Laptop DJing. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

pure laptop djing, you get rsi from mouse movements! Most controlling tho can be mapped to the keyboard. That said, it would be interesting to use traktor with a touch screen.

Pro’s
1: Portability
2: A Massive Collection Of Tunes On Hand
3: Harmonic Mixing (without Burning CD’s)
4: One Cable (without a Controller) And You Are Performing
5: Fabulous Software (and Much Choice of Software)
6: Ability To Create Own Tracks On the Fly and Merge with Set
7: Acceptance Of DJ Evolution
8: A Back-Up Laptop (in case of Crash/Failure) Is Very Cheap

Con’s
1: Lack Of Physical Medium (such as Vinyl; CD; Decks)

If that is the Square thing that looks just like a the Screen off a Laptop; Richie Hawtin is doing this now 🙂
Though he is probably a Multi-Millionaire now and can do Anything

I like scratching on my ipad 😛

pros:
Portability
I can be up and running in 1 min if need be
have a collection of over 20,000 songs (purchased) that caters for most crowds
my setup can be as simple or as complex as I want (1 controller or 5)
I can and do mashup songs on the fly
I can make you a mix cd whilst I play
my backup laptop cost 250euro and has my whole song collection on it (compair that to 2 cdjs and a mixer and all the songs on top plus wait … cd’s)
there are loads more pros but this is all I can think of soo far

*** I can setup before I leave for a gig including loading tracks onto decks A and B close my screen and it goes into a batteryless sleep and open it a week later and rock if needs be 😉

cons:
oh no mr sync dj (i tell people im a controllerist not a dj these days)
you should really learn to use cdjs as I think it helps you as a dj
crashes although traktor 2 is stable as hell, traktor 1 used to blue screen if I unplugged a controller from it
traktor 2 doesnt do this although if I unplug sound card there is no sound (oooo I can add to the pro’s ***)

@ashtherookiedj, Im joking I tend to use my ipad for a internet browser more then anything, I used it as a controller for traktor for a while but with wifi drop outs it wasnt too fun.

if I ever dj with it, its in friends houses whilst drinking nothing too serious, its good for a quick play though, was trying to make a cdj like controller on it for traktor but its too difficult so that got left behind 🙂

Pros:
Portable
No need to burn CDs and reburn CDs
Easy and fast to set up
Takes a small amount of space.
Many cool features and functions
Midi mappable to do what you like.

Cons:
It takes forever to beatgrid all your music
(I have 6500 tunes and in a period of 3 month I have managed to beatgrid 1800
all my sparetime I have spent on this)
You will have too many tunes in your HD = hard to find chose music
Even a Mac can freze or crash
The Traktor SW takes time to learn if you shall use it fully
(The Traktor bible takes time to read)
Not acepted on all venues and not by all other DJs
Midi mapping can fail, all upgrades on sw (from OS to Traktor) can fail.

Basicly I do think that the biggest con is that it takes a lot of time……

I use CDs in meanwhile and has a MC6000 for the venues that lacks space for my two S3700 and X1700….

//DJ Hessler

DJ Hessler, post: 6530 wrote: Pros:
Portable
No need to burn CDs and reburn CDs
Easy and fast to set up
Takes a small amount of space.
Many cool features and functions
Midi mappable to do what you like.

Cons:
It takes forever to beatgrid all your music
(I have 6500 tunes and in a period of 3 month I have managed to beatgrid 1800
all my sparetime I have spent on this)
You will have too many tunes in your HD = hard to find chose music
Even a Mac can freze or crash
The Traktor SW takes time to learn if you shall use it fully
(The Traktor bible takes time to read)
Not acepted on all venues and not by all other DJs
Midi mapping can fail, all upgrades on sw (from OS to Traktor) can fail.

Basicly I do think that the biggest con is that it takes a lot of time……

I use CDs in meanwhile and has a MC6000 for the venues that lacks space for my two S3700 and X1700….

//DJ Hessler

*Ive experienced cdjs freezing whilst playing.

*Traktor works as fast as your laptop does mine takes on average 2 seconds for a 6 min song to beatgrid, which I can usually do during the last phrase of the previous track.

*Having too many songs can be the same as cd collection, its why its highly recommended to delete what you dont play or even save to an external harddrive. As a dj its one of the things we are known for about song choice, when I used to play on cdjs I found it could take ages to find a cetain song from a couple hundred cd’s. with any dj program or even computer you can search and have that song in seconds.

*Traktor, Serato, Mixxx, Torq etc can all be as simple or as complex as you want its down to how you work, When I switched over to traktor I used a 2 deck layout, these days I have 4 fx decks, 2 decks and 2 sample decks.
its how we as a dj use it. With any braincells its simple to have up and running in mins and doing basic mixing, which several of my non dj friends and girlfriend have prooved.

*its true both can crash but ive seen cartridges wearing down on tt’s making them sound shit, cdjs not working, I left cdj djing a few years ago because of new technology, I dont get paid enough to dig out my old cd collection, burn all my new songs onto cd’s, then go and actually attempt to do a good mix.
now im not saying it would be brutal but it doesnt suit my style anymore, and im sure it would take me a while to get used to it again as its been over a year since ive been on a cdj1000 and about 3years since ive done a night on them.

this isnt to start a fight by the way 🙂 just my suggestions and opinion 🙂 feel free to give reasons back 🙂 🙂 🙂