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I was about to start a similar thread.

I only recently came back more into the Techno scene (which is pretty strong where I live) along with me wanting to fill some spare time with DJing (I’m definitely not trying to make money or a career out of this). But once you are a “DJ” you go to events and concerts and see everything through completely different eyes.

My problem is not so much with beginner DJs who play out too early (prolly because I don’t go to these places), but more with many DJ/Producers who seem to get booked at pretty much every club now (I’m talking Deep House/Tech House/Minimal/Techno). The resident DJ is left to open and close for them.

Which in itself is fine, but most producers I see performing live don’t play to the crowd at all. It’s f’in 0230 AM and people are really getting into it, lots of energy on the dancefloor – yet they (more often than not these days it’s at least two people I have the impression) are hunched over their Ableton laptops, fumbling their launchpads and APCs, triggering stuff on their Maschine… only to throw in 64bar breakdowns every 2 minutes and completely kill off the dancefloor. Zero crowd interaction.

I witnessed the same thing last night with opening acts for Boys Noize. These guys (6 or so) act like complete tools, wearing masks, I don’t know WHAT they did there exactly (half of them would dance around and twist an effects knob every couple minutes). Who books some douchebags playing TRAP and throw shitty German raps over it occasionally for a Boys Noize show anyway?? Then the next opening act (Spank Rock). They were pretty decent, but it was so sad too when the female DJ who actually startet to play a decent and weird electro house kinda set, that FINALLY got people going a little bit, put it on autopilot to get half naked and dance like a stripper who overdid the cocaine a lil bit.

I think it’s sad that now where everyone is/has to be a producer, gimmicks and “performance” seem to become more important than the music. I’m sure I’m not the only one of all the people paying cover who couldn’t care less if there’s three guys with tons of equip and dressed up as monkeys in the booth pushing the boundaries of technology. I don’t f’in care, give me some good music I can dance to! Oftentimes I (and from the crowd reaction there’s many more like me) actually have a better time when the resident takes over again and plays to the crowd from his CDJs, focussing solely on beatmatching and programming (!!!!!!!). Most people at the club don’t give a #!*& what technology the guy in the booth uses. I’d rather have someone with his Mixtrack Pro and Virtual DJ than all this self-centered Ableton-I’m doing live remixes-BS.

There’s some exceptions, Boys Noize wrecked that place last night. But yeah, I feel like it’s becoming an exception more and more.

Well, the jogs can have issues with vibrations due to their specific nature on the Kontrol series. Apparently Porter Robinson has had some issues with that.

Then again, most of us don’t play the kind of venues he does… 😀

Well, to show that spending more money doesn’t necessarily mean a better product:

Aiaiai TMA-1, only few months old, always treated them well, only used em for DJing at home or mellow house parties. Headband just snapped during practice. Gonna take em back to the store tomorrow, they should replace them. But actually I’ve read about that happening on some forum. So I dunno, is buying 180€ headphones really worth it?

I know for sure I wouldn’t buy the TMA-1 again, even though they are good headphones in general. And I really liked the concept of them being flexible without any hinges etc, but well, obv that doesn’t work out 🙁

Yeah, Ergo vs S4 – there shouldn’t even be a debate over this. A no brainer really.

Had to go to my favorite DJ store in my town today to get an adapter and one of the guys told me that the DDJ-SX units are moving really fast. They keep re-ordering the thing because as soon they have any units – they sell. Must be a really nice piece of kit!

Mac isn’t a PC dude 😉

Had one of the now updated iMac 27″ for a few months after going with a MBP for years. Now I’m on a MBP again. Performance wise the iMac had nothing on my MBP ^^

The best do-it-all computer in my eyes is the 15″ Macbook Pro. Want screen real estate, then shell out the money for the Retina one ^^ Seriously, its portable, plenty of performance, holds up well. For portability 13″ MBA for sure. Never gonna leave home or own an iPad? 27″ iMac. I would never get the 21,5″ one, that huge screen is way too nice 🙂

Don’t think you will see a difference in the way your controller works, apart from that I can only recommend going SSD. Went from a MBP with HDD to one with SSD – never wanna go back. Makes everything much more enjoyable.

I’d recommend Crucial or Intel, those are the most reliable!