MyDjSpace.net

lol, great idea! wouldnt have worked in my early days mixing though... i played trance and so had big drawn out mixes... how annoying would a minute or so of airhorn be?

Haha, but it was like 30 secs of song- *air horn* 30 secs of- *air horn* *you are listening to yappity yap yap* *air horn* [throughout that, I havent beatmatched ONCE!] thats pretty much the whole mix, and it went on for like 5 min too, i was ashamed.

*air horn*

So sound effects are ok..But know how to use them!!

 

Serato/VDL Users

Everytime you get a new MP3 set the cue points you will most likely use then. Dont wait till you have 300 MP3s that need to be cued. LONG AFTERNOON

 

 

Never set you MacBook down at an afterparty . A fat girl might sit on it.

 

 

 

we feel your pain! :-o   did she realise what she did?  did she offer any form of compensation?  how hard did you hit her?

damnnn...THAT SUXX...I GOT A FEW FLAT SCREENS LAYIN AROUND...PM ME if you Need 1 cheap...

For computer dj's - get the best quality encoding you can - go for 16 bit @ 44100 if you can, and only consider mp3 if there is no other choice and if so, 320kbps cbr.

Look we are in a world where lo-fi mp3 is marketed as acceptable, but if you care about producing 'good' sounding mixes don't compromise for space.

Compromising the quality is noticable whether you're performing at a nightclub or on FM radio, lossy data compression sounds shallow and muffled and that's before the digital signal processing warps it further.

For example, radio puts all its audio through a multitude of digital audio processing which reveals artefacts in the mp3 files that it hid during the encoding process by re-equalising the audio.  Further, bu the time the audio gets to the transmitter it can go through several stages of data compression (called cascading) - all this has a detrimental effect on the audio quality of your performance.

Terabyte (1000 gigabyte) Hard Disk drives can store 1904 hours of cd quality audio (which is about 114,285 12" tracks at 6mins per track).  In australia we can pick the good ones with a five year warranty for less than $200.00.  That is less than 1 cent per song.   Actually it's about 1 cent for every 5 songs for storage cost.

My question is. for that price why would you throw the fidelity of your music away just to save on space?

Another one for computer DJ's.

If you rely on djing for your pay, then protect your music.

1. Get a line conditiong ups even if you have a laptop.  It will condition the power and add protection from power surges and spikes - most surge protectors are sacrificial or are a gimmic.    I have two ups's - one for my studio amp and one for the 2 computers.

2. This comes to the next issue - mirror your setup on two computers.  if one dies you can rely on the other.   Keep all your music and databases mirrored between the two.  Keep one as a 'master' and the other as a 'slave' when it comes to updating.  I use a tool called microsoft synctoy which does this automatically.

3. Other levels of protection you can add to your computer is use quality components respected in the computer industry, implement internal redundancy on the components like using RAID (hard disks in an array) so that if one fails the other(s) keep the system usable.  I use RAID-5 which means it has 5 hard disk drives - if one fails i only notice by a flashing icon.

4. Back up your music, and whatever data you rely on (like yourmusic catalog databases). 

As you add new music to your library,keep a second copy in a 'new archive' folder/directory.  Wite it torewritable media untill it's big enough to fill a dvd and make apermanent copy, erase the new archive and start again.  This way youwill never lose your music.

5. Add up all the amounts of memory and hard disk space as recommended for all the software and double it.   Get the fastest processor and mainboard you can afford. 

You want your gear to last at least 3 years and you will get more demanding and so will the software - particularly if you get into production.  Speed = Efficiency = Flexibily

More for computer DJ's.  (and traditional dj's who should use computers)

1. Dont rely on the software to take all the fun out of mixing.  Get anatural feel for mixing by controlling the software with turntables. Look for control surfaces like  or go the vinyl/cdj route with finalscratch or serato.  Dont be a point and click keyjock.

Some of the most respected DJs in the world use computers even if they wont admit to it - they do.  They can't afford not to.  And many who do publicly do so because they can get away with it.  But all of them peform traditionally - using vinyl, cd decks and midi mixers to control. 

There are those who 'customise' their tracks and repress them to vinyl or burn to cd - but that is another discussion.

2. Use the software to research and develop your mixes - throw songstogether even of different genres, break the traditional dj'ing rulesand see what works and what doesn't.  

When it comes to creativity, rules are the barrier to progress.

This is where the true power of computer based dj programs are -it is much more rapid than doing it manually and you can focuson the effects from the tunes, percussion, vocals and effects from themix and perfect them all. 

Once you've done your research and are proud/excided with the mix you've come up with, then practice it the traditional way. 

Then you'll have a show that is worth just as much to watch as it is to listen to.

Sorry i forgot to mention the control surface.  m-audio xponent.

And i forgot to say - for performing, broadcasting and recording get the highest quality audio device you can afford.  Stay away from domestic grade audio cards. 

You want high fidelity, so check out m-audio, MOTU, NI, ART, Digigram, Terratec.  (Please stay away from embeded sound devices on mainboards.) and some software has trouble with sound cards that don't natively support 16bit @ 44100 (like soundblaster audigy platinum 2).

This is especially true if you want to add voiceovers and vocals to your mix.  A noise free mic input that is suitable to compress about 20db so it sits clearly ahead of your mix will sound crap if you record it with a noisy audio input, no matter how much audio processing software you try to use to clean it up.