DJ Vintage

I can only give you my personal opinion, but I would not spend money on either option frankly. The 350 setup is easily the worst thing out there from Pioneer (imho), loading times on anything but the smallest of collections on a RekordBox-stick is pretty bad, the display very limited, searching – already a b*tch on any one-knob system – seems even worse on the 350s.

As a CDJ-alternative the XDJ700s are clearly a few classes better than the 350s, but at the end of the day they are still just CDJs but without CDs. If you want the extra functionality/creativity offered by DJ software, then it does not make much sense using an external mixer. Even with USB connectivity you would be missing a LOT of functions that a controller would offer you by way of extra buttons, knobs and even faders.

As far as new coming gear is concerned, usually you won’t know til very shortly before things are officially launched. Imho it’s really bad policy to postpone the purchase of new gear because of thing that might be coming next.

My recommendation would be to read some of the recent posts on the topic of picking your first controller. There is a logical multi-step approach to determining what gear would fit you best, starting with determining your workflow. From there it get’s easier to narrow down your options. Worfklow, software (if you are going that route) and budget together will lead you to a shortlist of gear. The two setups you mention for example would, again in my opinion, never fit in the same shortlist as they are far apart in features and price.

Not quite sure what you are trying to accomplish here. You want to take the (master) output from your controller and run that into your sound card (inputs) in order to record what comes out of your controller?

Please folks, post to the correct forums!

I have moved this post from the Forum FAQ and it has clearly nothing to do with the forum itself, but is about courses.

Help make our (moderator) lives easier and spend 5 seconds longer before posting to make sure it goes where it should. Also, your chance of the right people reading it goes up if you post in the proper forum.

On-topic:
1) We don’t know, this is all determined over at the main site. We, the moderators, are not part of the regular DDJT team. We might get to hear news of (re)starting courses a little bit sooner, but as of yet no news that we know of about when the scratching course restarts.
2) Don’t know how long it was exactly, but effectively it’s available for life and you can pace yourself. The only thing that is on a timed schedule is the webinar support from the tutors.
3) Steve Canueto is our resident scratch tutor (and awesome at it). The course does have several lessons by DJ Angelo in the Power Skills section

The “stick” you talk about does not come from your primary customers, the audience and not even from most venue owner and promoters (who are mostly interested in drink turn-over and number of people in the house anyway), it only comes from (basically insecure) other DJ’s.

Yet for some reason we sometimes seem to be more bothered by a “fellow” DJ’s opinion than we are by our crowd.

Tools are there to help you. Yes, it pays to be able to drive a stick-shift when your rental company ran out of automatics so you don’t get stuck, but there is no shame in enjoying the pleasures an automatic car offers. It allows you to spend less time moving a stick and pressing extra pedals. Time and energy you can put into other things.

Same with DJ-ing. Sync and beatgridding offers some (power) mixing options that just can’t be obtained with regular gear and/or make it so much easier that you’d be crazy to do it manually if you didn’t have to. I say use the tools when you can and do it manually when you must (or just for your own pleasure, but never for the sake of other DJs).

Just my 3 cents as usual.

Having passed that station years and years ago, going back to CD’s and CDJs as my primary platform will never happen.

It does depend a little on what kind of DJ you are. I am a mobile DJ that plays just about any genre from any era. First just software (PCDJ RED among others) on a laptop with keyboard and mouse I “graduated” and moved to the (then high-tech) Numark D2 Director (see below picture). As you can tell effectively a double CD-deck reminiscent of the old Denon DN-S2600 and such, but with an option to hook up a hard disk and use digital tracks. Simple management software took care of indexing so you could find tracks quicker. Rudimentary in retrospect but it worked.

http://www.numark.com/images/product_large/d2dir_angle_lg.jpg

Then I bought my first real controller, the Denon MC6000. I’ll freely admit that I am a big and long-time Denon fan. It came with Traktor software. At the time Traktor were trying to get their software bundled with many controllers. Pretty soon I had strong love for the controller, but way less for Traktor as I found it very unsuitable for mobile DJ-ing, but especially for my workflow. Since Serato was very closed ecosystem then and could not be used with the MC6000 I moved to Mixvibes Cross. It has most in common with Serato and works fine and I use it to this day. I then sold my MC6000 in anticipation of buying the mk2. Unfortunately Mixvibes was behind the curve on creating a mapping for that one, so I waited. At some point I was able to swap some other gear for a “golden” DDJ-SX. This I have been using for the last couple of years and works just fine. As you’d expect from a higher-end pro-grade piece of equipment.

Since the announcement of the MC8000 I have been waiting to get one and it looks like I’ll be able to order one this week. I have never considered the XDJ-RX in general and after reading Phil’s review and hearing from co-moderator Terry_42 (a more than avid Reloop afficionado who willingly tossed his Terminal Mix 8 aside for the MCX8000) I don’t think the XDJ-RX and MCX8000 can be compared as equals.

So my vote goes to the 8000.

Point of attack number one (after making sure you are actually use phono input if that is what your TT puts out or line if the TT is line) is to gain/trim. As we advise here, you should 0dB gain your tracks, meaning the 0dB light is on just about continuously (certainly on modern digital dance music) with the peaks in the track hitting the second light regularly. This is, on many mixers and controllers usually somewhere in the 10 to 1 o’clock position of the trim/gain knob. Switching to phono this should give you PLENTY of headroom to get the phone input to the same level.

Clearly if the DJ before you has been running the mixer hot, with both channel and master meters in the red, there is no headroom left to play with unfortunately. All the previous DJ managed to do is show his/her ignorance, mess up the system and audience for you and – most likely – made the house technician angry

Track gaining is something you should do with EVERY track, regardless of the source. It’s very good practice as you may not always be in the presence of a system that automatically does the gaining for you and/or the automatic gaining might not be all that good.

Even if you follow the above, you will run into something else though, the results of what is known as “the loudness war”.

In order to claim as many listeners for their radio stations as possible, people started using compressors to make tracks sound “louder” and more energetic. While compressors certainly have that effect, they also have one very bad side-effect, namely that the dynamic range (the difference in dB between the softest and loudest parts of a track) is totally gone and the track sounds loud but flat as a pancake. Most modern dance tracks will have a dynamic range of sometimes less than 3dB!

Old (vinyl) music was created with a far wider dynamic range, making it more “alive”. Unfortunately if you were to track gain a vinyl track the same way you would a modern digital track, the vinyl one would always SOUND (perception of the DJ and audience) less loud, even if the peaks run at the same level.

The only direct technical solution to this would be to run your phono channels through a compressor, bringing it within the same dynamic range as digital music (and taking away the dynamic range). Not very practical unless you only play on/with your own gear. And even then, track compression is a sound engineering tool and not something you can do with “1-touch” settings.

If you like vinyl for the feel and the gear and don’t care too much if the music is on vinyl, going DVS is obviously an option as you would manipulate your tracks the way you would with regular vinyl, but the sound output would be from digital music from your DJ software.

Hope that helps some.

Please don’t revive/bump posts that are this old. If you have a question to which you can not find an answer in previous posts and/or you believe that things may have changed in a year’s time (which it probably did), then make a new post.

On-topic: if you have a really dark room and preferably a hazer they will get you some effect. However, imho, like with PA there is no shortcut to quality. Meaning that there is a reason pro-lighting uses fixtures that cost 10, 20 or more times the price of a budget fixture.

Especially at high end parties like weddings (usually a once in a lifetime affair with quite a budget) I would not want to be there with 100 dollar lights. Also lights are only as good as the people controlling them. So if you decide to add lighting to your gear, be prepared to find a friend that is willing and able to be your LJ (light jockey). If you set all these budget things to sound mode or automatic, it really feels disconnected from the music.

Another thing is that setting up lights takes a disproportionate amount of time for the extra money you can usually charge for it. You can easily spend an hour and a half setting up the lights properly and an hour taking it all down. And there is just no way you can recoup that usually.

Again, just my personal opinion.

The only lights I usually bring of my own are a few LED par cans that I use to uplight a few walls, columns or trees/plants. If the customer wants lighting, I rent (including operator!).

Hello there in Virginia, been there a few times, nice state.

Welcome to the forums, looks like you are taking the right steps. There is much to set in Traktor and unless you know what each setting does, you should probably better leave them alone. With the S2 as controller things should be pretty straightforward to setup for first time use.

If you have more questions, just post them in the appropriate forum. If you want people to know about your (mixcloud) mixes, you can post links to it in the Mixes, Music & Shows forum for maximum exposure. Also be sure to check out some of the “sticky” threads, especially the video commentary by co-moderator Terry_42. You will find those at the top of each forum.

Enjoy your stay here!