DJing Software.

[Bob the Builder]

At a glance there are very few technical DJ requirements that a Swing DJ needs (hardware/software anyway). So, is paying a lot of $$$ for DJing software really worth it when a program like Winamp (maybe with some plug-ins) can do most of the desired Swing DJ tasks?
I'm directing this at people how just DJ to Swing dancers and not DJ's that do other club DJing.

If you have bought DJing software, how are you using it above a program like WinAmp?

I understand some of these items have been dealt with in the general Laptop DJ thread, but I just want something in one place, and I think the Software should have its own thread.

Can a Swing DJ justify paying a lot of money for software, where most of what it can do is not required?
Is there cheaper DJing sortware out there that will do all we want?

Brian

[Skippy]

If you have bought DJing software, how are you using it above a program like WinAmp?

BTB, winamp sucks ass. mind you some people swear by it. I don't like it one bit. but hey, each to their own. I will add though that I have not looked at winamp recently as I am happy with what I use.

As I've said in the past and will continue to say go get yourself a copy of Jriver media center. It costs $40 and does heap and heaps of things / some of them the same as winamp, some not. The most important thing is that its all INCLUSIVE, so you don't have to worry about plugin redundancies or trying to find the right plugins to start with. It's also highly INTUITIVE, so much so that i reckon a blind folded monkey could use it to DJ to a group of swingers.

Key features that I use regularly:
*zones - allows me to listen to tracks while playing at the same time
*split screen - have both my zones viewable at the same time
*synchronisation - keeps my computers in synch, one main file server with EVERYTHING and another one with just the music I want to use for DJing.
*XML hacking - make it look and do what I want it to do with plain english coding
*tagging - far greater tagging abilities than most progs I've tried previsouly.
*on the fly playlist creation (cueing)
*extensive and customisable searching
*automatic BPM measuring (which can be tweaked and entered manually)

ahhh bugger it i can't be bother listing everything, just go here and check it out for yourself
http://www.jrmediacenter.com/comparison.html

Can a Swing DJ justify paying a lot of money for software, where most of what it can do is not required?

there's no need or point in spending big $$$ on software.

Is there cheaper DJing sortware out there that will do all we want?

YES, read my first answer.

[JohnDyer]

At a glance there are very few technical DJ requirements that a Swing DJ needs (hardware/software anyway). So, is paying a lot of $$$ for DJing software really worth it when a program like Winamp (maybe with some plug-ins) can do most of the desired Swing DJ tasks?
I'm directing this at people how just DJ to Swing dancers and not DJ's that do other club DJing.

If you have bought DJing software, how are you using it above a program like WinAmp?

I understand some of these items have been dealt with in the general Laptop DJ thread, but I just want something in one place, and I think the Software should have its own thread.

Can a Swing DJ justify paying a lot of money for software, where most of what it can do is not required?
Is there cheaper DJing sortware out there that will do all we want?

Brian

I like PCDJ Red (not Red VRM) over Winamp for the following reasons:
1. Setting a semi-permanent quepoint. Since I'm lazy I can set a starting quepoint once per song and I just have to hit the Queue button whenever I load it into a player. Much easier than editing the actual song.
2. Recordcase catalogues. Regardless of how you have your physical directories setup on your harddrive, you can have a limitless number of groups and subgroups, pulling songs from anywhere, categorizing as you see fit.
3. Searching by artist or song or BPM or comment. It is a snap to see all available versions of a song, or all songs by an artist. Unfortunately with Red (not Red VRM) you don't ever see the album name without drilling down a bit.
4. Previewing without having to go to another application. I can preview songs in my recordcase groups, or in my waitlist lickety split without having to hunt for them.

That's why I use PCDJ Red over Winamp. I'd prefer to use BPM Studio Pro (tried the demo and nearly wept) but at $600 I can't justify it - yet

[GemZombie]

BPM Studio rules.

There are, uh, "extended trial" versions of that software... not that I'd know anything about them.

[PitchTheWoo]

Skippy is right. JRiver Media Center rocks completely. If it doesn't do what you need it to do... you shouldn't be trying to do it! Seriously, I've been using it for over 2 years and every time I have a whim regarding something I'd like to do with my collection, or how I access or view it, I find that Media Center can do it. Plus, their engineering team is very accessible and are totally responsive to feature requests.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Lawrence]

Bob, this is a great thread to start to segregate the topic. Thanks.

Thanks also to everyone for their recommendations. I'm making the jump, myself and the laptop DJ thread is amazingly helpful as a starting point.

I used the dual-Winamp installation thingy so far based on Nathan's recommendation (and demonstration). Nathan developed a series of certain standardized coding comments he uses in the comment tag to make Winamp more functional for searching for songs. It is an impressive system, but, as Jerry has put it, "It sounds like a lot of work" that I personally don't have time to do.

What I primarily want is something that can customize "playlists" (or any other method of categorization) so I can quickly and easily categorize songs several different ways to make it easier to find what I want. (Groove vs Vintage, for instance, so I can categorically ignore all scratchy, lo-fi vintage songs but still honestly say that I have them handy. ). Sorting by BPM is also an essential feature. It is possible with Winamp, but not without manually programming a series of tags for each song in the comments section, which would take months to do for an entire collection.

As far as I know, Winamp doesn't allow you to search or sort by the BPM MP3 tag, which probably is a dealbreaker for me. (Or is there a plug-in that allows you to do so?) The Winamp method Nathan developed also requires that you precisely remember your entire "code" list of categorizations, as well as requires perfect data entry. A drag and drop method that copies a song into a playlist or categorization would be MUCH easier.

[Bob the Builder]

I'm still using WinAmp as my DJing output program, and iTunes as my Library system. The Smart Play list system is a very powerful search tool on iTunes. I'm kind of surprised that WinAmp doesn't have some thing simular.

Brian

[Nate Dogg]

I'm still using WinAmp as my DJing output program, and iTunes as my Library system. The Smart Play list system is a very powerful search tool on iTunes. I'm kind of surprised that WinAmp doesn't have some thing simular.
Brian

WinAmp does utilize SmartPlaylists, for more details, keep reading. What WinAmp lacks is the BPM field, WinAmp on shows the following ID3v2 fields:

FILENAME: Full filename (including path)
LENGTH: Length, in seconds (or hh:mm:ss)
ARTIST: Artist
ALBUM: Album
TITLE: Title
TRACKNO: Track number of file
GENRE: Genre
YEAR: Year
COMMENT: Comment
FILESIZE: File size, in kilobytes
FILETIME: Last known file date/time on disk
LASTUPD: Date/time of file imported to library or modified in library
LASTPLAY: Date/time of last play
RATING: Rating value (1-5, or 0 or empty for unrated)
PLAYCOUNT: Number of plays
BITRATE: Bitrate (in KBPS)

The Winamp method Nathan developed also requires that you precisely remember your entire "code" list of categorizations, as well as requires perfect data entry. A drag and drop method that copies a song into a playlist or categorization would be MUCH easier.

Regarding my comments system.

I could easily build a bunch of "dumb" playlists, that is what a lot of people do. When we met about the laptop DJ stuff, I never showed you that method, since I don't like it. Being that you are newer to the MP3/laptop DJ world, I probably should have gone over it. My bad.

The problem with using regular/dumb playlists is that if you ever move a file, rename a file, get a new computer, etc..., the playlist has to be rebuilt (unless you have iTunes and and iPod, I guess you can share playlists back and forth between devices, I have not tried it, but seems like that would work, use your iPod to backup smart playlists and vice versa). What I use is called SmartPlaylists in iTunes and SmartView in WinAmp, I am sure other players have similar advanced playlist tools. The idea is that I put a lot of data in the comments field of my MP3 tags, in a organized and structured way to allow for searching. I then write and save a bunch of queries that I use as I DJ.

For example, in the old days, I might have burned a CD called "Soul songs with BPMs between 120 and 160." This was what I did to help me organize my collection, make a bunch of custom mix CDs. Today, I have queries saved for all my BPM ranges, I have other queries for genre, I also have have queries that combines genres and BPM ranges (for those sweet spots that I draw a lot of songs from).

I can't see any substitute for the updating of your tags manually, tag editing software will speed things up a lot, especially with fields like song title, album title, artist name, genre, year; but you still have to edit a lot of files one at a time if you want to track the more eclectic, Swing DJ centric info.

Here is some of the query text, from WinAmp.l

comment has "SwingDJ" and genre HAS "ClassicSwing" and comment has "180_189"

"SwingDJ" signifies the song is in my DJ book, this filters out all my non-swing stuff. For this query it would not matter, but for other queries this little piece of data is useful.

Genre is self explanatory.

"180_189" is my workaround for not being able to search directly on BPM in WinAmp, I still populate the BPM field using a tag editor. But for searching, I use this syntax in comments.

For the most part, I DON'T write queries for everything. I write them broadly to pull up matching songs and I browse within the results. I often browse through my genre and BPM queries.

I also have lots of other elements to my system, including:
Balboa songs, BluesRoom songs, WestCoast songs, LineDances, gospel songs, birthday and other jam songs, Hip Hop Lindy, Charleston Songs, songs by decade they were recorded, songs by vocal style (female vocalist songs, male vocalist songs, duets, group vocals by gender, instrumentals), Songs by primary instruments (piano songs, trombone songs, etc..), songs by geography (New Orleans songs, Austin songs, Chicago songs, travel songs, etc..), songs for the end of the night, songs to open the night, songs that other local DJs overplay, cha chas, waltz songs, songs by lyrical content (Alcohol, food, and a bunch of other silly themes), foreign language songs, songs that are kid friendly.

I can pull up lists of these songs any time I DJ. Some songs have a lot of comments in them, since they fit a lot of categories. Whenever I sit down and add to comments, I am able to make my sets flow more, I am able to compensate for my poor memory.

Sure, it takes a lot of time, but it lasts forever. I could load my songs onto any computer, spend about an hour rebuilding my smart playlists and be fully functional.

Also, there is nothing magical about WinAmp, I could migrate and DJ to iTunes in an afternoon. I don't know all the various players, but I imagine many of them mimic the features of iTunes and WinAmp.

In terms of using MP3s and media players to their fullest database potential, I am very happy with my current process. It works and it pretty easy to work with while DJing.

Nathan

[Nate Dogg]

Also,

I am open to using other tools. If you think what you use is better and can achieve the things I do above with WinAmp, let me know. I don't have time to test out all the other competitors.

I know I can do it most of it with iTunes, but I have other issues with iTunes that lead me to prefer WinAmp right now.

[Skippy]

BUY JR MEDIA CENTRE

hahahahhaaaaa

[Nate Dogg]

BUY JR MEDIA CENTRE

hahahahhaaaaa

Does it do smart playlists?

Nathan

[Skippy]

BUY JR MEDIA CENTRE

hahahahhaaaaa

Does it do smart playlists?

Nathan

It can do anything you want it to.

[PitchTheWoo]

J. River Media Center can do smart playlists and a WHOLE lot more. You will never go back to anything else after you try it. iTunes wants to be Media Center when it grows up. WinAmp? It's been so long since I abandoned that, all I remember is a vague sense of pain. WinAmp may have improved in the intervening years, but I seriously doubt it can hold a candle to the ease and power of J. River Media Center (v11.1).

Cheers,
Jeff

PS. no, I don't work for them. lol.

[julius]

Y'all ought to mention JRiver is available as a free 30 day download, that might help your case more :)

http://www.jrmediacenter.com/

[Nate Dogg]

Ok, I will try the trial version and report back.

Nathan