synthet1c

I have a reloop digital jockey 2 and 2 reloop contours, The dj2 is pretty low end, although the best low end controller I have seen, but the contours are great quality, the only issue I have with them is the leds on the top four encoders are a little difficult to see unless you are a lot taller than the table it’s on or the controller is on a slight angle, apart from that great knobs buttons are good, there is 5 hardware shifts built into the jogs for some crazy mapping possibilities, there is shifts for the decks and standard shift functions, so even using traktor you would have a lot of options for mapping, the contour doesn’t have any sliders to judge, but the the DJ2 has a fantastic crossfader, but crappy line faders. Overall the contour is a great controller and being the baby brother of the DJ3 is probably a good barometer for the quality of the DJ3.

I would definately wait till after NAMM as there may be better controllers released, but there may also be a significant decrease in price as the DJ3 will be older technology next week…

ah nope, traktor doesn’t have more features, only more popularity & better marketing. If I were you I would have waited a few more days to preview vdj8 before making a decision… Traktor is definately a faster out of box solution than vdj, but vdj has many more possibilities.

Denon HP1000
+ great soundstage, good isolation, solid construction
– ummmm, nothing really there is better but others I have had break too easy, these feel solid.

here you go, I answered it on the vdj forum
http://www.virtualdj.com/forums/153008/Mix_lessons/Looping.html

you can also quantise the size of the loops in vdj, it’s called “smart loop”, there is a picture of a lock on the skin near the loop out button, but it only works when using loop in and loop out, if you use the automatic sizes they are the perfect size anyway..

it’s meant to and is in the program, however there are no reports of it working that I have found. Apparently to make it work you need to download the registry tool and select your “midi out port” I don’t have any hardware drum machines or keyboards that can recive midi so never tried it. But when you rewire the program as master for ableton, reason cubase, fruity etc… it sends the midi clock directly to the program, as well as transport information of play, pause, stop, nudge, pitch. that way you are playing the sequencer in vdj, but making the sequence in the DAW, you could also use a matrix controller in ableton and a dj controller for vdj.

I have tested it with timecodes and an audio 8, this did not work very well as the pitch was always drifting, then I tried it only with midi controllers, a reloop digital jockey 2 for vdj and an mpd24 for ableton, it worked perfectly.

to set it up you just do this in advanced config, in the sound options

I have vdj7 pro on an asus eepc 1005pe, 1.66ghz overclocked with “set fsb” to 2.11ghz, 2gb DDR3 RAM. It is what I use to test things out, it runs vdj fine with timecodes using a midi controller as a mixer, you just need to be careful about what effects you use as some can chew through the available cpu leaving artifacts in the audio, although I have tested it with 14 effects running 2 video’s while the in a loop and it was fine that said I still wouldn’t trust it to play out, although it is my backup with everything already on and loaded incase my gig lappy dies mid set.

If you want to run a dj program however you will need to disable all unused serices and bloatware, as well as change your power settings and disable wifi and bluetooth while playing.

the biggest problem you will find however is the screen resolution, mine is 1071×600, if you have a little to spend you should go for a dual core, 1377×768 monitor, upgradable to 4gb of ram, that would be compact and shouldn’t have a problem running software.

EDIT——————————
also the soundcard/driver in the bcd is terrible, you would have better luck using a seperate soundcard…

not sure what you want to know more about, but with the slicer the way it works is, in vdj there is a command called “get beat_num # 16” the “#” is changed a beat number in a 4 bar part of a song according to the beat grid. It basically questions what beat the song position is in at the time you press the button, then depending on which button in the grid you have pressed will jump back the required amount so in english for button 1

if the track is at beat 1 ? activate roll
if the track is at beat 2 ? jump back 1 while pressed and activate roll
if the track is at beat 3 ? jump back 2 while pressed and activate roll
if the track is at beat 4 ? jump back 3 while pressed and activate roll
if the track is at beat 5 ? jump back 4 while pressed and activate roll
if the track is at beat 6 ? jump back 5 while pressed and activate roll
if the track is at beat 7 ? jump back 6 while pressed and activate roll
if the track is at beat 8 ? jump back 7 while pressed and activate roll

the trick is that using “while pressed” makes the action temporary and returns the track back however many bars you moved to put the track back into the correct position. with the roll it has settings for how large the loop will be so that is handled internally within the plugin.

then you do the same for the rest of the buttons, but following that guideline it should be able to recreate the slicer in other programs like mixx, maybe torq if they have a decent script system.

I did try it with just standard loops quite a lot to actually recreate the effect and got realy close, but I couldn’t make it reliably jump back to the original song position on release of the a button.

for the midifighter mapping I just copied this off the djtt forum, this is a very brief description of the midifighter mapping, but I am still waiting on the guy who requested a mapping for it to get back to me so I can define it properly, when that happens and is tested on a midifighter I will release it, but I have it mapped to a led matrix icon istage and it works perfecty, with a cool lightshow lightshow already programmed into it, not sure how it translates to a midi fighter as I don’t have one..

• chained effects (instant gratification style)
  -reverb
  -gate
  -lfo fiilter
  -bit crusher
  -echo
  -echo out (doppler)
  -delay
  -flanger
• beat masher as below
• beat slicer workaround (like twitch) using a map that jumps around the 2 bar section and repeats using a roll plugin. Then returns to the point in the track it should be on release. Can work in or out of a loop.
• cue juggle 8 cues
• slip role similar to DJTT’s rejuggle mode
• basic transport: play, sync, pitchbend, pitch
• maybe – 4 banks of 8 samples the user will need to edit, will have the functions of play_stop (for one shots), play_sync (for loops), play while_pressed, stop & play (for drumming). working on a way to load samples recorded on the fly

http://www.virtualdj.com/forums/143680/General_Discussion/MidiFighter_mapping_and_VDJ_script_question.html
http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42889

of coarse you will feel limited by vdj le, it is a “limited edition” I use vdj pro, and have found no limitations in the software, the effects have become a lot better recently and any gaps with things like reverb and filters can be overcome by using much more powerful vst’s