Digital DJing in 2009 - my setup

As it's 2009, I thought this blog might be due an update!

This is the road setup I have now:

• Edirol FA-66 4 in 4 out Firewire soundcard:
  

MacBook White 2.6 Core2Duo 2GB RAM. I could have gone for a PC - there wasn't much in it. One of the advantages of using a Mac is that most DJs/producers use them, so you don't look out of place. I'm not going to get into the whole PC v Mac debacle, but it serves me well as an audio workstation. Whatever works for you.


Faderfox DJ2 Controller. My trusty faderfox has been useful for the (relatively simple) mixing that I do on my setup. You might want to pick a different MIDI controller if you're going to be doing hip-hop mixing or something. But I like mine:

Digitalising your music collection - some tips

Importing a music collection into digital format is a massive task. And it's easy to make mistakes, especially for those more used to CDs and Vinyl as opposed to MP3s and digital. So here are some tips:

1) Standardize on an MP3 format for ALL your tracks.

MP3s are the standard for all digital DJing tools. If you have tracks in WMA (windows media player) AAC (apple format) or FLAC (high quality lossless audio format), these tracks will NOT play on all digital DJing tools and DJ MP3 players. You don't want to get caught out in a club (like I have done on several occasions) going to play a track that is not in MP3 format, only to have it not play, and hear a horrible silence. So I suggest standardizing on MP3s.

You will want to pick the highest bitrate available - gone are the days when hard disc space mattered; nowadays your mobile phone can store about 10 albums on its own. The higher the bitrate, the more information about the music track is stored in the MP3, and the better the sound quality. So I suggest going for the max - 320KB/s bitrate.

I've also just bought some top of the range, pioneer CDJ-400s, and these things don't like VBR - variable bit rate - tracks. Since pioneer make the club standard CD players, and the feature set in the CDJ400 is likely going to be seen on the next CDJ1000MK4, which is going to be installed in every club everywhere when it comes out, I would suggest you stay with CBR (constant bit rate) tracks instead of VBR.

So unless you've got a good reason for not following my advice, pick 320KB/s Constant Bit Rate (CBR) MP3 files.

2) Set your CD ripper to extract audio from the source at the highest possible quality.

You really must do this before you start digitalizing your CD and/or vinyl collection. iTunes defaults to a *poor* quality CD -> MP3 copy that will sound *poor* (and may not even play) when you play those tunes out on a club environment. But you can change it. So set it to the MP3 format you have decided on, if you're following my advice, that is 320KB/s bitrate Constant bitrate MP3s. Here is the settings you will need in the current version of iTunes, if you choose to opt for the simple route and use that to import all your CDs:



3) Converting other files to MP3s.

In general, you want to minimize the amount of converting you do between the CD original and the final MP3. Having to convert a file means that there is a possible loss in audio quality when it is recompressed and possibly resampled. But as mentioned, I recommend you have all your audio files in the same format. So you might have to convert those old WMAs, AACs and whatever else you've got lying around. I can recommend a program called 'TuneBite' to convert different types of audio files to MP3s. It works well, is commercial, but quite cheap for what it does.

4) Burning to CD

If you want to burn your music collection to MP3 CDs or audio CDs for use with DJ CD players, which you will probably want to do at some point, you should consider the following:

a) Choice of media. Some brands of CDRs won't play in some types of digital CD player. Generally you'll be fine, but you might want to do some research first on your target CD player to see if it suffers from any problems.

b) Which program you're going to use to burn the CDs. I have found that far and away the best CD burning program is Nero for the PC. It allows you to burn at variable speeds, print out labels, index cards, supports CD TEXT, which is great if your CD player supports it, and other features. I have also seen that Toast for the Mac is a great CD burner.

c) Labelling/Indexing system - how are you going to keep track of the music on your CD? Most people write an index card, and write the title of the CD with a marker pen on the CDR. I have been buying LightScribe CDRs, which allow you to print the CD label onto the top of the disk, and have been printing out index cards using Nero for each CDR to keep in my CD wallets underneath the CD.

5) Keep backups of your music files.

Now you have all your music in one place, you certainly don't want to lose it all. I suggest purchasing an external hard disc for your backup needs. I recommend something like a Western Digital My Book drive for backup. Note that you will not want to use this driver as your external hard disc for playing MP3s live, because it's a slow drive. However it offers a good ratio of MB/money.

That's all for now. Feel free to chime in with any questions if you want.

Making your kit as compact as possible

If you DJ regularly, you should make sure that your kit is as compact as possible. My previous setup consisted of 9 components, forgetting any of them or leaving them behind at a gig was easy and happened quite a few times. (Don't doubt it, it will happen to you, if you DJ regularly enough). It looks messy, is dangerous if you forget things, and increases the number of things that could go wrong with your setup.



To minimise these problems:

1) Reduce the number of components you need to DJ with. You can do this by a) Using internal HDs instead of external HDs, or b) using an external bus powered HD without a PSU. There are other options too, of course.

2) Bring along backup kit. Yes really. If you have a complete backup solution in your car boot, you're sorted for just about any problems.

New Digital DJing Setup

I finally shelled out and got a completely new setup:

1x ThinkPad T40 refurbished from Ebay. This includes two USB2 ports, two PCMCIA slots and built-in wireless. This is a good choice of laptop because 1) It's cheap: £200 from e-bay 2) The build quality is excellent, making it very durable for DJ use. 3) It has the right connectors I need for the portable HD and the portable PCMCIA soundcard I'll be using.



1x Echo Indigo DJ PCMCIA soundcard. This is still one of the best DJing soundcards you can get for laptops. It is multi-channel (2 channels) and provides great amplification, sound quality and low-latency ASIO drivers (4ms on Traktor 3). You can pick one up for ~£100.



I'll still be using my old LaCIE portable USB drive, but will probably be replacing it soon for a LaCIE 120GB Rugged drive, which has extra shock protection to guard against bass reverberations. I'm also still using my Faderfox, need to get a powersupply and a case for that. Below is the LaCIE Rugged drive, apparently they come in black also, which looks preferable!:



I'd also recommend a surge protector for all kit, as although I haven't been burnt yet, club electronics can be quite dodgy.

What is Digital DJing?

Digital DJing (or CPS DJing as it's technically called) is the art of playing or mixing using a computer.

There are several advantages to digital DJing:

• Your setup takes up very little space. This is preferable to lugging around a crate of vinyl or even a couple of cases full of CDs (and possibly your decks!) to each of your gigs.


• You can search through your music and load music into one of your decks in a couple of seconds, rather than a few minutes it might take you to go through your record or CD collection.


• Current DJ software gives you a lot more information on the structure of your music than hardware-based players such as CD and/or vinyl. On most DJ software you can see the waveforms and the beats, so you can quickly cut to a breakdown and be alerted when a track fades out. Current leading DJ software products are : Traktor and Virtual DJ. DJ software also gives you features such as precise looping, sampling and FX controls.


• DJ controllers are available that allows you to control your DJ software with high precision, and can be customised to your personal choice.

• You can use products such as Sereto Scratch to hook up your decks (vinyl or CD) to your laptop, so you can mix MP3s on your decks.

There is are two main disadvantages:

• A lot of DJing is about the image - it's a performance and the crowd expect you to be looking like you are doing something when you are up in the booth. In clicking on a laptop, you lose some of the showmanship of traditional DJing.
• Some older DJs and club promoters look down on digital DJing, and it may be difficult to land a residency at your club if this is the case.

Whatever your opinion, Digital DJing is here to stay. Professional DJs cannot afford to ignore it any longer. Stay tuned for what you need to know about this new and exciting way of DJing.

Ground Loop Isolators, and why you need one.

"Ground Loop Isolator". Sounds scary and technical, doesn't it? But don't worry, it's not the crucial component Scottie needs to repair the warp drive in this weeks episode. So what, then, is it?



First of all, I'm going to explain why you need one.





This is a standard UK plug. Your plug may vary, but I'm going to keep this UK-specific.

Each plug has three wires - one for each prong. The live wire - which carries the electricity for your appliance, the neutral terminal, which isn't actually used, and the earth (or ground). You can see the terminals on the diagram.

Now if you look at your laptop power supply, where the laptop plugs into the power supply, you'll notice that it seems that only one wire fits into your laptop. This wire is actually split into two terminals - live and neutral.



But there is no ground terminal or wire. So your laptop is not properly grounded.

Yes Dave, you're saying, but so what? What does all this mean for my DJing setup? Well, it means that the little amount of excess electricity on your laptop has only one place to go, through the lead to your soundcard into the club mixer or PA that you plug it into!

This manifests itself as the light hissing and screeching when you plug in your ungrounded laptop into your amplifer/PA/mixer. So that's why you need a ground loop isolator. It stop this excess electricity leaking into your audio channel, by making sure your laptop doesn't ground itself on your playout system.

You can pick up a basic GLI from Maplin.co.uk for about £10. This is what I use, and really I have had no problems with it at all. You can get better quality GLI by searching around but to be honest, I'm not sure whether you need to pay extra as it seems to do exactly the same thing.

So if you're experiencing hissing and screetching on your club playout system, get a ground loop isolator first, and see if it fixes it.

Scottie would be proud.

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.