DJ Vintage
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DJ Vintage
ModeratorI have stopped it a mobile gigs when thing got out of hand in the crowd (too much rowdiness going on, on the verge of a major fight breaking out).
The only other time was the best night I ever played in Germany many years back. It didn’t matter what I played (the manager had asked me to play some bad music so not everybody would be dancing, the bar turnover had come to a complete halt by then), people would just keep dancing. When the manager went ape … I just killed the music mid-song, went on the mic, told everyone we were taking a drink break and we would be back in 3 minutes … It was a hoot.
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorI have worked with that setup. If you want to play CDs … it’s ok, not great, but ok. If you want to use MP3s stored on a USB stick or external harddisk, I think they totally suck. It is a disaster having one short line of text on the display and one rotary/push knob to locate tracks. Unless you do all your work with prepared playlists (you can prepare them on your PC with Rekordbox of course), finding and selecting tracks is dramatic (and painfully slow with big libraries). I can’t get used to this workflow.
I’d rather take a Numark iDJ Pro out (530 US$ or so?) for a night on the town than the 350 setup.
I think more people are starting to realise that they are not really special as controllers (as Terry says way better stuff available for way less money), they are average as cd players (jogwheels are nothing to rave about and very basic in features) and as mediaplayers the limitations in searching for a song are (in my opinion) to big to consider them seriously.
The mixer features a USB port, so you can record straight to a laptop or PC and four standard FX. Other than that, very plain.I had the power supply on the mixer break on me 15 minutes before I was supposed to start my first gig with this setup. Took 5 weeks to get it repaired and this was with new gear, straight from the box.
So, you may think they are worth every penny, but I would never even consider bidding on this stuff. And if I had a set, I’d probably be glad to get rid of it for 1.100 bucks.
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorDid some reading on the matter and it seems that indeed in the THRU setting the incoming audio signal is passed straight through to the main outs, with the master volume being the only working control.
It’s minimal and will save you if all you need to do is reboot your laptop. If anything more serious is up, I am not sure I’d want to depend on this as my backup for the rest of the night. It actually was one of the big reasons for me to forego the S$ and buy the Denon MC6000 which is a complete 4-channel analogue mixer as well as a controller. I bring two extra CDJ type players that have floorfillers loaded. If something goes wrong with my laptop/Traktor, I just hit play, open the fader and then I can start working on fixing the problem. Even if I can’t fix it, the two CD players and a small CD pouch (bout 1000 songs in MP3) will get me through the night.
Greetinx and good luck with your choice,
C.ModeratorDon’t worry about it too much. There are plenty of tutorials on Google and Youtube. In essence once you have created a new partition (which usually involves resizing the existing one – smaller – and creating a new on in the resulting free space) and have some kind of bootmanager installed (I like EasyBCD, but there are several around). Then it is like installing a new machine, add windows, update, the necessary DJ software and drivers and off you go.
Good luck & greetinx,
C.ModeratorUhm, but the S4 is NOT a standalone mixer,right? So I am really curious to see if the thru-trick works. I suspect that if it does work, you will have no control whatsoever, which essentially would be the same as plugging in your iPhone directly into your amp or active speakers.
Theoretically not even the channel faders should work. The S4 is a true controller, it’s knobs and faders control values in the software and the resulting output is sent to the sound card of the S4 and out to the speakers. If your laptop has crashed, there is nothing for the knobs to control.
For your sake I hope I am wrong. Be sure to let us know if it worked that way.
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorYep, it’s called dual-boot and effectively gives you two totally separate setups.
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorYeah, I think I have the best of both worlds right now. Both my SC2900s media players and my X1600 mixer have built in sound cards. Meaning I could actually use the matrix input on the Denon mixer and have up to 6 channels available … Not gonna use that, but it is a great backup that way.
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorI had a 320G HDD and I switched to a 128GB SDD. Love it. 2GB to 4GB is the big bang, 4GB to 8GB less so (in tests and practice). Another thing is that when you buy bigger memory it is often a faster bus speed too, so that is an additional boost.
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorAh … money … then yes 3K is certainly viable for a decent light setup. I thought you ment 3KWATT! = 3000Watt = decent in traditional lighting (low even) but immense in LED. 🙂
I must say that light is hardly ever an issue when I get invited, but then again I am not very active in looking for gigs. When they come they come, if not then fine. I do have a VERY limited amount of light (4 LED Pars and some combo laser/moonflower thingie). But still I think the extra amount of work to haul, setup and breakdown lighting hardly ever get’s paid enough. So, if people want light, I can sell it to them, but at the full price I need to pay someone from which to rent, including transport, setup, breakdown and operating the stuff.
I like lights, I just really can’t be bothered these days.
Greetinx,
C.+ModeratorAnd I wonder how many of those complainers bothered (or even knew) to check things like latency (which, when set wrongly, can cause dropouts, hickups and popping noises!). Easier to go “hey, this sh*t doesn’t work!”.
My point here, only listen to bad comments on forums if you know a little bit about the complainer or if it is a well argumented complaint.
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorIn my humble opinion that race is won hands down by the swapping your HDD out for a SSD. Better performance and no moving parts. I have seen boot times far under 25 seconds.
RAM is only a consideration if you are running 2GB or less. From 4GB onwards the benefits become less and less. I have a mid 2011 MBP 15 too and run it with 4GB without any problems or glitches. I do love my SSD upgrade though.
Greetinx,
C.Moderator3K LED … that is a LOT of light! :-p
ModeratorYep, be sure to kill every process you don’t need. Network off, wireless off, bluetooth off, windows search (kill this one permanently), virusscanner off. Pretty much strip anything you don’t need for DJ-ing from your PC. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. Many software (Java and Adobe to name just two) have little programs running that check for updates from time to time. Kill those too :-).
Greetinx,
C.ModeratorThank you, Terry!
Greetinx,
C.Moderator@Alex: Yep, 4 stereo channels out and off you go.
@Ess: Yep, the Audio 2 has 2 stereo outputs and should feed two input channels on an external mixerGreetinx,
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