Does this DJ software exist?

It's all about the equipment

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Haydn
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#16 Post by Haydn » Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:15 pm

david wrote:... since I recently recommended Play, which has poor databse browsing, maybe this is a good candidate. What you'd do is run itunes as you would normally do, listening to music just like you would at home, ignoring what the other playing is pumping out to the room. And when you find something you like, you press a hotkey that sends the current iTunes track to the queue player.
Well, I've just tried Play and iTunes, and this combination appears to do more or less what I want. Play lets you drag and drop from iTunes, and lets you output to a different 'sound output' port.

http://sbooth.org/Play/

Surreal
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#17 Post by Surreal » Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:15 am

Which is pretty much what a bunch of us already do. Use the "library manager" program to find songs and preview to headphones, then drag into a "simple" player which outputs to the speakers.

Myself, I use jriver to do both since the program supports multiple "zones" which can handle different outputs simultaneously. If I let other people play with my laptop, they can browse/preview my library with jriver and drag'n'drop to either WMP or VLC.

Haydn
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#18 Post by Haydn » Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:35 am

Surreal wrote:... Use the "library manager" program to find songs and preview to headphones, then drag into a "simple" player which outputs to the speakers.
Yes, that's what I want to do (ideally within one program, but failing that using two in this way).

You are obviously using Windows. I haven't found a way of dragging and dropping from iTunes to VLC on the Mac (or WMP for that matter). There do seem to be a few players on the Mac which do this though - I'm gradually discovering them.

Haydn
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#19 Post by Haydn » Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:03 am

Playing with Disco XT and iTunes, these two together provide some sort of solution. Disco XT actively monitors and updates iTunes Playlists which means that you can Preview in iTunes, and adding to a playlist while doing so, and this playlist appears in Disco XT. So Disco XT 'pulls' from iTunes rather than you having to 'push' tunes from iTunes to the separate player. It seems fiddly after that though. You have to manually drag from the Songlist to the Playlist for automated playing, or drag to the two different decks.

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fredo
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#20 Post by fredo » Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:22 am

Yeah, that's a good point Haydn. I had forgotten about the refresh that DiscoXT does of the itunes library. I forget if it's a very quick turnaround time on that though.

Also agree about the extra step needed when draggin from the DiscoXT previewer to the song queue. But I like the automation of the song queue enough to over look something like that.

Haydn
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#21 Post by Haydn » Fri Nov 21, 2008 12:24 pm

fredo wrote:Yeah, that's a good point Haydn. I had forgotten about the refresh that DiscoXT does of the itunes library. I forget if it's a very quick turnaround time on that though.

Also agree about the extra step needed when draggin from the DiscoXT previewer to the song queue. But I like the automation of the song queue enough to over look something like that.
Disco XT seems to monitor iTunes about every 10 seconds. DiscoXT is very good, and I can begin to see why it has a lot of fans (I think it succeeded CuePhase, didn't it?). For what I want to do, the best Mac solution I have found is iTunes Party Shuffle for Shuffle Previewing (in Party Shuffle you can choose the source Playlist), and Play for playing. Nice and simple, and once you've set up your iTunes Playlists, it lets you change things around quickly and gives you a constant stream of fresh songs in your headphones.

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Eyeball
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#22 Post by Eyeball » Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:59 pm

With all these fine innovations, how much better or worse would your DJing be with or without them? Since I don't DJ now, I can't know.

Toon Town Dave
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#23 Post by Toon Town Dave » Fri Nov 21, 2008 2:14 pm

I like the portability because I can fly somewhere with all my music in a compact package. No more heavy flight case and limited music. The search is great because it provides everything a cross reference does (search by artist, album, track title, etc) in one step. Also, the way the track details are displayed, I no longer accidentally play the wrong track which I did occasionally with CDs.

All the compatibility issues and quirky behavior of software are a pain but the benefits outweigh the costs.

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Chilli Poppin
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#24 Post by Chilli Poppin » Tue Nov 25, 2008 8:04 am

What format do Itunes playlists take, are they m3u?

ktron
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#25 Post by ktron » Tue Nov 25, 2008 9:50 am

Chilli Poppin wrote:What format do Itunes playlists take, are they m3u?
they're buried in the iTunes Music Library.xml file. but there are ways out there to convert them to m3u!

(just migrated my library from iTunes to a linux system... i think i ran this one under wine to get things converted over and then used a perl command to straighten out the file paths. but life ought to be a lot easier if you're still in the original OS!)

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#26 Post by Haydn » Thu Nov 27, 2008 1:17 pm

So anyway ....

... I DJ'd a short set using Cog and iTunes on the Mac last night - Cog for playing, iTunes for previewing, using Party Shuffle to throw tracks into my headphones at random from selected Smart Playlists. It worked, but it was much too stressful. Sweaty fingers, watching the crowd, working two lists on two different programs, one for previewing, one for playing. Inevitably I mistook which program I was in, pressed the key for the next song in my headphones ... and interrupted the song playing on the floor :oops:

If this system was solid and idiot-proof, it would be great. But as it is, I think it might just be too stressful for DJing. So I'm switching my attention to purpose-built programs like Traktor and Disco XT for now, to see how close they will come to doing what I want ... (which is basically to manage two lists, a preview list of songs and a playlist of songs I select to be played). I know most DJ programs are not designed to do this, but they might come closer than I imagine ...

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fredo
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#27 Post by fredo » Sun Nov 30, 2008 4:10 pm

I think that the stress you mention is more to do with a new arrangement than the style of DJing that you were trying. I think switching methods will always be stressful at first. The itunes/cog setup you mention works pretty well, even though cog looks just like itunes so I could see why you'd get confused!

Be careful with Cog...it has a weird thing where if you pull out your headphones from your laptop it will switch the output from your external card to your internal. doh!

I think what it comes down to now is weighing which method criteria are more important for you.... shuffle preview with two players, or manual searching with a comprehensive player/previewer.

Haydn
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#28 Post by Haydn » Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:46 pm

fredo wrote:Be careful with Cog...it has a weird thing where if you pull out your headphones from your laptop it will switch the output from your external card to your internal. doh!
Yeah, I saw you mentioned that in another thread. Thanks for the warning. I've got a feeling it's not the only program that would do that, I think it's something to do with the Mac's Audio setup.

fredo wrote:I think that the stress you mention is more to do with a new arrangement than the style of DJing that you were trying. I think switching methods will always be stressful at first. The itunes/cog setup you mention works pretty well, even though cog looks just like itunes so I could see why you'd get confused!
Hmm ... I've seen other people DJing in a similar fashion, dragging and dropping between iTunes and other programs, or sometimes only using iTunes and dragging songs between playlists while playing live in iTunes. It doesn't seem to worry a lot of people DJing this way. Maybe they're more nimble than me. But for me, the stress of worrying about making a mistake is much too great - actually I think it was MORE stressful DJing with Cog and iTunes than just iTunes, because I kept having to check which program I was in and remember what commands did what in that program. At the moment, I'm looking at the 'proper' DJ programs like Traktor, Disco XT and Scratch Live. I already like the way it's much harder to accidentally interrupt a song or play the wrong one with these packages. I'll update the thread further when I'm nearer a decision. Even if I don't find anything which really meets my needs, I think it's been helpful to me to clarify what I'm looking for, and how I want to DJ.

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