Rob Francis
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Rob Francis
MemberI’m another MBP 15″ user (early 2011 model) and love it to bits. I use an original Apple hard disk but am considering a switch to SSD.
MemberThanks for your reply Hee Won Jung. I’ve been reading around a lot recently about this topic. Many agree with what you are saying about turning off Auto Gain so I think I will do this. In my experience Auto Gain has done ok 90% of the time, a few other times it has made tracks too loud or too quiet.
I’m going to keep the Limiter on – just as a fail safe. I’ll keep the Master Gain low enough that the Limiter won’t kick in. Headroom is now at 0db too. This means the onus is on me to get the levels right (as I should do anyway) but gives me the Limiter just in case some FX or something else causes a volume spike.
I still dislike the VU meters in Traktor though – I think I will set the levels so that the top LED is never illuminated. That will be my equivalent of the red LED you would get on a real mixer.
MemberI’m not comfortable with setting gain manually in Traktor as its impossible to get it right. When I used CDJs it was fine as most mixers have decent level meters.
Traktor could do with moving the meters away from the fader, its such a stupid design. For instance, there is no red or orange light to tell you when you are clipping. When a bass drum “kicks in” you can’t see if it just reaches 0 or if its actuall going way past 0 and causing clipping. Sure I could listen to it, but clubs are too loud to accurately do this.
I could do with a plugin (like in Ableton Live) with a decent volume meter.
MemberInteresting that NI give the exact opposite advice: http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/913/Internal+Mixing+and+Sound+Quality+-+Handling+of+Digital+Levels+in+TRAKTOR
MemberOk don’t shout! 😉
K2 doesn’t have volume controls, not even through any kind of software interface – but I will have another look tonight.
Autogain is essential because the meters in Traktor are crap! The channel fader covers up the “LEDs” (not real LEDs, I mean the little blue flashy lights underneath the channel fader on the Traktor interface).
I don’t see how you can accurately set levels in Traktor without Autogain. For instance if the channel fader is all the way up, I can’t see the top two or three “LEDs” so how do I know if the levels are right?
Limiter – fair play I will turn off. To be fair it made not difference when I toggled the Limiter anyway so I don’t think I was hitting the threshold.
Member@Coltrane09 no I’m a pirate, ooo-arrrr
Er, pirate/internet radio – occasional club/bar too.
MemberInteresting that you say Traktor is unstable – I found the opposite. It has never crashed on me, although I am on version 2.1. I am planning to move to 2.6 when that is released.
Rekordbox did look appealing to me as Traktor + iTunes is crap but I have no other choice right now.
MemberI eventually stuck with Traktor and put the time into mapping it the way I wanted. Mapping is now done (on my Allen & Heath K2) and I love it.
The reason I stayed away from Mixvibes CrossDJ was for the reasons reason808 (no pun intended) stated: I didn’t think CrossDJ was “pro” enough. It struck me that CrossDJ was aimed at bedroom DJs due its ability to be controlled from an iPhone for a party – I couldn’t see Richie Hawtin doing this!
Also people elsewhere said that CrossDJ’s effects were a bit ropey whereas Traktor’s are top notch.
Ultimately you get what you pay for.
MemberI always Google “<> problems” and see what I get. You can usually find forum posts or blog posts from Joe Public saying what problems they have had.
MemberCan’t say I’ve had to worry about mains conditioners for DJing. I have one for my home cinema system like you said, but for DJing have never bothered.
MemberIf you’re playing in a proper club venue the chances are the monitors will be LOUD so I wouldn’t take your studio monitors or they will likely get wrecked.
Monitors are pretty useful to use while “in the mix”. The main club speakers are often pointing away from you and sometimes there is a delay between what you hear and what the rest of the club hears – makes for interesting times while cueing! Monitors help you to get around this problem.
Plus, like you say, you can hear things more clearly when the speakers are pointing at you.
MemberI would be up for this too
MemberMP3 320 is fine unless you are playing proper big clubs, chances are you are not otherwise you would be famous and probably not on these forums!
MP3s tend to be more universal and you can store tags on the files so are more useful. I tried to use Apple’s lossless format for a while but some DJ software won’t play it.
WAVs are great but I hate paying the extra £1 just for the file – total rip off in my opinion.
October 12, 2012 at 10:23 am in reply to: soundcloud v mixcloud and problems with the first #1013468MemberDon’t Soundcloud take down mixes for copyright reasons? Whereas Mixcloud are a bit more laissez faire?
MemberPlay tracks for girls first. Get the girls dancing and the blokes will follow. Something with a vocal, maybe a little bit commercial will do it.
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