x

Mac Air or Pro

Home 2023 › Forums › Digital DJ Gear › Mac Air or Pro

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • October 27, 2016 at 2:43 am #2458431
    Caleb Grayson
    Participant

    any Mac made on/after 2012 will be sufficient enough in terms of processing for any DJ application. make size, weight, screen the primary considerations.
    if i could get (another) dedicated DJ Mac its be the smallest Air with and external screen for home. 11″ Air is much more screen than my Traktor S8 controller has.

    also, is say 100 GB is plenty of space for tracks. no external hardrive needed.

    October 27, 2016 at 9:07 am #2458441
    Tord
    Participant

    Hi!

    If your son is getting into DJing and mixing, but hasn’t really gotten into it yet, this seems like a huge waste of money to spend. If you have an older laptop/ipad/pc at home – start out with that. See if he likes it, and if he gets serious about it, after getting gigs etc, then looking at this again. Put the money into a decent controller, monitors and headphones, not to mention music.

    My thoughts if you still continue to go ahead, though..

    1. The Pro is vastly more durable. The Air, while sleek and sexy, doesn’t have the same tolerance for moving, impacts, vibration, etc.

    2. I recommend the opposite. In fact, I’d make an effort to limit the selection of tracks from the very first day. Never go over 200-250 tracks in his digital libary. DJing is about knowing your music intimately, and if you have 20000 tracks, there simply isn’t any way to do that.

    BR Tord

    October 27, 2016 at 9:50 am #2458511
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    Tord summed it up very well.

    However the Air is plenty sufficient for DJing, most DJs only prefer Pros (especially 15”) just because of screen size.

    And I also hugely agree that limiting the music to below 500 songs for a beginner DJ is essential for success. And ANY notebook can hold 500 songs without external drives.

    October 27, 2016 at 6:21 pm #2458681
    Ian Williams
    Participant

    I use an 11″ Air with Traktor, & it does the job perfectly.

    I use it with an external screen / keyboard / mouse when it’s docked at home, but the lappy screen is sufficient for gigs (I’m a Traktor user, so the space bar takes me in & out of my main collection).

    October 27, 2016 at 7:08 pm #2458691
    Brandon Wilson
    Participant

    Thanks for all of the input. Today I have him set up with a desktop that I build as a gaming PC but im not using it now. It has i7, 16gigs of ram, top end video and solid state drives. Believe it or not my reason for looking for the air is when he wants to go to a friends house to DJ a small party I don’t want him taking that PC. I put about 2400 in that one a year ago and I don’t want him messing it up. Based on the advice I likely will get him an Air during black friday or after Apple announces its new PC. At that time the prices should drop about 2-400 which will keep me around 800 or so. After reading here I likely should have started him on something else I got him the Numark MixTrack Pro 3 & Lightwave Speakers DJ Package from idjnow.com. I should have gone with the Pioneer but with that said it should suffice for a 13 year old that wants to have music at his parties and wants to explore becoming a DJ. I figure worst case I have a small set up for parties and he has a new laptop for school. However it should keep him busy for a few months while he sees if this is his thing. He plays the drums, piano and taps on his legs to the beat of every song. This is just one way for me to support him with his passion for music. Thanks for the help I likely will be back to ask more questions as he moves forward.

    October 27, 2016 at 7:10 pm #2458701
    Brandon Wilson
    Participant

    Also thanks for the comments about music. I would have thought the opposite and it makes sense now.

    October 28, 2016 at 1:38 pm #2458851
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    Honestly the Mixtrack Pro 3 is excellent and will keep him occupied for long, it is in no way inferior to Pioneers starter offering and has the better pitch faders.
    You can easily upgrade the Mixtrack Pro with a reloop Neon in a year or so and squeeze another year of live out of that setup.

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • The forum ‘Digital DJ Gear’ is closed to new topics and replies.