Cog with iTunes - mac laptop DJing

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The Peanut Vendor
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Cog with iTunes - mac laptop DJing

#1 Post by The Peanut Vendor » Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:45 am

For all mac users: Tonight I stumbled across a little music player called Cog, which has gotten me very excited:
http://cogx.org/

First, it can output to any soundcard.
Secondly, you can drag & drop from iTunes into Cog.

Basically what this means: You can configure Cog as your Master and iTunes as your Cue, and interact between the two!

Ideally you would output Cog to your external soundcard, and output iTunes to the internal soundcard. Whenever you hear a song you want to play in iTunes, just drag & drop into Cog, and voila! Added to the stack.

There are a couple minor drawbacks; it can't play protected AAC, which all non-iTunes programs can't do anyways. It can't drag 'n drop back to iTunes, but this can be solved by simply saving it as a .m3u file and then drag 'n drop the .m3u file back into iTunes in a playlist. I cannot speak of it's reliability and whatnot yet, but on some first tests, the app works well.

This is the best solution I've come across. Works for all macs afaik. Yay!
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straycat
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Re: Cog with iTunes - mac laptop DJing

#2 Post by straycat » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:35 am

The Peanut Vendor wrote: There are a couple minor drawbacks; it can't play protected AAC, which all non-iTunes programs can't do anyways.
Just to say that this statement isn't quite accurate - there's several DJ programs which happily play protected AAC (so long as the tracks are authorised on the machine you're using)

Cog looks useful though - thanks for pointing it out.

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ymendel
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#3 Post by ymendel » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:47 am

I actually use Cog+iTunes the other way, with Cog as the cue and iTunes as the master.

Cog has other problems, like its inability to detect changes to the upcoming playlist within the last 7 seconds (or so) of a song's playback. I consider that a minor problem with Cog as cue, but it would be inexcusable in a master. It also has the drawback of missing playback options, so you can't apply an EQ or start/stop points. If you want Cog to not play the file as-is, you have to edit the file.

In checking out some of these problems, I downloaded the newest, "unstable", "edge development" release of Cog. That one lets you drag from Cog to iTunes.

Haydn
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Re: Cog with iTunes - mac laptop DJing

#4 Post by Haydn » Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:45 am

The Peanut Vendor wrote:For all mac users: Tonight I stumbled across a little music player called Cog, which has gotten me very excited:
http://cogx.org/

First, it can output to any soundcard.
Secondly, you can drag & drop from iTunes into Cog.

Basically what this means: You can configure Cog as your Master and iTunes as your Cue, and interact between the two!

Ideally you would output Cog to your external soundcard, and output iTunes to the internal soundcard. Whenever you hear a song you want to play in iTunes, just drag & drop into Cog, and voila! Added to the stack.

There are a couple minor drawbacks; it can't play protected AAC, which all non-iTunes programs can't do anyways. It can't drag 'n drop back to iTunes, but this can be solved by simply saving it as a .m3u file and then drag 'n drop the .m3u file back into iTunes in a playlist. I cannot speak of it's reliability and whatnot yet, but on some first tests, the app works well.

This is the best solution I've come across. Works for all macs afaik. Yay!
If you do a search for 'cog' using the search function

http://www.swingdjs.com/phpbb2/search.php

you'll find quite a few people on this board have talked about using Cog and iTunes, and some use another player called 'Play'.

I used it once to DJ, but it didn't work for me - it was much too stressful. I think this is largely because you end up using two different programs and they work differently. For example, pressing the 'right arrow' in iTunes does one thing, and may do something different in Cog. Similarly with other keys. Even if you can configure both programs to use the same keys for the same job, they will still be quite different. Also, you end up using two list-based programs, which makes it hard to tell instantly which one you are using. The problem I have is if I try to DJ like that, I end up using far too much energy on being careful and constantly checking which program I'm in and there isn't much energy left for relating to the crowd and selecting suitable music.

That's what I found anyway.

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fredo
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#5 Post by fredo » Mon Jan 19, 2009 11:19 am

Haydn is correct, Cog has been discussed on here a few times with mild reviews. I stopped using it as well because of a few of the reasons listed here already. I don't know if they've fixed this yet or not, but if you pull your headphones out of the laptop jack while playing music the Master output switches from external to internal sound cards.... or at least it did when I was testing it.

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ymendel
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#6 Post by ymendel » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:24 pm

fredo, I posted to the Cog forums about the output-switching problem. There's a ticket for the developer now, so you can keep track if you're interested. http://trac.cogx.org/ticket/108

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fredo
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#7 Post by fredo » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:55 pm

good idea ymendel.

Hopefully they can take care of that problem. I think the issue you raised earlier about not being able to add a song to the playlist at the last second was my next biggest problem with Cog. I tend to change my mind at the last second from time to time and this problem was annoying.

I've not considered Cog since testing a few times, but maybe if they fixed these things I might take another look.

thanks

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trev
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#8 Post by trev » Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:57 pm

I just wish iTunes allowed you to output to two different devices at once. *dream*

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ymendel
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#9 Post by ymendel » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:08 pm

trev wrote:I just wish iTunes allowed you to output to two different devices at once. *dream*
I'd be at least a little happier if iTunes let you choose an output device other than the system output.

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CafeSavoy
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#10 Post by CafeSavoy » Tue Jan 20, 2009 4:13 am

ymendel wrote:
trev wrote:I just wish iTunes allowed you to output to two different devices at once. *dream*
I'd be at least a little happier if iTunes let you choose an output device other than the system output.
You have to set that up in system preferences. Otherwise there's an application (no longer supported but available) called Detour that lets you set output for players.

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dogpossum
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#11 Post by dogpossum » Sun Mar 22, 2009 2:20 am

Just a little note: I had some technical issues the other night and cog saved my bacon.

I've been using itunes as my 'to the people' program and DJ1800 as my previewer on a mac. DJ1800 chucked its guts (again) and I had to just ditch it completely as I had to start DJing _right then_. I just opened up cog and used it as my previewer. It wasn't ideal and I won't be using it as my 'proper DJing tool' any time soon (same goes for itunes and DJ1800 - phew!), but it was simple, safe and easy to use in a possible-panic situation.

The biggest problem I had with it was the fact that it works from a play list to which it added every song I dragged and dropped onto it - I really just wanted it to 'accept' the dropped song and play that. I'm going to start using Disco XT this week, and I'll be keeping cog on hand just in case. It was very helpful and simple in a stressful situation - quick to open up, easy to use.

The moral to this story is probably 'learn to use your software/tools properly so you can problem solve effectively' or even 'use the right tool for the right job', but at the time it was 'thank the goddess I've been exploring light weight media players lately'. Phew.

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chrisbe
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#12 Post by chrisbe » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:58 pm

I use iTunes and DJ1800 the same way. It happend to me that iTunes or DJ1800 (V3.2.1) hanged after the standby mode. So I began to restart my MacBook before DJing and since then I never had a problem. Another hint: deactivate AirPort.

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#13 Post by dogpossum » Thu Mar 26, 2009 2:17 am

chrisbe wrote:I use iTunes and DJ1800 the same way. It happend to me that iTunes or DJ1800 (V3.2.1) hanged after the standby mode. So I began to restart my MacBook before DJing and since then I never had a problem. Another hint: deactivate AirPort.
I do both those things. But I just don't trust DJ1800 any more. Also: new teck = sweet.

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