Home 2023 Forums Digital DJ Gear USB Flash Drives & SD Cards

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  • #2116461
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Not many and no you don’t. The current USB sticks are even faster than the SD cards I think.

    My advice would be to stick with USB-sticks. Most players that have SD-slots will have USB slots as well. Obviously if you own or play regularly on gear that will only take SD-cards, you will still need to keep a set of those.

    #2116751
    Glenn McCrary
    Participant

    How much space on the USB stick would you recommend?

    #2116811
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Depends a little on the audio format you are using, but at 320MP3, you are looking at about 2,5 (actually 2,34 or so) MB per minute. So let’s say 4 minutes a track gives you 10 MB per track. Which is 100 per GB. A simple 8 GB stick will give you 800 tracks. Let’s also assume that you’ll play (on average) 3 minutes of any track (the rest is lost in mixing and transitioning). That means you need 20 tracks per hour. For a 4 hour set you need twice the amount of music as can fit into that period (you want to be able to manoeuvre after all). 4 hours times 20 tracks times 2 = 160 tracks.

    Conclusion 1: For a 4 hour set, you could do easily with a 4 GB stick (160 tracks times 10 MB = 1,6GB).

    The biggest pitfall for digital DJs is having TOO much music in their collection. I think a decent size for your primary/main collection is somewhere between 1.000 and 2.000 tracks max (just my opinion), as this is the maximum amount of music you can know intimately enough to use.

    Conclusion 2: if you want to take your entire core collection with you to a gig, a 2000 track collection would need approximately 2000 time 10 = 20GB. Some software will take up some extra space (like waveform info and such), but a 32GB stick will be plenty.

    Hope that helps.

    #2117031
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    Also be aware that many CDJs cannot handle USB sticks bigger than 32GB.

    #2117361
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Good point.

    And always make sure the sticks are FAT-32 formatted (not Mac or NTFS) or they most likely won’t work either.

    #2124021
    Glenn McCrary
    Participant

    What is the best USB and/or SD Card for a Macbook Air? What are some of the best that are available at American retailers?

    #2124031
    Glenn McCrary
    Participant

    And can I still get a 32GB USB stick for a Macbook air? Will I need more than one USB stick?

    #2124041
    Glenn McCrary
    Participant

    Btw My Macbook Air is the 2013 Edition.

    #2124071
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Don’t think there are sticks/cards specifically for MacBooks, certainly not if you are looking for them formatted in FAT32. USB/Cards are generic as far as my knowledge goes.

    I think our colleagues over at dj tech tools did a recent article on just this subject.

    #2124331
    Glenn McCrary
    Participant

    for the Mac what would be my next best option other than FAT-32 format or is that the standard?

    #2124401
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Sticks are usually formatted in FAT32 out of the factory. You an always opt to go HFS+ if you will ONLY use the stick on OSX devices. Many/most DJ gear with USB ports will not support HFS+.

    For portability: FAT32
    For Mac proprietary: HFS+

    What will you be using the stick for?

    #2124741
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    To my knowledge the CDJ 2000 Nexus also supports ExFAT.

    #2126121
    Glenn McCrary
    Participant

    I will be using it for portability and music storage. What I am trying to figure out is if Mac proprietary is optional.

    Also is a 32 GB Sandisk USB stick FAT-32 formatted? Also will it be compatible with a Macbook Air 2013 Edition?

    #2126441
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Hi Glenn,

    I’d say most if not all USB-sticks come pre-formatted in FAT32 and that will be compatible with just about anything, including Mac, PC and CDJ(like) players.

    You are free to reformat to anything. I am sure you can reformat to the Apple HPF+ format if you so choose. I never tried because I never had a pressing reason to do so.

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