Caleb Grayson
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Caleb Grayson
Participantso last week i just did a 9.5hr DJ set. it was for an obstacle course fund raiser. they told me Rock, but when i got their they wanted hard metal. i didn’t have 4 hours of death metal. Spotify saved my bacon — which was totally fried after those 4 hours.
i spent the last 5.5 hours playing ‘beer drinking music’ which included of every hard Led Zeppelin and AC/DC track.
i only had 1.5bars reception on my phone, but Spotify app allowed me to download into cue.Participantwhat i really want is to be able to download Spotify tracks into Tracktor for off-line play for $10/mo.
Participanti have Kontrol S8 and just bought Reloop Mixtour to run Spotify on DJay for iOS. i was bummed to realize while you can download tracks on the Spotify app, for DJay you have to download them one at a time in real time (while one deck is playing you download the other deck. yuck!).
so i explored the Mixtour with DJ Player Pro and Trackor2 Mac and it’s been a great little controller.
the thing is it’s also a sound card with 4 outs (mains and head phones).
so make sure you aren’t just looking at controllers, but actual 4 channel sound card controllers if you want to be able to monitor while performing in stereo.Participantmaster/slave is if you want the 1st gigbar to control the 2nd while in auto or program mode so they go through their programs in sync.
with a DMX controller you are no longer in master or slave mode but DMX mode.
to do what you want, you simply assign the two lights to the same address. you can assign as many lights as you want to the same address and they’ll all be in sync and follow the same commands.
Participantyou want to use the Booth for Monitors..Booth means monitors in DJ parlance. another name is FoldBack.
don’t those HK’s have a combo XLR/1/4″ Jack? if not then you can use a 1/4″ to XLR adaptor or even better yet a transformer/DI box, but at short distance this isn’t really necessary.
Participantwhy would the S5 solve your scratch intro problems that the S8 wouldn’t?
Participantany Mac made on/after 2012 will be sufficient enough in terms of processing for any DJ application. make size, weight, screen the primary considerations.
if i could get (another) dedicated DJ Mac its be the smallest Air with and external screen for home. 11″ Air is much more screen than my Traktor S8 controller has.also, is say 100 GB is plenty of space for tracks. no external hardrive needed.
Participantthere are 3 software places to check and one hardware. the hardware is the headphones/cable. try different pairs to make sure it’s not this and try your pair on a different device to make sur it works.
the 3 software are the audi preferences in your DJ software, the Sound preferences in the System Preferences/Settings, and the utility app called AudioMIDI looking at the audio window.
in all of these you want to look at volume levels, pan settings, mute settings, etc. for things that are off.
ParticipantIronically, I JUST finished my laborious conquer of DMX on Traktor/S8.
Using freeware QLC+ for DMX and a DMXKing.com ultraDMX micro interface ($70), i was able to put my Kontrol S8 into MIDI Control Mode and use the performance space — 8 knobs, 8 buttons, 8 faders — to control RGB scenes, chasers, strobe, sound/audio driven effects, blackout, MBC(MIDI Beat Clock), multiples of MBC,animations, and dimmers.
having all of this right on the S8 under the tracks really makes it possible to do some light tricks with the music. certainly more practice on my end and working out practical ways to keep the lights interesting without being burdensome, but at least i finally got it working. i had a cheap DMX-USB adapter that caused problems and the MIDI Mapping between Traktor and QLC+ was a royal pain in the butt (needing multiple templates to control MIDI in and out).
I hope to post a video soon. maybe in a week or so if there’s interest.
—Caleb
January 21, 2016 at 7:19 pm in reply to: Latest Logic Pro X update (10.2.1) has STEMS export #2342551Participantyou’re totally correct DJ Vintage. the new stems bounce in Logic is more powerful than what’s needed for NI’s StemsCreator, but it’s a lot more convenient way to do it than before where you had to bounce each stem individually along with the mix.
ParticipantI know the Camera Connection Kit (CCK) is often mentioned, but does anyone know how that is different than just putting a USB A (rectangle) to USB B (square) adaptor on your charging cable?
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by
Participantthe first rule of trouble shooting:
isolate the problem.this means switching out each piece of gear until you figure out what’s not working.
the simplest thing is to plug the speakers directly into the computer.
btw, never use the wrong power supply.
ParticipantBrian,
you seem to have been tossed overboard on this! let’s see if we can throw you a lifejacket.
“1. How can I diagnose the problem? ”
your possible problems could be:
• one piece of gear in the chain is not functioning and thus not passing signal
• a cable or connection is bad and not passing signal
• the setting on one of your pieces of gear is not allowing signal to pass throughfrom what you said, i suspect that the compressor is not getting a loud enough single from the mixer or it is not sending out a loud enough level. on the compressor, make sure you threshold is all the way up and ratio all the way down to 1:1. click in bypass, too, to start. also, set your output switches to -10 (not +4) as that will give you a hotter signal to the amp.
you really need to have the whole setup to diagnose the problem, but what you can do is test the compressor and crossover by running sound this way:
Audio Source —> compressor input —>compressor output—> Mixeruse headphones on the mixer to monitor the compressor’s output to see if it is receiving/sending signal
unplug the compressor and do this with the crossover
we’re using headphones here instead of speakers. you won’t be able to check the amp or speaker to see if it works until you can plug it into speaker as it will blow up you headphones if you plug them into it.
“2. What really is the best setup for the equipment we have in the rack?”
Mixer Main Out —> Compressor —> Crossover —> High out to Amp —> Passive Speakers
\—> Low/Sub out to Active Subhowever, a minimal setup would be:
Mixer Main Out–> Amp —> Passive Speakers
with optional
Aux 1 Out —>Active Subhere you control how much sub and what goes into the sub with the Aux1 Send on each channel.
this is not as efficient because you’ll be loading the Main Speakers with sub frequencies, but it would be the easiest set up to get started and then add the compressor and crossover one at a time to see what is giving you the problem.“3. How do we use the active sub with the passive speakers?”
you just need to think of the Passive Speakers and the Amp as one unit like the Active Sub which has the amp inside.
“4. Where can we learn more about the proper way to tune the compressor and crossover?”
go to YouTube and just search for you pieces of gear or keywords ‘crossover’ or ‘compressor’, etc.
the crossover just splits the signal so only the lows go to the sub and only the highs go to the main speakers.
On your model, you want to run it MODE:STEREO and LF/SUM:SUMMED. The Left and Right go to the Amp—>Speakers and the LOW/LF SUM goes to the SUB. the other mode is for if you have a 3 way system and need HIGH/MID/LOW.the compressor just smooths out the signal’s amplitude or volume. but in this case, it was probably being used as a limiter to protect the system from really loud ‘accident’ signals. to make a compressor act like a limiter, you set the ratio very high — all the way up even – and set the threshold medium-high as well so it only kicks in at very loud signals.
that’s the tricky part, though. you have to make sure it kicks in before it gets too loud to damage the speakers, but does not kick in at a threshold too quiet to where it makes your system unable to get to loud volume levels at all.
—Caleb
Participanthey DJ Doin’Bad,
Traktor is not very demanding, but for production when using a lot of tracks with plugins and automation, you may need something more powerful than what Traktor requires.
Multicore processors make redundant tasks go faster — like analyzing multiple songs at once or paralle processing of multiple tracks/plugins. Also, the bigger the level 3 cache the lower the latency.
funny thing about the Mac is it hasn’t really improved very much since 2012, although the NEA processors coming out for Intel will change that. in the mean time, Apple has made it harder to upgrade RAM and batteries and have made a few other manufacturing decisions that make upgrading and self repair much more difficult. Retina displays have also arguably added more load to a system with little benefit — especially for music applications.
All this to say, I’m really happy with my MBP 15″ QuadCore i7 non-Retina with 6MB of level 3 cache that I bought last year for $1000. the SSD makes it scream and it can handle a lot of tracks with many demanding plugins in Logic.
If you need more info for comparing models see EveryMac.com. for buying used, it is an indispensable resource.
since music production is so much more demanding, I suggest you check out production web sites and see what they recommend.
see the LUG logic-users-group.com or he user’s forum of whatever production software you plan to use.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by
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