SwingDJs

Help! Bowing to the pressure around me, and tired of lugging my cds everywhere, I purchased a 12" Mac Powerbook for djing. I've been loading my music into iTunes, and using the little BPM counter recommended here.

I'd like to know preferred methods for cueing vs djing on a Mac.

Please keep in mind, I'm not that technical. I want it to work as easily as possible. At the same time, I want the flexibility to cue on the fly. (I know there's a lot of information on this board, but I cannot judge how much of it is out of date.)

Thanks for the help!
Naomi

http://www.swingdjs.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=106

Topic covers both Windows based PC's and Apple based PC's.

that's an intimidatingly long thread. :o)

fwiw, the few times i've dj'ed recently i've done it from itunes on my powerbook. i make a shortlist of about twice the length of my total sets and keep that playlist's window open next to a "live" playlist window.

if your shortlist is really long, and you don't trust yourself to remember what you've played before, you can always create a smart playlist which has "is in shortlist" and "not played in past day" properties set -- then keep that smart playlist open instead of the shortlist. make sense?

i add songs to the live playlist, maybe two or three past the one currently playing -- and i can always insert, if i change my mind of course. you have to be a little careful with your mouse -- no accidental double clicking (had a trackpad glitch once during a birthday jam -- ouch!).

yup, you can't do previews over headphones this way. i carry only music i know fairly well, so i don't mind too much. i always bring an ipod with a copy of the shortlist++, but i've never actually used it (neither for previewing a song nor for emergency dj'ing).

Did I mention this app yet for mac? It's called Detour. http://www.rogueamoeba.com/detour/. It allows you to specify which program will use which soundcard. I do without iTunes and DJ1800 because I don't like how DJ1800 stops when it's library is being updated.

I use Audion 3 with Itunes. I use Audion (http://www.panic.com/audion/download.html) as my search+find application for queueing, and iTunes for playing . You can do drag+drop between audion and itunes, but not the other way around. Other glitch is that you can't interchange playlists very easily.

Has anyone found an app that let's you drag from iTunes to a playlist like you can with winAmp on the PC?

The nearest I could find was DJ1800, but I'm not a fan.

The Peanut Vendor wrote:Did I mention this app yet for mac? It's called Detour. http://www.rogueamoeba.com/detour/. It allows you to specify which program will use which soundcard. I do without iTunes and DJ1800 because I don't like how DJ1800 stops when it's library is being updated.

I use Audion 3 with Itunes. I use Audion (http://www.panic.com/audion/download.html) as my search+find application for queueing, and iTunes for playing . You can do drag+drop between audion and itunes, but not the other way around. Other glitch is that you can't interchange playlists very easily.

Unfortunately, Detour doesn't seem to work on the Intel Macs, and development has stopped.

In the process of evaluating DJing software for my new MacBook.

I have looked at MegaSeg and DJ1800.

My initial observations are that DJ1800 would met my requirements of managing my library in iTunes and previewing and making DJ1800 the main output. I gather there can be dropout issues with DJ1800 but I haven't experienced them yet (though only using the demo version). I understand this mainly occurs when letting DJ1800 manage your library.
At present I don't import in my iTunes library.

I have tried to load up my system by ripping some CDs while playing music through DJ1800 but haven't been able to produce a dropout yet.

Any comments from people who have used DJ1800 about its reliability??

p.s. I gather there is a new version coming soon with major changes including using universal binaries. Anyone tried the beta releases?

I have used DJ1800 for a couple of years and only had one drop. But to me, one was one too many. But I continue to use it because I haven't found anything (for the price) that is comparable.

As far as a new version . . . I don't think you will ever see it. The last time there was an update on their site was Jan. 2007 and quite a few users have asked for an update on the status on the user forum . . .

zzzzoom wrote:I have used DJ1800 for a couple of years and only had one drop. But to me, one was one too many. But I continue to use it because I haven't found anything (for the price) that is comparable.

As far as a new version . . . I don't think you will ever see it. The last time there was an update on their site was Jan. 2007 and quite a few users have asked for an update on the status on the user forum . . .

Jan 2007? Jeez, that's only 6 months ago. Software cycles are often much longer than that, especially when the software is produced as a hobby or side-project for the programmer/group.

I guess I wasn't clear. The beta of version 3 was released to some for testing in 2005. It has been posted on the user forum as 'we'll be releasing the next version of the beta in a couple of days' several times in the past two years.

The last update to their site regarding when the beta version will go live was in January 2007.

zzzzoom wrote:I guess I wasn't clear. The beta of version 3 was released to some for testing in 2005. It has been posted on the user forum as 'we'll be releasing the next version of the beta in a couple of days' several times in the past two years.

The last update to their site regarding when the beta version will go live was in January 2007.

Ya, that clears it up. Oh well.. that exposes the other problem with Hobby-software

Naomi wrote:Help! Bowing to the pressure around me, and tired of lugging my cds everywhere, I purchased a 12" Mac Powerbook for djing. I've been loading my music into iTunes, and using the little BPM counter recommended here.

I'd like to know preferred methods for cueing vs djing on a Mac.

Please keep in mind, I'm not that technical. I want it to work as easily as possible. At the same time, I want the flexibility to cue on the fly. (I know there's a lot of information on this board, but I cannot judge how much of it is out of date.)

Thanks for the help!
Naomi

You can use TraktorDJ but you will have to use an external soundcard that has two outputs since traktor generally doesn't allow to send signals to two different devices.