DJ mixer question

[rickryan.com]

Okay, exposing my ignorance here (yet again). I currently use a laptop to play tunes, running into a small mixer, out to P.A. The setup works well but here lately I've been thinking about a "real DJ mixer" (i.e. dual deck).

What I'd like to have is something that actually loads a tune from my laptop's hard drive into it's local memory, and plays it. Obviously, I'd want it to have an ipod dock and a CD drive would be a nice extra. The only real question would be "How good is the playlist?" (I currently have an easily-readable playlist onscreen) and "How good is the search capability of this type setup?"

Just for clarity, I'm not interested in moving to a platform that's just a control surface and requires proprietary software to drive everything from the PC.

Educate me, please. Thanks in advance.

 

[Scott Hanna]

Rick,
What is the benefit you are looking for that you don't already have?

It sounds like you are ALMOST describing something like the denon hd2500. It has the ability to have a cd player, an ipod, and an HD. But those things don't play well together.

 

[rickryan.com]

Rick,
What is the benefit you are looking for that you don't already have?

It sounds like you are ALMOST describing something like the denon hd2500. It has the ability to have a cd player, an ipod, and an HD. But those things don't play well together.

Scott, what I've been using is working well. What I'm missing is being able to beat-mix and I can't preview tracks. The latter is simply because I'm too lazy to setup a 2nd system or alternate laptop audio output channel to use with headphones. As for crossfades, I have my player set to do those automatically and I can also pull a "fake crossfade" manually, very easily. BTW, I'm talking about end-of-song crossfades to the next track.

The programmer side of me is also, even after all this time of rock-solid performance, still of the belief that a hardware-based player is going to be more solid in terms of not failing on playback over a computer-based playback unit. The only issue I've run into, to date, is when I use one of the backing tracks that has both lyrics and video. There's sometimes a pause of a few seconds where the application (winamp) stops responding to the O/S. It's never crashed and has always come back, btw. And before anyone here starts berating me for using winamp, let me say it works for my setup. When I'm pulling one off live (one-man band style), I need audio, video in a detachable window (to send to the projector) and scrolling lyrics (on the primary monitor, due to my poor memory skills). Winamp is the only tool I've found that'll do this, exactly the way I need it.

Maybe I'm mis-understanding the capabilities of the DJ mixers that are out there but thought it was worth asking the experts. I really do hold a LOT of respect for you chaps/chapettes.

 

[Jon Tuck]

there are apps to give you two winamp players allowing mixability if memory serves. you can also gain an app that adjusts the fade ability if Im not mistaken.

 

[rickryan.com]

there are apps to give you two winamp players allowing mixability if memory serves. you can also gain an app that adjusts the fade ability if Im not mistaken.

Yea, it'll work but just never felt very "production ready". Trying to bounce between multiple copies of an app, and adjusting output devices on the fly is just begging for trouble. I think it's Rock-Box that does this but I never was terribly impressed by the setup.

 

[Bill Kexel]

Rick,
What is the benefit you are looking for that you don't already have?

It sounds like you are ALMOST describing something like the denon hd2500. It has the ability to have a cd player, an ipod, and an HD. But those things don't play well together.

Don't play well together? Please explain.

 

[shanefrom302]

erased

 

[drzinc]

What you are describing is this
It plays regular cd's it plays from an ipod and it plays tunes from your laptop. You can beat match cue your songsa nd other neat things.

 

[ahoustondj]

Rick Ryan,
Do you use an external soundcard? If not your answer could be in the ESI Gigaport where you have 4 pairs of outputs. Here is how I have mine configured.
Deck 1 on Traktor going out one pair of outputs 1 & 2 on the gigaport to Channel 1 on my mixer.
Deck 2 on Traktor going out one pair of outputs 3 & 4 on the gigaport to Channel 2 on my mixer.
Internal Cue on Traktor (This feature can cue a song before you load it on a Traktor Deck) going out one pair of outputs 5 & 6 on the gigaport to Channel 3 on my mixer.
I always have Channel 3 Cue Button on my Mixer Depressed for the Internal Cueing.
Everything is in stereo.

I hope this helps.

 

[rickryan.com]

Rick Ryan,
Do you use an external soundcard? If not your answer could be in the ESI Gigaport where you have 4 pairs of outputs. Here is how I have mine configured.
Deck 1 on Traktor going out one pair of outputs 1 & 2 on the gigaport to Channel 1 on my mixer.
Deck 2 on Traktor going out one pair of outputs 3 & 4 on the gigaport to Channel 2 on my mixer.
Internal Cue on Traktor (This feature can cue a song before you load it on a Traktor Deck) going out one pair of outputs 5 & 6 on the gigaport to Channel 3 on my mixer.
I always have Channel 3 Cue Button on my Mixer Depressed for the Internal Cueing.
Everything is in stereo.

I hope this helps.

Honestly? I have an external sound card and never use it. The S/N ratio on my laptop's card is really good. It's not worth the config pain to use the external. I try to live by KISS.

 

[rickryan.com]

What you are describing is this
It plays regular cd's it plays from an ipod and it plays tunes from your laptop. You can beat match cue your songsa nd other neat things.

Now you're talking. My only question though, is that thing copying the track to the hardware unit or is it still playing it straight off the laptop and routing the output (via USB) to the mixer? The only other downside appears to be it only supports 2 channels.

 

[Scott Hanna]

Don't play well together? Please explain.

what I meant was is it can't do all of those things at one time. You can't grab a song from a cd player and put it in a "playlist" with a song from a hard drive, then one from an ipod, and then a song from the computer

 

[Steve LeBlanc]

Rick - you've some what lost me......
1) What software are you using to play your music?


The Mixdeck that Zinc mentions is ultimately what you are looking for; actually it is 3 channel; one for each table and one for the ipod..the patop connects via usb ; table one would contrl deck one on the software, table 2 controls deck 2 on the software.....

You don't need a moxer per say; the downside is that there doesn't appear to be mic capabilitiers.....

You could run virtual DJ and an external sound card like a M Audio Fast track Pro...this will give you multiple outs which you need to be able to use the cue off a mixer and have each "virtual" deck go out to a separate channel on the mixer.

IO can beatmix with a laptop keyboad and track ball....you can hook up controllers to a laptop to get the "physical" feel of tables....

 

[Scott Hanna]

Honestly? I have an external sound card and never use it. The S/N ratio on my laptop's card is really good. It's not worth the config pain to use the external. I try to live by KISS.

Believe me, every thing i do is to make things really simple.

I use my T1 as a mixer and a sound card. That way I can use my head phone jack as my preview/cue channel.

Ots makes it incredibly easy to have my t1 as my main sound card and my laptop's sound card as my cue. Ots is not only simple, but ROCK SOLID. Back when I was using external HD's, I had a plug come out on the HD, so the computer lost connection with the HD. Some of the songs that were in the playlist were on the HD. When songs that were on the HD came to the player, OTS simply skipped over those and found the next song it was able to play. I had tried PCDJ and Virtual DJ and both crashed on occasion. OTS has never crashed. To be fair, this was years ago, and I know plenty of people that have never had virtual DJ crash.

 

[ahoustondj]

Honestly? I have an external sound card and never use it. The S/N ratio on my laptop's card is really good. It's not worth the config pain to use the external. I try to live by KISS.

Does your laptop card have three pairs of outputs? If not how can you have independent cueing of each channel pair? Those onboard PC/Laptop Soundcards were not designed for DJ use, so you have to make adaptations. It is not a Pain to configure. Less than a minute one time only. Certainly less than having to buy more equipment to accomplish the same.

 

[rickryan.com]

Does your laptop card have three pairs of outputs? If not how can you have independent cueing of each channel pair? Those onboard PC/Laptop Soundcards were not designed for DJ use, so you have to make adaptations. It is not a Pain to configure. Less than a minute one time only. Certainly less than having to buy more equipment to accomplish the same.

I've got a Lexicon Omega that sits at the house. Keep in mind, I'm not running stereo so that Omega would actually support multiple players but, again, I just don't fool with it. Yea, I know it's quick to change outputs and I did that for a while. Had a couple of gigs where I had some stress over no audio at setup so I finally just punted that and went to the simplest config I could find. Like I said, the standard headphone out on this unit is very clean (to my ears anyways) and I can preview on a 2nd unit (netbook), if it's needed. I rarely ever need to preview, however.

 

[rickryan.com]

Believe me, every thing i do is to make things really simple.

I use my T1 as a mixer and a sound card. That way I can use my head phone jack as my preview/cue channel.

Ots makes it incredibly easy to have my t1 as my main sound card and my laptop's sound card as my cue. Ots is not only simple, but ROCK SOLID. Back when I was using external HD's, I had a plug come out on the HD, so the computer lost connection with the HD. Some of the songs that were in the playlist were on the HD. When songs that were on the HD came to the player, OTS simply skipped over those and found the next song it was able to play. I had tried PCDJ and Virtual DJ and both crashed on occasion. OTS has never crashed. To be fair, this was years ago, and I know plenty of people that have never had virtual DJ crash.

The "rock solid" part is what I focus on. I take a lot of ribbing from other DJs for not running "real DJ software" but the fact of the matter is, winamp just never goes down and it's a major-release piece of software with millions of users, not to mention it's extremely easy on CPU. I run winamp, do internet queries/downloads, run a slideshow and constantly load new pics to a single PC and I can't tell you the last time it crapped out on me. I keep a 2nd laptop in case of failure and also have an ipod handy as a 2nd backup. Oh, and as for 2nd laptop, I just got my new verizon netbook which is already loaded and ready to use tonight on its first run.

Thanks for the bump on OTS. I'll check it out and also thanks for the input on the workstations. I really would like to get something for scratching.

 

[Scott Hanna]

The "rock solid" part is what I focus on. I take a lot of ribbing from other DJs for not running "real DJ software" but the fact of the matter is, winamp just never goes down and it's a major-release piece of software with millions of users, not to mention it's extremely easy on CPU. I run winamp, do internet queries/downloads, run a slideshow and constantly load new pics to a single PC and I can't tell you the last time it crapped out on me. I keep a 2nd laptop in case of failure and also have an ipod handy as a 2nd backup. Oh, and as for 2nd laptop, I just got my new verizon netbook which is already loaded and ready to use tonight on its first run.

Thanks for the bump on OTS. I'll check it out and also thanks for the input on the workstations. I really would like to get something for scratching.

I have nothing against winamp. To me, if it's working for you, I'm all for it. But if it's complicated to add secondary sound cards, that's a killer for me. I would never DJ without the ability to cue/mix music.

I have not seen winamp in a few years...since i stopped doing karaoke...as it ran with my karaoke software. At least for the skins I saw, dedicated DJ software could do a lot more of the things I needed than wimamp could do. I would be interested to see what has changed.

Scratching...my denon hd 2500 can scratch very well. Unfortunately, I can't. To me, that's the last thing someone wants at a wedding...A Dj that thinks he's sir-mix-a lot.

 

[Steve LeBlanc]

The "rock solid" part is what I focus on. I take a lot of ribbing from other DJs for not running "real DJ software" but the fact of the matter is, winamp just never goes down and it's a major-release piece of software with millions of users, not to mention it's extremely easy on CPU. I run winamp, do internet queries/downloads, run a slideshow and constantly load new pics to a single PC and I can't tell you the last time it crapped out on me. I keep a 2nd laptop in case of failure and also have an ipod handy as a 2nd backup. Oh, and as for 2nd laptop, I just got my new verizon netbook which is already loaded and ready to use tonight on its first run.

Thanks for the bump on OTS. I'll check it out and also thanks for the input on the workstations. I really would like to get something for scratching.

If you want to beatmix, you're going to need to preview....

 

[ahoustondj]

I've got a Lexicon Omega that sits at the house. Keep in mind, I'm not running stereo so that Omega would actually support multiple players but, again, I just don't fool with it. Yea, I know it's quick to change outputs and I did that for a while. Had a couple of gigs where I had some stress over no audio at setup so I finally just punted that and went to the simplest config I could find. Like I said, the standard headphone out on this unit is very clean (to my ears anyways) and I can preview on a 2nd unit (netbook), if it's needed. I rarely ever need to preview, however.

That Lexicon Omega is a nice piece of equipment but it does not have the multiple outputs that you need. With the proper Soundcard, you won't need to preview on another machine and then have to hurry back to the "Active" Machine to play.
This is what I use, http://www.guitarcenter.com/ESI-Gigaport-HD-105166169-i1432660.gc
I have already stated the configuration above between this and Traktor. BTW, Traktor has never ever crashed on me.

In Version Traktor 2.6.1 (Two Decks)
I can preview Deck 1, Deck 2 and also anything in the Music Library. That is a separate channel which can be used for additional Audio out. = 3 Decks

In Version Traktor Pro (Four Decks)
I can preview Deck 1, Deck 2, Deck 3 and deck 4 and also anything in the Music Library. That is a separate channel which can be used for additional Audio out. = 5 Decks

All this is in stereo so I don't have to compromise sound.
The key is to always use the same Port for the Gigaport.