DJ Vintage

Hi Mark, welcome to the forums. Enjoy your time here.

Unfortunately, nobody can tell you which software and controller are best for you. They can only tell you what is best for them.

If you use the search option you will soon find lots has been written on the topic of picking gear. That is not where it starts though. It starts with workflow, then software choice, then setting a budget, making a shortlist and finally picking the controller.

I would always suggest getting a starter controller first, you can always upgrade when you have figured out what it is you really want/need once you have some experience under the belt. It would be very nasty to find out that you bought an expensive high-end controller and 9 months in you have to conclude that it does not have some of the features you then know you want.

There is a list of likely suspects for starter controllers. You will also find those looking for earlier posts on the subject.

Non-tablet controllers that we think qualify an are a good fit for a starting DJ are, in no particular order:
* Pioneer DDJ-SB (both 1 and 2)
* Numark Mixtrack Pro (1 thru 3)
* Denon MC2000
* Traktor S2 (preferably only use with Traktor software)
* Reloop Beatmix 2

Tablet controllers:
* Reloop Beatpad (both 1 and 2)
* Numark iDJ Pro (best physical iPad integration ever)
* Pioneer WeGo 3 (different button lay-out making it my personal least favorite)

I would not worry too much about connections and such, the controller will most likely spend most of it’s maiden year sitting inside in your practice room and for the occasional house party you can always hook something up even if it isn’t an all-pro approach.

Some things like have dedicated filter knobs for example or track gain/trim options are way more important at this stage of your “career”.

You mention a few other things as well, like being able to use two different softwares. Apart from the cost component of having two separate platforms and the learning curve and keeping current on two softwares, there is more to DJ-ing with software than just putting tracks in that software. You need to prepare tracks (beat grids, cue points, loop points, etx.). If you have two platforms you have to do that for both and there is no way to easily sync them.Let;s say you are out at a gig and you come up with two cue points and a loop for two tracks where you get an amazing mix. You’d have to write it down in order to make sure you have that info next time you play with the other platform.

Something like this (if you are set on using both) could lead to selecting DJay Pro on both Mac and iPad if the track info can be synced between both.

There is no shame in not knowing what you don’t know yet. It’s where everyone started at some point or another. If you follow the best practice described you will soon end up picking something you feel confident will get you through that first year of practicing basic skills, building your collection and gaining that uber-important experience and knowledge to determine where to go after your starter controller.

In short, go read up on previous posts and if you have any questions left, please drop them here.

Hope that helps some.

Hi Allan, welcome to the forums. Clear introduction. If you could post your question in the DJ Booth I’ll give you an elaborate answer there. Your thinking is clearly but a bit flawed here and there as a result of being new.

You came to the right place, lots of people with mountains of experience (not in the very least your moderators with over 50 years combined 😀 ) and also lots of people in your position or those who have just moved on to the next step in their DJ-ing.

Enjoy your time here!

Not a clue unfortunately. Not even what online shops they have in Italy.

But welcome to Europe!

This Parrot is dead, it has gone and met his maker, it is demised, it’s pushing up the daisies, it has ceased to exist, it is no longer!

Not many playback devices that go beyond CD-quality sound cards, so upon receipt of the stream it will simply be “translated” into 16/44.1, losing whatever edge you had while mastering.

Also, it depends on your source. If your tracks are made by you in a DAW, you might have 24/48 source material (although I’d hope you would have 24/96 resolution to work with), but if you use regular tracks, none of them will be any higher than 16/44.1.

And even if you master your own tracks, which you created in 24/48 or 24/96 (which is great as you have the extra frequency range and headroom while manipulating your sound in your DAW), it’s common and best practice to “bounce” (=convert) your tracks to CD-quality before publication. One of the advantages is that your DAW most likely has better bouncing tools than if you leave the conversion to the playback end. Going from 24 to 16 and from 96/48 to 44.1 inevitably means that some things get lost. The better the conversion the better the result. So I would always advise people to work with that standard outside their own production environment, being 16/44.1.

I have never heard of people hearing up to 28KHz, 20KHz being the accepted maximum at the high end and that only baby’s and infants usually have that range. Not saying such people don’t exist but they would be such an anomaly to not warrant the extra quality for the other 99.99% that probably stops short of 18KHz. Getting technical here, the reason they made 44.1 the standard for audio tracks is that they found out that you needed at least twice the audible frequency range in order to get things to sound good (I’ll leave THAT technical explanation out of this post lol). For video (DVD) purposes they lifted that to 48KHz. Following the at least twice rule, for someone with a 28KHz upper limit, you’d have to record in 60KHz or more, meaning 96KHz, so your 48KHz would still fall short.

Just my two cents. Again, I know diddly about streaming, so, good post guys!

I don’t know much about streaming but I am wondering why someone would want to use 24-bit 48KHz audio when 16-bit 44.1KHz is CD-quality and much less bandwidth demanding.

Yep, misread the last part of your message where you went into OS X and Windows. Jumped to the wrong conclusion.

I could go into a whole dissertation on this topic, but I won’t.

As far as I know such a tool does not exist and with good reason.

You do not purchase (or get for free) the software, you acquire the right to use it for as long as the manufacturer allows. The advent of iOS/Android tablets has given manufacturers more tools to enforce that. If you had bought Photoshop at it’s regular price of several hundred dollars, you’d expect that right to last a long time and rightfully so. And if you bought Photoshop you’d be allowed to keep using it, albeit without support or guarantee and with no upgrades or bug fixes. Nor could you claim anything if your old Photoshop no longer works with the next release of Windows. With apps, it’s a manufacturers right to revoke the right to use at any given time and app stores make it easy for that to happen.

While an inconvenience and no doubt sad experience when you have to give up a free tool, I’d say it’s just that, an inconvenience and not a problem. It’s only a problem if you stacked all your chips on that tool and it’s disappearance means the end of your product or service. And putting yourself in such a dependent state isn’t good business to start with. Any tool designed to let you save and reinstall an app will only postpone the inevitable, the moment the app stops working (properly) as the OS continuous to evolve.

I have had free apps work fine on iOS6 only to stop working totally when iOS7 hit. Some apps disappeared (the developers not willing to continue development), others released updates shortly after. But in either case, if I had saved the iOS6 version because a tool had existed and I would now try to reinstall on iOS-whatever, it simply wouldn’t work and or cause an unacceptable security hazard.

Unfortunately, in this modern ICT day, nothing IT-related is truly “forever” anymore.