Luke Butzen

Latest drivers offered for the VCI-400. https://support.serato.com/hc/en-us/articles/203593924-Vestax-Hardware-Drivers-and-Firmware

My guess since Vestax has only just recently started coming back into the market (And I highly doubt it’ll ever be into the controller market again), the drivers are what they are and unless someone decides they love Vestax THAT much to write drivers for both Serato (Which Serato is never going to give coding to Anyone who isn’t a trusted employee) and the VCI-400, you’re stuck. Serato should be installing the proper drivers anyways as the VCI-400 is still a supported controller and the standalone mixer is just that, a standalone analogue/digital mixer. No DVS unless you already have a Serato box like the Denon DS1 or Rane Sl2.

Honestly, it sounds like you’ve already made the financial commitment to Vinyl. Unfortunately, djing with vinyl is an expensive and time consuming process. For instance, you’ll need a Scratch pro soundcard if you want to use your turntables to DVS Traktor, there’s the cost of buying replacement needles/Styli probably monthly or so if you seriously practice, possible repairs on the tables if & when they need it, and buying records.

If you seriously think the only to learn to DJ is with vinyl, then by all means keep going the way you have been. But if you’re open to learning on a controller and the financial cost of djing with vinyl is too rich for your blood, then look around and see if you can find a gently used mk1 s2 or S4 and go that route. You can also find cheaper controllers that should work with Traktor and you can always come back to turntables later as you already have a pair. Plus, you’ll be more prepared to learn the quirks of DJing with vinyl after having mastered the basics with the controller.

I highly doubt it’ll be years before the update from 1.8.2 to 1.9. Maybe six months to a year, tops.

I’d say don’t unless you really need pulselocker integration. All those stories like one Pioneer issued about 95% of their controllers no longer working with Serato on El Capitan would hit you first and you would have no recourse except to file a support ticket on the Serato website (Which if you’re not super detailed in your description of the problem and how you got there, is useless to them) and hope there’s a fix right around the bend.

If you don’t play out much/at all, then doing beta releases is fine if you have a backup program like MIXXX, Traktor, or rekordbox DJ for those instances you’re booked for a show and Serato is being problematic. If you rely solely on Serato or play out a lot, then stay away from Beta releases, as last thing you want to do is cancel a gig or gigs because your DJ program stopped playing nice for whatever reason.

@Arnaldi

Any other advise on how to use audacity, like for making a mash up or production would be great as well!

He did ask.

Also, keep in mind that I didn’t say he has to use a DAW to fix his mixtape. He asked about using audacity as a daw like Ableton and Protools. It’s LIKE a free version of Sound forge, but not something I would recommend messing with if you can even put a little bit of money towards a fuller, more robust DAW that actually has some production heritage.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Luke Butzen.

Yeah, there’s really no point worrying about what he uses unless you’re plugging into a Serato Certified mixer (DJM-900SRT for Ex.) and you’re trying to do flawless DJ swaps. Besides, I’ve noticed people tend to like those breaks between DJs as it lets them get a drink or what have you. (Could also be an American thing)

To answer your question though, that should be more than capable of doing a bookcamp setup. Just don’t forget to limit the stress on the CPU and what have you by following the basic optimization steps like turning off your wifi card and keeping the background stuff to an absolute minimum. You could probably also tell Windows to open into a “Perfomance” (I.E. super Optimized) mode all the way to the command line but you need to be super comfortable with doing that kind of stuff before you do it as you don’t want to have windows crashing all the time, even it would even work at all. But that’s only if you decide to do the bookcamp route.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Luke Butzen.

Then save your money & don’t go. If that’s how you’re honestly feeling while you’re at the club, it’s best to stay home, save your money and dj for yourself. I used to have that, but then I changed my ear plugs (allowing me to hear more while still protecting my hearing (and if you’re not wearing hearing protection while you’re at a club, why not?!?!) and I also take a moment before I walk in the door or while I’m in the bathroom to say to myself “I’m not here as a dj, I’m here as a fan.” I also stopped going to shows like I used to and only go for artists I really like, so I actually want to be there as a fan.

That’s just me though. It’s worked as shows I’d normally be bored to tears at, I’m having a little bit of fun. Even shows where I’m selling merchandise. So you can be a DJ and still have fun at a show, you just have to leave that mentality at the door. Otherwise, you’ll always be in that trap and never have fun when you’re on the other side of the booth. Yeah, it’s not as addicting as being the person on stage with everyone going crazy for you, but it’s something you either need to learn or just plan on not going out to a club unless you’re playing.

Using a backup Ipad make sense, but then that’s more work of having to put in cue points in your software as you can’t export/import them (To the best of my knowledge) if Cue points are super important for you.

Also, you can’t do Linux into Windows & expect to use Serato or what have you. I was looking into that after I downloaded Mint 17.3 and people were complaining about having issues running Serato & traktor using Wine & other programs. It just doesn’t work at all from what I read and sadly, no major music programs support Linux, no matter the build. But you might be able to finagle it and get it to work for you. Mixxx worked solidly but I wasn’t able to test it out fully since I didn’t want to hook up my MTP and try set up at the time of testing.

I would say if you do decide to get a dedicated laptop, you can try linux but don’t hold your breath on it working.
Also, do manufacturer refurbs on Ebay. Those come from either factory certified repair folks or Dell, HP & what have you and are probably a less worrisome purchase than buying it secondhand from someone who treated it like crap.

Hello! Interesting Setup. If you don’t mind answering a question or two, I’d like to try to help you.

(Also, yeah people may hate on Gemini and have valid points but those G4V & G2V are actually nice controllers if you use something other than Serato, which irks me that they won’t support them but that’s for later)

What’s the deal with your unbalanced master outs going into one port? Is it so that way you can route your audio out to the 2.1 speakers you’re using?

Also, are you using the Traktor Mapping from the gemini website, a community Mapping from somewhere, or was this something Traktor had in there for you to choose?