DJing Software.

It's all about the equipment

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straycat
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#76 Post by straycat » Thu Apr 17, 2008 5:59 am

fredo wrote: CuePhase was suggested in the Laptop DJing thread, but it's not located on the apple website anymore (that I could find). I did find it here though:

CuePhase

The iTunes integration seems like a convenient thing for someone who's already been using iTunes, but I haven't heard/read much about it. Does anyone have any current reviews of this software?
I tried cuephase a few months ago - for what it was, it seemed very good. Quite simply, it's a playlist manager with a couple of bells and whistles, most notably the ability to preview tracks. Cheap and cheerful, but worked well. The dealbreaker for me was that it didn't provide a way to display BPM information, in the track lists (or to use BPM as part of the search criteria)

Personally, I've tried various programs, including Traktor LE (kept crashing+wouldn't play iTunes DRM tracks), Deejay (disliked intensely), Disco LT (refused to play particular tracks for no reason I could figure out) and ended up using Megaseg. If Traktor seemed a bit over-the-top for you, Megaseg may prove to be similar (and it cost a lot more than I was hoping to pay), but I've found it to be rock-solid, and an absolute joy to use.

Haydn
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#77 Post by Haydn » Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:56 am

straycat wrote:Deejay (disliked intensely)
Andy,

What was it that you disliked so much about DJay?

straycat
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#78 Post by straycat » Thu Apr 17, 2008 11:45 am

Haydn wrote:
straycat wrote:Deejay (disliked intensely)
Andy,

What was it that you disliked so much about DJay?
If you insist ;) (and bearing in mind that a glorified playlist manager is pretty much what I need - which DJay isn't intended to be)
HUGE amount of wasted space in the interface. I don't need or want those turntables there for most of the time - I'd rather have at least one more view onto track lists, so their presence irritates me. This is the reason for the intense dislike.
Apart from that, the search facilities are a bit rudimentary, likewise any kind of playlist-building / sorting (I know you can do all that in iTunes, but I'd prefer to have it all in the same program - plus I really don't like using iTunes in any kind of DJing scenario)

I'm not saying it's a bad program. Just that the interface is not what I want / need / like.

For an example of a very nice piece of interface programming which Megaseg does (I think Traktor does something similar, and probably others) - if you type in 'Ella', yes, up pop tracks with 'Ella' in the artist name or title etc. Type in '200' though, and you get a range of speeds from 195 up to 205. That's the kind of interface thinking which I find to be lacking from the likes of DJay, and which I prize in my favourite apps.

zzzzoom
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#79 Post by zzzzoom » Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:44 am

straycat wrote:and ended up using Megaseg. If Traktor seemed a bit over-the-top for you, Megaseg may prove to be similar (and it cost a lot more than I was hoping to pay), but I've found it to be rock-solid, and an absolute joy to use.
I downloaded the demo and poked around, and it seemed like a nice program (I did this before I looked at the price). After giving it a test spin I thought, it is probably a program that I would pay around $80 for (still hadn't looked at the price). Yeow. $249??? Out of my price range, for sure.

straycat
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#80 Post by straycat » Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:07 am

zzzzoom wrote:I downloaded the demo and poked around, and it seemed like a nice program (I did this before I looked at the price). After giving it a test spin I thought, it is probably a program that I would pay around $80 for (still hadn't looked at the price). Yeow. $249??? Out of my price range, for sure.
Still significantly cheaper than the European price for Traktor, mind. Yes - it's expensive (and yes - half the cost is for functionality I'll probably never ever use), but given the amount that was spent on the laptop, the amount I spend on music, plus the fact that DJing is one of the main reasons we have that laptop.... I felt that penny-pinching on a one-off software purchase seemed a bit silly...

I spent a long time looking at software, and even considered writing my own (but my Mac programming skills are both rusty and hopelessly out of date)

Anyway - for me, it was worth it.

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fredo
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#81 Post by fredo » Fri Aug 29, 2008 11:47 am

anyone ever tried Disco XT?

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Cyrano de Maniac
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#82 Post by Cyrano de Maniac » Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:13 pm

I've used Disco XT quite a bit, or at least tried to...

I've generally found it not to be very stable, often crashing on me in middle of an evening. For some reason it does seem good about not crashing until the end of a song -- at least it plays through to the end. However, at this point I can't honestly recommend relying on the software.

That said, I have used several versions of the program (I'm still within the free upgrade period from my initial purchase), and the stability seems to depend on the version. Version 4.4 seemed OK actually, but 4.5 and 4.6 were troublesome. I just recently downloaded 4.7, but haven't had a chance to use it live yet. This is all on a Mac, BTW, I don't think there was a Windows version before 4.7.

The user interface and queuing/previewing as well as the huge amount of control with respect to fades, voice-overs, queueing, equalization, filtering, and such is fantastic -- a little more than needed for swing DJing, but nice to have (particularly the equalization and fades). The author seems to "get it" with respect to taking advantage of a computer and its flexibility while respecting the familiarity with CD decks. That (and the price at the time) were what sold me on Disco XT versus DJ-1800 and several others.

If I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn't buy Disco XT -- at least not version 4.5 or 4.6 -- we'll see about 4.7. However, given that I already own a copy, I now use it for headphone previewing, but play the songs to the room through iTunes.

I can't complain about the technical support -- I had a number of back-and-forths with the developer reporting various bugs, pretty much all of which he'd fix in short order, even providing me beta versions for testing. However I believe the software has undergone a change in ownership since 4.6, and I don't know how well they do right now (seems worse, but then again I only have one data point to go on). The price of Disco XT went up about $50-60 bucks at that time as well.

Brent

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DJ Click Play
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#83 Post by DJ Click Play » Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:54 pm

I've been toying with the idea of biting the bullet and picking up a full copy of MixMeister. Anyone in here ever used that live? I'm thinking it looks great for editing and mixing, not so sure about on-the-fly live playback. I'd probably do lots of pre-mixed groupings anyway...

Toon Town Dave
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#84 Post by Toon Town Dave » Wed Sep 03, 2008 3:28 pm

Since our style of Deejaying is more closely aligned with the use case of a radio DJ, I've avoided software that is designed for a mix DJ.

I used to like the software that emulated a dual CD deck because it was familiar. After playing from a laptop for quite some time, I've found that many of those features are not really that useful.

Right now the main features that I rely on are:
- a queue of music to play with control of the wait time between recordings
- a way to search and preview, including advanced searches
- a way to group (either through playlists or searhches and tags) music
- a bullpen where I can drop stuff I'm considering playing or want to work in to my set
- display track duration of all tracks and duration plus time remaining on the playing track
- control to stop play at the end of a track or to automatically play the next track.
- some idiot proofing to prevent accidentally interrupting the currently playing track.
- a nice to have would be some manual fade to fade out to either stop or play the next track in the queue

I've managed to get all but the last 3 features with a combination of itunes and winamp.

I now find certain features like the crossfade slider in the GUI and hardware emulation features common in the DJ software get in the way.

Are there any radio DJ's reading? If so, what kind of software do radio stations use?

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J-h:n
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#85 Post by J-h:n » Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:07 pm

Toon Town Dave wrote:Right now the main features that I rely on are:
- a queue of music to play with control of the wait time between recordings
- a way to search and preview, including advanced searches
- a way to group (either through playlists or searhches and tags) music
- a bullpen where I can drop stuff I'm considering playing or want to work in to my set
- display track duration of all tracks and duration plus time remaining on the playing track
- control to stop play at the end of a track or to automatically play the next track.
- some idiot proofing to prevent accidentally interrupting the currently playing track.
- a nice to have would be some manual fade to fade out to either stop or play the next track in the queue

I've managed to get all but the last 3 features with a combination of itunes and winamp.
For $40 JRiver Media Center will give you all the above except - as far as I know - the idiot proofing. (I did accidentally interrupt the playing track a couple of times in the beginning, when I used the touchpad for click'n'drag. Never happened since I started bringing a mouse.)

And if you don't need previewing you can download their stripped-down version, called the Media Jukebox, for free. I think it meets the rest of your requirements.

(Edited 'cause at first I missed that previewing was indeed one of Dave's requirements. So the Jukebox's out.)
Last edited by J-h:n on Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

Surreal
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#86 Post by Surreal » Thu Sep 04, 2008 12:05 am

For idiot-proofing jriver, I use the multi-zone function. I set zone 1 to my external soundcard (which goes to the speakers), and do all my previewing with headsets from zone 2 which goes to my internal sound card. For the most part I stay almost exclusively within zone 2, setting up the next sequence of songs and dropping them into the zone 1 playlist when I'm ready. It's essentially like doing the itunes/winamp combo, but with a single program.

For extra clarity sometimes I will have two instances of jriver running (one for each zone) and change the skin on the second one, but I like keeping it all within one.

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J-h:n
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#87 Post by J-h:n » Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:16 am

Surreal wrote:For idiot-proofing jriver, I use the multi-zone function. I set zone 1 to my external soundcard (which goes to the speakers), and do all my previewing with headsets from zone 2 which goes to my internal sound card. For the most part I stay almost exclusively within zone 2, setting up the next sequence of songs and dropping them into the zone 1 playlist when I'm ready.
That'll work, yeah, unless you're like me and feel the need to fiddle with the playlist in zone 1 up to the last minute before a song plays. I like to be able to react quickly to what's happening on the floor, but it is a bit risky and probably should be avoided.

Of course, with the free Media Jukebox you only have one zone to play with. You can still work in a way similar to Surreal's suggestion (using a regular playlist instead of zone 2), but minus the previewing.

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#88 Post by Surreal » Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:36 am

J-h:n wrote:That'll work, yeah, unless you're like me and feel the need to fiddle with the playlist in zone 1 up to the last minute before a song plays. I like to be able to react quickly to what's happening on the floor, but it is a bit risky and probably should be avoided.
I tend to fiddle with the playlist too, but I always double check which zone I'm in before I click anything. I wish there were a way to set the double click option to always play in a specific zone.

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Chilli Poppin
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#89 Post by Chilli Poppin » Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:33 am

Anyone use SAM Broadcaster?

Designed primarily as a radio station automation package, I find it fairly useful.

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LindyChef
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#90 Post by LindyChef » Tue Oct 21, 2008 9:59 am

Toon Town Dave wrote:- control to stop play at the end of a track or to automatically play the next track.
- some idiot proofing to prevent accidentally interrupting the currently playing track.
- a nice to have would be some manual fade to fade out to either stop or play the next track in the queue

I've managed to get all but the last 3 features with a combination of itunes and winamp.
I use iTunes and winAMP and basically the idiot proofing is the only thing that can't be done. For stopping the play at the end of the track, I just leave the queue in winAMP empty and that seems to work while for manual fade you can just use the volume control ... it's a bit akward and doesn't give you a manual cross fade but works pretty well.

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