New to mixing and looking for a controller and software suggestion

1 Should I go with VDJ or Serato

Personally I would check out Serato. For me currently it has the most stable development and improves and innovates.

2 ~$350 budget

I would also put on reloop Beatmix 4, MC4000 (might just fit in), Mixtrack Pro 3 and check them out.

3 I plan on DJing in Clubs and House

OK, good for you 🙂

4Looking at the following controllers
Gemini G4V

No no no no no. Just no.

Pioneer ddj SB2
Solid choice, I would not worry about XLR if you play in clubs most connectors to house mixers will be RCA and you will have cable length below 2m. Nevertheless I would look into the above controllers.

If you have other suggestion please post them as a reply
Note: I will be Using a MacBook Pro Retina 15″ and Vmoda m100 headphones

lol – Terry, tell us how you feel about Gemini! That said, he sums it up perfectly. Just don’t go there. While I’m sure Gemini are more than capable of building a quality piece of kit, they have yet to actually do it.

As for the software question – what are you looking to get out of it? A lot of people on here will preach Serato, and it is excellent software, but depending on what you want to do with it Virtual has areas where it excels. For example, I stick with VDJ because of the excellent mapping options and compatibility with pretty much all hardware. If you’re more familiar with the production side of things, you may want to take a good hard look at Traktor as it is the more “producer” like of the DJ packages – with remix decks and stems.

Nope, no DJ Software looks/feels like Logic. Primarily because Logic is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and not a DJ tool.

As for the number of channels. Personally I don’t think as a beginning DJ you need 4-channels. Many of the 2-channel mixers have 4-DECK control, so you can dabble a bit in 3-/4-deck mixing, but I’d even advise against that.

You will need some time to get to grips with the basic techniques of DJ-ing and for that 2-channels is plenty.

There are two things to consider here I think:
1) You are not sure if you like DJ-ing, so investing in a rather expensive high-end is dangerous. If, after a few months, you decide that DJ-ing is not for you and you will stick with producing, you’ve got this stuff to get rid of.
2) More importantly, you don’t know what you like/need in DJ-ing yet (could be stems for all I know, requiring very specific hard-/software) and you haven’t figured out your workflow. Those are things that you need to know so you can make a good choice for you (nobody can pick your software/hardware for you)about what software you want to use and then what controller to get.

So our advise usually is to start with one of the starter controllers, which are still packed with features but don’t cost an arm and a leg. Learn to master the basics on those and by the time you start missing features you will know much more about what controller to get as an upgrade. You can sell your first controller or keep it as spare/backup.

This would clearly be a good place to start comparing DJ software. Be sure to read up on articles on the blog that recently appeared. New stuff on the horizon, like the Pioneer Full DJ version of RekordBox.

Yep … nice choice.