deathy

For production use in Ableton, then, I have been really likin’ my APCKey25. Best of both worlds. There are other similar items from different brands, too, Novation makes one, there’s probably even an official one from Ableton (though I’m guessing). I got my APCKey25 because it had what I needed and had the best price at the time I was purchasing.

Can’t tell ya too much about the rest, sorry.

While there are certainly going to be clubs that are CDJ only, the number has been going down (though the newly released ones theoretically might see a resurgence in that). There will probably be a strong regional “taste” in that regard, though, so check out the venues you’d like to play and see if you can get a look at their booth.

If you can’t find a store that will let you gefingerenpokeren their CDJs (not actually that surprising, shops can be a bit uptight about letting people play with their expensive toys), and you find you really do need to practice on them for your favorite local clubs, it might be possible to rent them from a rental place – you might even be able to swing a price reduction by renting in the middle of the week when the rental place is likely to have them sitting on the shelf collecting dust as opposed to weekend use.

Pretty sure the XDJ-1000 is a CDJ-1000 without the CD slot, though, so that will probably be passable as practice, since the CD slot is vestigial these days anyway… but you’re not going to get much practice just playing around in the store.

Good luck! (I really hope I never have a gig that’s going to be uptight about CDJs.)

Hi, Toby, welcome!

Are you making money off of these parties?

The universal answer you will almost always get here is – rent, don’t buy, until you are making enough money from your gigs that they are paying for their own gear. Plus, this way, you will probably have access to some expertise from the folks who are renting you the gear to be able to answer questions like this for you.

There are folks here who really grok the math behind a sound system, but they’re going to start by telling you what I just did, so I’ve at least saved them a bit of typing.

The biggest thing you need is time and effort… those are pretty valuable, too.

Really diggin’ it… not all the way through it, in the middle of an album release, but goin’ back to as when I can. Definitely some music that’s my kind in there!

What DJ software are you using? Most DJ software (all that I personally am familiar with) support recording your mixes internally in the software (though your setup may be such that this gives you trouble).