Digital DJing - David Craddock's Setup

This is the setup I use to DJ every week:

We have:

1x Compaq PP2140 Laptop
1x USB 2.0 PCMCIA card
1x External USB2 LaCIE 120GB HD
1x Faderfox DJ2 MIDI Controller
1x Creative SoundBlaster Live USB multi-channel soundcard
1x Optical mouse

with Traktor DJ Studio 3 Software, and ASIO drivers for the soundcard.

This is my laptop. I wouldn't recommend it, as it only has 2 USB 1.0 ports. I have to use a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card to connect my LaCIE HD to it. If you're going to buy a laptop, make sure it either has a Firewire port or several USB 2 ports. Firewire is faster and recommended, but laptops that have Firewire are more expensive. You can get a decent old IBM Thinkpad with several USB 2.0 ports that will do fine, and is only a couple of hundred from EBay. Not sure how much the Compaq would sell for now, as it's a couple of years old.




This is my soundcard. It's a surround sound consumer product. I wouldn't really recommend it for serious use. Its main advantage is that it's multi-channel - ie: it has at least two seperate channel outputs, so I can use one for monitoring and connect the other to the mixer. You can pick one up for about £60 nowadays.



My portable hard drive. I would recommend a portable HD to store your music if you have more than one computer. Even if you have lots of space on your laptop's HD, it is easier to connect it up to your main workstation at home, transfer your music to it, and then put it in your gig bag. Cost: £100 2 years ago, but you can get bigger HDs for this price now. Just make sure it is USB 2.0 or Firewire, or there will be an unacceptable delay in queing up tracks.





This is my Faderfox DJ2 controller. As you can see, it has all the standard mixer functions, with volume faders and the all-important crossfader. It also has play, que play, pause and pitchbend buttons. It is designed for Traktor 3 so everything works with Traktor 3 out of the box. It is battery-powered, you have to buy a seperate powersupply which I haven't got yet. Despite this minor annoyance, I'm happy with the Faderfox, and would highly recommend it to people that use Traktor DJ studio. It costs £120.



The M-Audio Uno is a compact MIDI to USB controller. You use it to connect MIDI devices to the USB ports on your computer. I have no complaints with it, it's small and does its job well. £40.





Traktor 3 is my favourite DJ software. It allows up to four decks, and probably more functionality than you'll need. I know that Nick favours VDJ, more about that later :) Costs £70 for a full lisence.

My setup works well for most situations. I use my Faderfox for venues where there is enough space, otherwise I just use Traktor with the mouse.