Djing Digital or CD?

[damagedgoods]

Yeah, I know there's the whole traktor scratch thing as well, which again I don't really understand unless you want to pretend to play vinyl. (Having said that, I have DJed a bit with it and it's pretty good fun).

Well, it's all the advantages of laptop DJing without the lack of tactile control. It's yet to convert me, but I can certainly see the appeal for those who don't mind looking at a screen in a club or taking their laptop out gigging.

What I'm advocating is like a CD deck but one that uses USB drives instead of CDs. To me that seems like the most logical option for digital.

This is what I've got at home: http://www.numark.com/d2director#

It's pretty tacky but the concept is great, I just don't think it really ever took off. If you had something like this in clubs all you'd need to take as a DJ would be a pen drive. No laptop, no CD case.

I think the two main issues with this plan are:

1) Browsing - you need a good user interface and one that's fairly consistent with whatever the DJ has at home, otherwise they'll get to the club and be very confused about what all the buttons do. Not only that, but realistically a comfortable-to-use unit will need a screen at least the size of a tabletop CDJ. Major expense.

2) Possibly more important - standardisation. It'll never take off until it's already taken off enough that loads of DJs and clubs already use it. By which point it's already taken off. Know what I mean?

1) Yep, I definitely agree that browsing is an issue but I don't see that it's an expense issue. When you're spending thousands on mixers, decks etc. the price of a decent screen would be relatively cheap, and actually you'd have the ability to organise your tunes much more easily that juggling records/CDs.
Also, the USB deck could have exactly the same format as a CD deck, you'd simply have access to many more tunes. Granted, you'd have more scrolling to do. But you'd just be scrolling instead of flipping CDs.

2) Agree, this is one of those catch 22 situations, nobody will buy it until enough people have already bought it that it makes sense to buy it.

I still think, if somebody produced the right product (and it wouldn't need to be that cheap) CDs would soon be phased out in favour of USB drives.

Hmmm. I can see CDs being phased out by laptop, but not by USB drives... club owners (especially small clubs) will be keen for laptop DJs since it means less equipment to maintain. CDJs are hella expensive to repair when people spill drinks on them. Any shift in technology would be 90% dependent on what's available in the clubs, and club owners aren't gonna be willing to fork out the considerable expense for a USB drive (assuming one is developed). Hence we're back at point 2).

Ultimately, a laptop can do anything a USB drive could do (including "feeling like a CDJ or turntable", via scratch software). The only disadvantage is weight, and after 50 years of vinyl I think it'll be a long way off before DJs start bitching about having to carry a kilo or two of sh!t with them to gigs.

[BigPoe]

Hmmm. I can see CDs being phased out by laptop, but not by USB drives... club owners (especially small clubs) will be keen for laptop DJs since it means less equipment to maintain. CDJs are hella expensive to repair when people spill drinks on them. Any shift in technology would be 90% dependent on what's available in the clubs, and club owners aren't gonna be willing to fork out the considerable expense for a USB drive (assuming one is developed). Hence we're back at point 2).

Ultimately, a laptop can do anything a USB drive could do (including "feeling like a CDJ or turntable", via scratch software). The only disadvantage is weight, and after 50 years of vinyl I think it'll be a long way off before DJs start bitching about having to carry a kilo or two of sh!t with them to gigs.

But do you really think that clubs dictate what technology people use to such an extent? I thought it was more the other way around. The DJs decide what they want to use and the clubs allow it (within reason).

Whether laptops will become the standard I'm not sure, I guess they already are pretty prolific.

My point is really about whether it makes sense to have CDs as opposed to a USB stick. CDJs are MP3 players anyway. I'd simply rather load tunes onto my USB drive than burn a tonne of CDs everytime I want to DJ.

[damagedgoods]

But do you really think that clubs dictate what technology people use to such an extent? I thought it was more the other way around. The DJs decide what they want to use and the clubs allow it (within reason).

"Allow", of course. "Provide equipment for", I'm not so sure. How many DJs bring their own CDJs?

IME, clubs will take the lead in ceasing to supply equipment (eg "yeah, we sold the technics because nobody used them and they just kept getting trashed"), but if you want to convince a club owner that he should buy a new piece of gear, he (or she) is gonna need some pretty hard persuasion that its purchase is utterly necessary in order for there to be music in the club at all. This won't happen if only a handful of DJs carry USB sticks with their music on.

My point is really about whether it makes sense to have CDs as opposed to a USB stick. CDJs are MP3 players anyway. I'd simply rather load tunes onto my USB drive than burn a tonne of CDs everytime I want to DJ.

I agree with you in theory, but I like having a record bag to flick through. The only reason I don't play with Traktor Scratch is because I don't like browsing on a screen (or taking my laptop to a club).

[BigPoe]

IME, clubs will take the lead in ceasing to supply equipment (eg "yeah, we sold the technics because nobody used them and they just kept getting trashed"), but if you want to convince a club owner that he should buy a new piece of gear, he (or she) is gonna need some pretty hard persuasion that its purchase is utterly necessary in order for there to be music in the club at all. This won't happen if only a handful of DJs carry USB sticks with their music on.

Actually, this reminds me that I wanted to ask if anybody knows much about managing a club. Because from a business perspective I don't think that 2 or 3 grand for the latest equipment is a lot of money (if the business is not a tiny one of course). You don't want to be shelling out this sort of money every month but any medium sized club must budget for new DJ equipment, just as you'd need to budget for broken glasses. I'd be interested to hear what their policy on buying new equipment is.

[Myfirstcasio]

BTW, unless you want to play with Ableton, a soundcard with more than one pair of outputs is unfortunately absolutely mandatory for DJing, otherwise you have no monitor...

No worries, my soundcard has multiple outputs, just the dedicated headphone output is shared with the main channel, so a bit of swaping stuff over is needed to use it for Djing.

Thanks for the advice man, I think I will go with what you suggest. The importnat thing ofr now is to have something that will fit in my room and help me learn, I can upgrade later if I wish to.

[damagedgoods]

BTW, unless you want to play with Ableton, a soundcard with more than one pair of outputs is unfortunately absolutely mandatory for DJing, otherwise you have no monitor...

No worries, my soundcard has multiple outputs, just the dedicated headphone output is shared with the main channel, so a bit of swaping stuff over is needed to use it for Djing.

Thanks for the advice man, I think I will go with what you suggest. The importnat thing ofr now is to have something that will fit in my room and help me learn, I can upgrade later if I wish to.

That should be fine then; I can't speak for other DJ programs but Traktor is pretty versatile with output routing. In your case you can either use the internal mixer (if I understand you correctly then this is possible even in your case just by telling Traktor to feed the main output to your soundcard's 3/4, and the monitor output to your soundcard's 1/2, and monitoring 1/2 on your headphones) - or an external mixer, in which case you monitor off the mixer and take two stereo outs from your soundcard.

If you've already got an interface then you can then look into MIDI controllers without built-in audio capabilities.... not sure what else is on the market so I can't really help you there, but I'd imagine you'd get a better controller for your money.

[Myfirstcasio]

(if I understand you correctly then this is possible even in your case just by telling Traktor to feed the main output to your soundcard's 3/4, and the monitor output to your soundcard's 1/2, and monitoring 1/2 on your headphones)

Yeh, I have trialed this setup with my soundcard already when checking out the Traktor demo, works fine, but I was just thinking, doesn't the BCD3000 have a built in soundcard with monitoring?

[damagedgoods]

(if I understand you correctly then this is possible even in your case just by telling Traktor to feed the main output to your soundcard's 3/4, and the monitor output to your soundcard's 1/2, and monitoring 1/2 on your headphones)

Yeh, I have trialed this setup with my soundcard already when checking out the Traktor demo, works fine, but I was just thinking, doesn't the BCD3000 have a built in soundcard with monitoring?

It does - I meant that maybe there's a similar controller available with no audio, which could end up being either cheaper or better quality for the same price. But I don't know whether or not this is the case.

As a sidenote, I don't know what your soundcard is like but I doubt the converters on the BCD will be great. This is unlikely to be the limiting factor though.