Any digital dj's in here?

Chris1712

Chris1712

Chris1712

Soldato
Joined
29 Jul 2004
Posts
9,728
Location
Bristol
Right, mixing is something i've always wanted to do as a hobby, and this digital dj malarkey has caught my eye once again.

I have mucked about on vinyl decks at my uncles many times, and used to sit in Traktor DJ farting about but always felt without physical interaction, it was made a lot less fun.

Now i've spotted a few products like the Numark Total Control and various Behringer kits that interface with Traktor (and cubase etc.) to give you some control with jog wheels, effect rotaries and so on.

Anybody had experience with such equipment? I really fancy splashing out on something fun, and this is ticking all the boxes of fun and creative here (I'm on a computer engineering course so all my creativity is being sucked up by logic and boredom!).


Input/Recommendations?
 
have used the behringer thing before aswell as one of the evolution controllers that surkin uses and theyre allright. when i play about i tend to just be boring and use ableton at the moment :o

the Vestax VCI100 seems to get great reviews although its a good 200quid more than the behringer and numark. depends how often your planning on using it and how far you want to take things i guess

hoping to get some cdj400s in a few months though (unless the mk3 800s turn out extra special

look like a spot on piece of kit , can be used as midi controllers too
http://www.djsounds.com/11/14/new-bpm-show-hosts-first-public-uk-sighting-of-pioneer’s-cdj-400/
 
"andy" said:
have used the behringer thing before aswell as one of the evolution controllers that surkin uses and theyre allright. when i play about i tend to just be boring and use ableton at the moment :o

the Vestax VCI100 seems to get great reviews although its a good 200quid more than the behringer and numark. depends how often your planning on using it and how far you want to take things i guess

hoping to get some cdj400s in a few months though (unless the mk3 800s turn out extra special

look like a spot on piece of kit , can be used as midi controllers too
http://www.djsounds.com/11/14/new-bpm-show-hosts-first-public-uk-sighting-of-pioneer’s-cdj-400/
Click to expand...

I would like to stick probably below £200 tbh, as much as i enjoy music it will be an on the side hobby as such. In the future, depending how much i get into it obviously i will start to look at superior equipment, but for the start the numark and behringer look like great bits of kit.

One question, as most of these controllers dont have there own audio controller, is there anyway you can split optical output? I understand that if you have a multichannel sound card (7.1 optical on my MBP) you can have headphones from rear, front out to your speakers as such.

Is this possible from an optical connection? Or will i have to get some kind of usb solution aswell, to split the signals out through RCA?
 
hmm , i believe the behringer bcd3000 has its own soundcard and does it all over USB then you have aux outs and a headphone out

id prbly go for the behringer just because its good value for money imo , theyve supposedly fixed the bugs that the 2000 had too


if you have a 7.1 card then i believe with virtualdj/tracktor you can fairly easily set it up with a normal dj mixer rather than the midi controller things ( dont see why it wont work with an optical 7.1 card and mixer with optical connections)
 
"andy" said:
hmm , i believe the behringer bcd3000 has its own soundcard and does it all over USB then you have aux outs and a headphone out

id prbly go for the behringer just because its good value for money imo , theyve supposedly fixed the bugs that the 2000 had too


if you have a 7.1 card then i believe with virtualdj/tracktor you can fairly easily set it up with a normal dj mixer rather than the midi controller things ( dont see why it wont work with an optical 7.1 card and mixer with optical connections)
Click to expand...

Cool cool, out of interest, what were the bugs/problems present with the BCD2000?

The numark set is available with the numark djio, which deals with the headphone output for 199, which seems like a pretty good deal with the bcd3000 set at about 170?

Hmmmm decisions decisions, something about the numark set attracts me more than the behringer.
 
"andy" said:
think the main bugs where to do with the software not really supporting it properly, peopel where getting probs with the queing and with knobs/faders not returning to zero , supposedly it all works fine with the 3000 though

can get the 3000 for 135 here too :)
http://www.bluearan.co.uk/menu/index.php?id=BEHBCD3000&browsemode=category
Click to expand...

w00t! Bargain, gonna grab one of those then!

Cheers for the advice guys, while we're at it, anyone know of good download llocations for unmixed dance/trance/house (what I'll mostly be mixing firstly)?

Also, headphone recommendations? My pc headset isn't going to cut it i reckon! (sub 40 pref)
 
Last edited:
The best two legal ones are Beatport and Juno. Headphones, get to a shop and try a few at volume. All depends on whether you are going to be gigging out or not...
 
avoid the behringer, it may look good, but it gets a lot of bad reports from owners, best bet for your price range is the hercules mk2, has built in soundcard, does everything the behringer does, but i find it more compatible with different software, traktor, virtual dj etc, full versions, come with presets for it, its a good bit of kit, dont be put off by its 'toys r us' appearance
i warn you now tho, after 12 months with one of these you will be itching for 1210's and serato scratch live setup, it just cant be beaten in my opinion

to mix properly you really need either a moving platter or at least a touch sensitive platter, otherwise your gonna be mostly using your mouse and auto beat match, which is ok but not so much fun as doin it yourself, you dont get this with the cheap end of the market solutions, plastic jog wheels just dont cut it, you can however make some fantastic mixes with them but your gonna be lettin the software do almost everything but x-fade for you, which is ok for some
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom