Your preferred digital DJ system and why

nomos

Administrator
I'm toying with the idea of, at least partially, switching to digital. Vinyl's taking up too much space and my budget for overseas purchases may be drying up. So going digital as much as possible would be a help, but only so long as it makes sense financially and is still pleasant to use.

I'm hoping people with a good bit of experience might be able to get into some detail on the ins and outs of systems they know.

We've had a [URL="http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=4611]Traktor thread[/URL] but it was short and I imagine the software and gear have moved on a bit.

As I see it, my options are:

1. CDJs
Probably my preferred route but too damned expensive. Next...

2. Virtual vinyl a la Traktor or Serato
I've got an NI I/O box already so all I'd need is the Traktor software and the data records. I still want to 'touch' what I'm playing, however virtually.

3. Ableton with a DJ-type controller.
I've used Ableton forever but not live because I'm not keen on standing around clicking squares and triangles. What I'd love is not worrying about tempo lock. The controllers seem pricey though.

Thanks
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
I
2. Virtual vinyl a la Traktor or Serato
I've got an NI I/O box already so all I'd need is the Traktor software and the data records. I still want to 'touch' what I'm playing, however virtually.

This cos you could use your 12s as well, plus a few cdrs if in a club.
 

Alfons

Way of the future
Im moving abroad for about ten months in two weeks and I cant be bothered to move all my vinyl + bringing the decks, mixer etc. Have been recording a bunch of my vinyl and am thinking about getting one of these:

http://www.maudio.co.uk/products/en_gb/XSessionPro-main.html

Looks and feels like a mixer (if a bit plasticky) and Im hoping it will work well with ableton and traktor. Guessing it will feel more like dj'ing than generic midi keyboards, but wish there was some sort of jog wheel for speeding and slowing up things.

But I would definitely go for some sort of serato thing, if you have the soundcard it should only cost you two control records (like 30$?) There's some open source software you can use too, but I can't remember the name at the mo...
 
D

droid

Guest
If you're gonna go there, go all the way and get Serato. CDJs are great, but every time you want to play out tunes you have to 'pre-master' them, burn them to CD and then index the CD in some recognisable fashion. Serato gives you the tactile feeling of DJng, but also allows you instant access to the music on your hard drive. Plus it seems to be pretty stable these days.
 

Chef Napalm

Lost in the Supermarket
BTW - are CDJ 800s more pricey than Serato?
They are on this side of the pond. A complete Serato suite (minus the laptop, of course) runs about $600US, whereas two (2) CDJ800s will run upwards of $1600US.

I agree with Martin and Droid, Serato/Traktor maintains the skill set required for vinyl DJing while accessing all that is digital. Having said that, both set-ups feel like half measures to me; a way to break vinyl DJs into the digital realm without scrapping everything they've already learned. In order to truly take advantage of the possibilities digital has to offer, you really need to forget about decks and get an Ableton equipped laptop with a proper MIDI controller.

If you're a bit handy, you could even build your own. http://www.auroramixer.com/

2622267524_2aa7610256.jpg
 

hint

party record with a siren
Serato is about £300. CDJ800s are over £400 each.

Serato has excellent customer support and is being constantly updated and developed, with bugs getting fixed relatively quickly and new features popping up regularly. If you already have a laptop, know how to encode / tag MP3s and have experience of DJing with vinyl, it's a great choice.

Plus, they're developing software called Itch, if you're interested in moving away from turntables eventually:
http://www.serato.com/itch

It's like Scratch, but designed to be used with dedicated control surfaces made by the likes of Vestax.

====

The system nobody has mentioned yet is Torq:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/TorqMixLab-main.html

I have no experience of it directly, but it's a cheaper alternative, with a few nifty features.

But personally, I'd recommend Serato since Rane have a good track record when it comes to support and they really understand the market. The likes of M Audio and Native Instruments have fingers in too many pies.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
^ Someone I work with uses that M-Audio controller with Ableton for live stuff, including controlling live vocal processing via Ableton, and says he really likes it. I've always thought it looked a bit clunky myself.

The new Novation controller, the Nocturn, looks pretty nice too:

http://www.novationmusic.com/products/midi_control/nocturn/

___________________________________

EDIT: Personally, I use Ableton at home for doing 'studio' mixes, without a controller at all, and use a combination of CDJ and vinyl on the (admittedly rare) occasions that I play out.

RE Droid's point about re-mastering and burning to CD - most DJ mailouts provide digital alternatives now, and anything I want to duplicate, I usually find it's easier to spend the 80p on bleep.com or whatever to get on mp3 as well. Anything that's vinyl only I'll just play on vinyl.
 
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Alfons

Way of the future
http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.php?threadid=518955&highlight=diy+serato

The people using serato / ableton in live situations do you have a laptop just for music or is it used for all your computer needs. I keep thinking if I go live I should have a computer that doesnt all this extra stuff on it but just music software (more stable and more hd space but more $$$$...)


and for people recording their vinyl what kind of setups do you use? Im not really satisfied with using my technics and dj needles (shure m447s). A lot of the time I end up buying an mp3 as well, but I kind of feel justified using p2p when I won the record in physical form too...
 

nomos

Administrator
Thanks for the knowledge..

I agree with Martin and Droid, Serato/Traktor maintains the skill set required for vinyl DJing while accessing all that is digital. Having said that, both set-ups feel like half measures to me; a way to break vinyl DJs into the digital realm without scrapping everything they've already learned. In order to truly take advantage of the possibilities digital has to offer, you really need to forget about decks and get an Ableton equipped laptop with a proper MIDI controller.
Yeah this is where I'm torn. Like I say I've used Ableton for a long time and I've done a lot of 'studio' mixes with it. It's a familiar environment and I like it. On the down side, it means getting a controller (more $ + adding one more piece of gear to the array). And I'm guessing three's still a lot of point and click going on to launch and stop clips, unless you've got one of those controllers with a hundred buttons. Part of the reason I still DJ is to get away from computers for a while, give my eyes and RSI wrists a break.

Traktor would mean just adding the software and controller vinyl to my existing laptop & I/O setup. But yeah, it's always seemed a clumsy half measure to control a computer with dummy records. I suppose it comes down to what I want out of DJing - greater creative options and precision with Live or just continuing to have fun knocking slabs of plastic around.

Are these controller vinyl systems any more or less forgiving than real when it comes to beatmatching? I'm not exactly Mr Precision so I wouldn't want to make it worse.
 

hint

party record with a siren
Are these controller vinyl systems any more or less forgiving than real when it comes to beatmatching?

Neither - it's the same as mixing vinyl in that respect.

The "extras" compared to vinyl DJing are things like looping and cue points, as well as the obvious benefits of having more tracks at your fingertips and the ability to organise virtual "crates".

It depends what type of DJ you are I suppose. If you play tracks one after another and are happy with mixing vinyl, Serato is fantastic. You can get creative with the cue points and loops, of course, and do your own re-edits / drops.

If you find yourself thinking "ah man... I want to loop this bit, then drop in this vocal, then slow it down to 63bpm and drop it through a bitcrusher, all on the fly", then it's better to look at Ableton Live.
 

ripley

Well-known member
I agree with Martin and Droid, Serato/Traktor maintains the skill set required for vinyl DJing while accessing all that is digital. Having said that, both set-ups feel like half measures to me; a way to break vinyl DJs into the digital realm without scrapping everything they've already learned. In order to truly take advantage of the possibilities digital has to offer, you really need to forget about decks and get an Ableton equipped laptop with a proper MIDI controller.
]

The problem for me is not only do I not want to render my current skill set less useful, but also, so far I have yet to find a midi controller that is fun to use. The tactile aspect of vinyl is still the most fun for me, playing live, way better then pushing buttons or sliders.

I use Serato, which I find extremely stable, also it has a very small footprint so I use it on my laptop that I also use for everything else. Rane has great tech support and a good community of users/techies too.

I can't wait until a more interesting interface is developed but so far nothing really seems that fun so I'm sticking with vinyl.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
apple doing something new for people like us:

applepatent.jpg


Apple preps MultiTouch for digital DJs

Thu, 08/07/2008 - 04:13 — Andy Space
Apple appears to be patenting all manner of implementations of its multi-touch technologies, with a recent patent revealing plans to create virtual DJ software for potential deployment on MacBooks, rumoured Multi-Touch tablet Macs and - potentially - the iPhone and iPod touch.

The Apple patent - which is available in its entirety here - describes ways to manipulate objects on a touch screen, including numerous user interface applications, detailed with accompanying diagrams.

For DJ's the patent describes the following implementation, which basically explains a virtual pair of twin turntables which appear on the screen, touch-sensitive, these would let DJs mix and shift various kinds of digital media.
"Like a pair of physical turntables, stylus 844 and stylus 855 can be graphical icon indications of a playback queue, the position of which can be varied by touching the queue on a touch sensitive display screen and dragging the icon to the desired position on the graphical record."
"[0148]During song reproduction, the records 834 and 835 can be manipulated similar to a physical record. For instance, rapid back and forth movement of a record can cause the sound effect of a record "scratching," as disc jockeys often do on physical turn tables," the patent explains,
Like all Apple patents, the existence of this one doesn't mean the product will ever actually appear - in a sense, patenting these technologies may actually hamper their appearnace, as third party developers will require Apple's permission to use such patented technologies.



might be cool but makes me think RSI/carpel tunnel :eek:
 

continuum

smugpolice
This is what I'm currently using and it works great:


Looking forward to trying out the Vestax and Serato Itch package released shortly - may switch to that from the current Torq Xponent setup depending on what I think of it.

Serato Scratch is brilliant but took it to play out once and couldn't get it to work in the live setting so have gone off it.

Still have traditional decks and mixer though and saving to get CDJ1000 MK3s to add to my set up so all bases are covered.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
There's this free open source software called Mixxx that has recently added support for Serato and Traktor vinyl. It's supposed to be quite good but I haven't used it so couldn't vouch for it's reliability.

mixx.jpg


http://www.mixxx.org/
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/08/07/mixx-open-source-dj-tool-adds-vinyl-control/

And there's also the Indamixx studio which is a package including a Samsung ultra-portable PC running Linux that comes with the above and some other bits like Energy XT.

rotator-3.jpg


http://www.indamixx.com/
 
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Chef Napalm

Lost in the Supermarket
After sleeping on it, I've realized that my response was missing one crucial point...

A complete Serato suite (minus the laptop, of course) runs about $600US

...$600 will buy one hell of a lot of records. I'm paying on average $16CAN (shipping included) from Juno. That's ~40 records for your $600US.

Don't give up on wax. Mp3 is already on the downslope of it's popularity.
 

Chef Napalm

Lost in the Supermarket
Or 300 FLACs ?
In terms of number of songs, given that the average 12" (at least in my collection) contains 3 tracks, that's approximately equivalent to 120 FLACs. Everything involves a trade-off; the records weigh quite a bit and take up space, but they'll never be lost to a hard drive crash or viral infection.

I'm all for pushing this as a meme, but is it really true? In favour of what?
Something lossless, I imagine. Hell, given the leaps in storage technology, they may even be eclipsed by wav.
 

straight

wings cru
In terms of number of songs, given that the average 12" (at least in my collection) contains 3 tracks, that's approximately equivalent to 120 FLACs. Everything involves a trade-off; the records weigh quite a bit and take up space, but they'll never be lost to a hard drive crash or viral infection.


Something lossless, I imagine. Hell, given the leaps in storage technology, they may even be eclipsed by wav.


how about when your mates big brother pisses on all the records you were storing in in his house, they then go completelty mouldy and have to get thrown away?
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
If you're gonna go there, go all the way and get Serato. CDJs are great, but every time you want to play out tunes you have to 'pre-master' them, burn them to CD and then index the CD in some recognisable fashion.

that's kinda misleading, if you need to pre-master your tunes for CD play then you certainly do for serato as well
 
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