Laptop DJing

It's all about the equipment

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Allen
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#421 Post by Allen » Fri Jul 28, 2006 10:46 am

I use my IBM T42
Pentium M 1.7Gh, 512 MB RAM
Built in SoundMAX sound and have a turtle beach audio advantage micro
Western Digital 120GB external hard drive

I run iTunes but i have JRiver Media Center as well. Only reason i haven't changed over is because i haven't figured out how to import the ratings from itunes. So right now i mostly use it to preview songs.

I've never had a problem with wireless polling. Mine does so quitely and places nice with others.

One thing you guys might try is uninstalling Dell's wireless software. I don't use IBM's wireless stuff because it sometimes refused to let me connect when i should have been able to. Windows XP SP2's built-in wireless support works just fine.

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GemZombie
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#422 Post by GemZombie » Fri Jul 28, 2006 12:52 pm

I also disable wireless when DJing...

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Bob the Builder
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#423 Post by Bob the Builder » Fri Jul 28, 2006 10:55 pm

The 120GB laptop hard drive has now become affordable. You can get a 160GB but it's about double the cost.
I'm getting my full 60GB upgraded on Monday to 120GB.
That should do be for another 2 years.

You can now get an external USB external hard drive that you don't need an external power source. It takes its power off the USB2 port. They are in fact the same hard drives that you would have inside your laptop, i.e. around the size of an ipod. The thing is by paying an extra $60 or so bucks you can get the computer shop to clone your old laptop hard drive on to the new one and install it.

I hate having to have external devices when I DJ. It is just more set up time and some thing likely to go wrong.

I'm still using my Echo Indigo DJ card to great success. It has never let me down.

There was a question on buying new laptops. I always advise people to stay away from Dells. The mounting on them is very cheaply made and thus they can cause connections to break or come loose very easily.

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LindyChef
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#424 Post by LindyChef » Mon Jul 31, 2006 12:17 am

GemZombie wrote:I also disable wireless when DJing...
A better idea is to completely disable all sound schemes ... I have it standard on my computer all of the time.

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GemZombie
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#425 Post by GemZombie » Fri Aug 11, 2006 12:39 pm

LindyChef wrote:
GemZombie wrote:I also disable wireless when DJing...
A better idea is to completely disable all sound schemes ... I have it standard on my computer all of the time.
I do that too. I'm not sure how those are related, except in that they are both wise things to do when DJing.

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LindyChef
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#426 Post by LindyChef » Fri Aug 11, 2006 7:22 pm

The original problem was related to the wireless card making sounds when connecting and disconnecting to networks ...

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GemZombie
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#427 Post by GemZombie » Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:59 pm

LindyChef wrote:The original problem was related to the wireless card making sounds when connecting and disconnecting to networks ...
Right.

I actually disable the network so that it doesn't take any extra processor time, so I wasn't thinking in the sense that it would make sounds. Since I turn my sounds off from the start, I didn't even realize that the network connects made sounds :)

Jase
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#428 Post by Jase » Tue Aug 15, 2006 1:17 am

I'm all for disabling extraneous things.

One recent example - wasn't DJ'ing but was using the laptop for PowerPoint at church. I was wondering why the laptop was extremely unresponsive. Any keypresses took ages to register but we managed to change slides clicking on the next slide with the mouse. Unfortunately I couldn't investigate during church, but afterwards I brought up Task Manager and saw that MSN Messenger was chewing up heaps of CPU. I didn't do a clean start from home, I just suspended from home and opened the lid at church. It must have been still looking for the network, etc.

So now, I turn off Messenger, etc, turn off all sound schemes (you don't want a "Ding!" in the middle of your set). Wired/wireless network sounds good too, disk intensive stuff like virus scanning or defrag might be a good thing to disable too. I also now disable all power saving schemes, screensavers, etc.

BTB - the USB bus powered HDs save one more cable, but laptop 2.5" hard drives are still not as cheap as 3.5" ones. A friend came over with a Maxtor One Touch the other day. Whoa! It was big and heavy, but built like a brick!

One more story about external devices - at one DJ thing I ran the external Hard Drive AND my M-Audio Firewire both through firewire (one extended from the other) - BAD NEWS! Half way through my set, something just didn't like this and I had to restart everything. Now I run one off USB and the other off Firewire and cross my fingers - no problems yet. (If only the the Echo Indigo DJ came in an ExpressCard format).

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CafeSavoy
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#429 Post by CafeSavoy » Tue Aug 15, 2006 5:29 pm

Jase wrote: One more story about external devices - at one DJ thing I ran the external Hard Drive AND my M-Audio Firewire both through firewire (one extended from the other) - BAD NEWS! Half way through my set, something just didn't like this and I had to restart everything. Now I run one off USB and the other off Firewire and cross my fingers - no problems yet. (If only the the Echo Indigo DJ came in an ExpressCard format).
i've noticed that too. sometimes you get conflct when you run both audio and drives of the same firewire port.

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JeffyCupcake
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#430 Post by JeffyCupcake » Sun Aug 20, 2006 8:05 am

I just wanted to post an update on what I've been using since I asked about stuff awhile back. I've been using the Echo Indigo DJ soundcard and Traktor DJ Studio 3. I've found the Echo Indigo DJ to be a really decent card and it works great combined with the Traktor software. It's really convenient to just pop in the PCMCIA card and then load up the software and you're ready to go.

Some of the nice things about it are:
* it's a lot less hassle than an external USB sound card - just plug in and go
* the Windows sounds automatically get disabled while Traktor is running
* you have an output for the speakers and a second output for your headphones
* you can't accidentally double-click on something and have it change the song that's playing (like WinAMP or iTunes)

The way I configured it:
Audio Setup:
* Soudcard - ASIO Echo WDM
* Output Routing:
- Monitor - 1. Indigo dj virtual 1/2 2. Indigo dj virtual 2
- Booth - 3. Indigo dj virtual 3/4 4. Indigo dj virtual 4
* Deck Preferences:
- I turned off "Stop Deck at end of Track"
- I turned on "Auto Load next Track"
- (I changed these to options because I only use one deck and it acts more like a regular playlist)
* Hotkey Setup:
- Browser List Edit (Alt+3) - Bring up ID3 tag edit window WinAMP style

Traktor DJ Studio used to be around $200 but there is a promotion now where it's only $99. It though some people here might be interested in that. I was really excited when I found it and I bought it right away. (I don't get anything for referring people.)

There were some really annoying bugs in Traktor before but most of them are worked out with the latest update and it works a lot better. I'd highly recommend it. I've tried various other programs and I like it the best by far. It has a lot of features that are overkill for Swing DJs but at $99 I think it's a pretty good deal.

A pet peeve when DJs use iTunes:
One thing I'd like to add... the thing that drives me nuts is people who DJ swing music using iTunes who don't have the crossfade option turned off (it's turned on by default). Please please please turn off the crossfade option. It's under Preferences -> Playback - Crossfade Playback (just uncheck the box).

I'm not the best swing DJ by far but I thought some of this info. would be helpful to people starting out.
Last edited by JeffyCupcake on Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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la musette
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#431 Post by la musette » Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:24 pm

By all means redirect me if you've already covered this- but I just bought myself a new mac laptop so that I could DJ more easily (compared to ipod or lugging my big old bubble mac around) and I'm a bit confused as to which file type and sampling rate I should go with in itunes. Naturally, I don't want to fill my computer up right away with just tons of music, but I want good sound quality too, and to be able to burn nice cd's for people.

In the past I imported things in WAV but should I switch to AAC or MP3? Is there any file format that I would absolutely regret using? Am I overthinking this? :D

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CafeSavoy
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#432 Post by CafeSavoy » Wed Aug 23, 2006 2:05 pm

la musette wrote:By all means redirect me if you've already covered this- but I just bought myself a new mac laptop so that I could DJ more easily (compared to ipod or lugging my big old bubble mac around) and I'm a bit confused as to which file type and sampling rate I should go with in itunes. Naturally, I don't want to fill my computer up right away with just tons of music, but I want good sound quality too, and to be able to burn nice cd's for people.

In the past I imported things in WAV but should I switch to AAC or MP3? Is there any file format that I would absolutely regret using? Am I overthinking this? :D
If you want no loss through compression and your dj software handles that format you could use flac. Apple also has a lossless format but it is proprietary and so less attractive to some. If you don't mind some loss through compression you could go with 320 mp3 or aac. I tend to use mp3 over aac but i have ripped to both formats. I would be curious about the preferences of list members on that choice. I know some people use lower bit rates with aac because of the claim that they employ better compression technology than mp3. But I figure that I might as well rip to the best current standard.

lipi
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#433 Post by lipi » Wed Aug 23, 2006 6:48 pm

i use itunes and rip to alac (apple losless). it's smaller than wav and handles meta data more gracefully.

i would pick mp3 over aac, because of universal support.

i did not pick flac, because i want to be able to play the files on my ipod without hassle (and i already had a lot of meta data in itunes from earlier rips to mp3).

i think losless is the way to go. you don't lock yourself into a format (losless you can convert later without, well, loss -- losse you'll lose data each time you convert). disk space is cheap. 500 gb drives hold idiotically large amounts of music (2,000 cd's losless is a fair estimate) and are less than $200.

i feel like we've had this discussion before, but i'm too lazy to find it. try lookng for "losless" or some such.

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#434 Post by Surreal » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:04 pm

I've been thinking about buying an external sound card for my laptop, but the selection in town is extremely limited. About the only ones I can find are the Sound Blaster Live ($70), and a used Sonica M-Audio ($50). Are either of these worth it? I've asked around and been told that the Audigy2 is a good buy, but I can't find them anywhere. I suppose I could always order online.

I hear that a new line of sound cards is coming out soon too. Any idea when?

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JeffyCupcake
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#435 Post by JeffyCupcake » Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:05 pm

The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 worked alright but I've found the Echo Indigo DJ to be more convenient. I've never used the M-Audio so I don't know how good it is. I ordered the Echo Indigo DJ online.
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