Digital DJ Tips reader Dylan writes: “Hi, I recently bought the Kontrol S4. I have it set up in my bedroom on my PC with Traktor. I have to DJ at a party in two days but obviously I can’t bring my PC with me so I am planning on getting a lend of my mother’s laptop. The problem with this is it only has 2GB of RAM (will it be fast enough?), and I don’t have Traktor installed on the laptop so I would have to set up all my preferences etc, and last but not least none of my music collection is on the laptop. What’s the best thing to do? Fastest way to get around it? Any tips?”
Digital DJ Tips says:
Good question! The hardware should be OK, check the processor against NI’s recommended spec on their website. Give it a go ASAP and find out, and move your latency up a bit if it’s jittery. Regarding the tunes, if it were me I would copy only the tunes I wanted for the party onto your mum’s computer, and prepare those to DJ with, rather than your whole collection (I don’t believe in taking a whole collection anywhere, to be honest); this exercise will help you to think about the music you’ll be playing, which is a good thing. Having said that, I don’t use pre-prepared cue points or rely on the beatgrids very much; if you do, this may not be the best idea.
However that still leaves your preferences. It’s easy to import and export preferences from the Traktor config; however, there are a couple of things you should know. Rather than go thorough them all here, there’s a page on the Native Instruments site that can help you. If you want to go the “whole hog” and move your tunes over too, that stuff is all there as well.
Have you ever moved your Traktor preferences and tunes from one computer to another? Had to DJ on a friend’s set-up with your music? Play from external drive? Please share your tips below.
Phil Morse
