speed in mind. If you are using uncompressed files, like FLAC, AIFF or similar. Uncompressed files are huge in size, and this greatly affects loading times on CDJs. A faster memory drive will load tracks faster. CDJ-900NXS and CDJ-2000NXS support USB 2.0, while NXS2 and XDJ-1000 incl. MK2 support USB 3.0.

BR Tord

I know our colleagues over at DJ Tech Tools did a test on them some time ago, worth reading as they cover the general characteristics as well as a few specifics.

I bought the Corsair Survivors, pretty expensive, but – provided you put the covers back on when you transport them – also pretty indestructible, including ending up in the laundry machine when you forget to take it out of your pants pocket.

With the lousy way of searching for tracks on most units that accept USB sticks, I personally keep only my core collection on a stick, limited to somewhere in the 1.200 to 1.500 track range. So 32GB for high res MP3 or AAC256 is plenty big, but if you prefer lossless (even WAV), a 64GB would even do the trick.

Hey Mike! Not so off topic… At least it’s connected, but perhaps it should be moved to it’s own thread. Moderator decides.

Besides working as a DJ I also work with computers and everything related to them. I have used my knowledge to build my own machines over the years. My main computer for the moment is a 3 year old AMD 8 core @ 4.4 Ghz, 16 GB 2133 DDR3, OS drive Samsung 250 GB 840 pro, Windows 10 Pro. For storage I have 6 internal Hdd’s, a total of 16 TB and 2 external 2 TB Hdd’s.

If I had the money I’d upgrade to an Intel 6-core/12 threads, but this one will have to last a couple of years more…

What’s important to me is the fact that the 8 cores is fully utilized when I use Rekordbox, Mixed-In-Key and Platinum Notes4. To process 200 tracks are a no-brainer through all 3 stages and the final step, exporting to my two external SSD’s I use for my music. I can do all of it within an hour. Comes in handy busy Fridays when every minute counts to get the last music ready to play… As long I’ve sorted the music and picked the ones I want/need to add, this is the last step of my work flow every week. Of course it’s not always 200 tracks, but you get the idea…

Using Sata 3 drives and USB3 is important to get the speed wanted here. A couple of times a year I clean out my SSD’s and export everything back, +12000 tracks (120GB). Doing this to two SSD’s in no problem to manage during a day. It’s nice to clean out bad playlists/tracks and knowing everything is OK now and then. Every time I update my laptop, AMD 4 core @ 2.0 Ghz, I get reminded why I need a fast primary computer for my music. Everything takes at least 5 times longer on the laptop. That’s 5 hours vs 1 hour doing the same job.

This is about saving the unpaid time you need to prepare for the weekends, so assume you can save 1 hour/week… do the math and it’s quite easy to motivate an investment in a faster computer 🙂 .