Todd Oddity

Opening the Mac vs. PC debate will cause you nothing but headaches. lol

I have both, and know that the reality is that both work just fine. If PC is your choice, you just need to know your way around the machine a little better to get it optimized for the job.

Fully agree with Rick – once you’ve seen one 4-channel DJ mixer, you’ve seen them all. They all have small differences here and there, but for the most part act the same way. Effects will be a little bit different, but nothing you shouldn’t be able to compensate for.

Now, as for your long term goals… Just stating my opinion, but there are much better things to save your money for than a DJM900. I’m just not a fan of Pioneer mixers. Short upfaders, sloppy VU meters, and a bit harsh on audio output. If modular is your goal (I assume it is if you are using an external mixer) then you can find other mixers for significantly less cost that will just plain sound better. Or you can spend about that same amount of money and get a kickass mixer from one of the other brands.

So ya, if you’ve decided to go modular, you have a lot of flexibility in what you can use – don’t feel you have to follow the masses.

If I’m reading this correctly and you are new to the scene, this is ** really ** the wrong setup to get started with. Look for a basic controller. Play around with it, learn the basics, get a sense of what you want to do as a DJ, then go from there. You are nowhere near a point where you need to worry about standalone vs. laptop configurations.

First step is to narrow down what you need from your software. You mention RB and Traktor, but nothing else. Is there a reason you’ve picked those two? Once you define what it is you need in the software, the hardware question starts to become clearer.

I source all my videos from Xtendamix. They aren’t available in every country though, so it depends on where in the world you are located.

Just to clarify one point here – Vintage is speaking of the XDJ-RX (a two channel standalone controller), not the DDJ-RX (a four channel RB controller) that you are looking at. Different units – incredibly unhelpful model names from Pioneer to say the least!

I believe this is the unit you are interested in…

A couple of things to address here…

First, if you are having stability issues with the S8, it is far more likely a computer problem than a controller problem. A new controller isn’t going to fix a computer issue.

Second, Pioneer controllers aren’t “industry standard”. There is no such thing as an industry standard controller – by their very nature they are portable and therefore people bring whatever they are comfortable using. Odds of running into installed controllers in a club environment (that’s what makes things an industry standard) are still quite low in most places.

However, I suspect what you are hinting at is that Pioneer itself is an industry standard, and for quite a few years, yes, their club equipment held that title. In a lot of places, people will argue it still does. But that’s going to be some kind of CDJ and mixer setup, and to be frank, there is little crossover between that kind of setup and a controller, beyond the fact they have jog wheels and a play button. Controllers have a whole whack more features than you will find on “industry standard” club gear. Just think about it for a second – when was the last time you saw a CDJ with performance pads?

That’s not to say one is wildly better than the other – they are just very different experiences. If you can play well on a controller (even a cheap one), you can play well on a CDJ setup. If you can play well on a high end controller, you will notice the lack of features when moving over to a CDJ setup.

None of this is to rag on Pioneer gear – it’s all very nice. But the idea of “industry standard” is less and less a thing every day, so not where to put your energy in my opinion.

Not sure what OS you’re on, but on any recent Windows machine you should be able to right click the downloaded file, select “extract all” and then pick your destination folder. That new folder will contain each of the samples, which you can then drag & drop into Virtual’s sampler and edit as you please.