gferreal
I've been doing mobile and club work regularly for the past 8 years. The club I work in on Fridays and Saturdays recently put in a Denon MP3 player, and I started using MP3's exclusively. I just bought a new laptop so I could eliminate the weekly burning of MP3 discs and of course so I could take everything on the road. I've tried PCDJ (hate it, hate the company), used Traktor quite a bit (love it), and the reason I went with Virtual DJ is because it had all the features I expect, plus a viable and immediately available option for controlling it with hardware (timecoded discs). I was also impressed by the little Atomix DJ program, which I downloaded a long time ago for an old crappy laptop.
So this past weekend, I gave VDJ a go at my club gig on Friday and at a wedding on Saturday. I'm using it with an Asus M6BNE-based laptop and M-Audio Firewire 1814 interface. I got to the club early at about 8:40pm and set everything up to run with timecode. Everything was hooked up but nothing seemed to be working. Actually, it was that I couldn't get a signal from the disc player on the 1814's inputs, and my laptop power supply was introducing an extremely obnoxious noise into the sound system. I did some troubleshooting for a bit, and 9pm came and went. I had also forgotten my MP3 discs to use as a backup, so I made some calls in an attempt to get them there. During the next half hour, I rebooted several times, switched the firewire from a PCMCIA card to the built-in port, and pulled all the wires out and recabled. In the end, I was running on battery, without timecode.. but I was happy just to have the music playing. The rest of the night went well and even though I didn't feel great about it, the bartenders and bouncers thought the music was great.
The wedding on Saturday was also not without its problems, though at that point I started blaming the M-Audio 1814. The inputs kept disappearing, same as the night before, so I couldn't rely on the timecoded discs for control. Once I got going, the only other problem I had was one where the the currently playing track starting looping, like about a 1 beat loop. At that point, the system was hung and I had to reboot. This happened twice. I suspect it had something to do with the 1814 driver.. is anyone else using the 1814, or has anyone else experienced this problem?
The rest of this post are my first impressions and things that will make Virtual DJ a better program.
One of the things I'm used to in oldskool DJing is to be able to track through a disc and pick the best song, which is not nearly as easy to do with VDJ. The consequence of this is that on every mix I'm forced to just open my mind and think, "what song should I play next." This could be a good thing because I'm sure it will sharpen my selekting ability, but I still think previewing a song should be no more than one click.
The timecoded disc thing is amazing and it works really well. I can't believe Final Scratch and Serato are forcing their users to buy proprietary interfaces and lame software to do the same thing. The only improvement I can see with VDJ's implementation comes about because of the difference between the way you play CDs versus the way you play vinyl. With vinyl, the timecode will work perfectly because your hand cues the record, so VDJ always knows where it's supposed to be in the timeline of the track. But when you cue with discs, you play the track and set a cue point. The first time you do it, VDJ is set up correctly.. but what if you then decide to listen to the track? When you stop the disc, VDJ stops at that position. The CD goes back to its cue point, but VDJ doesn't know it should follow. When you hit play again, VDJ [sometimes] does a vinyl emulation sounding thing, as if you rewound the track really fast to the cue and played it. This is not really acceptable for professional use, but I think if the guys at VDJ can engineer a webcam as a scratch interface, they should be able to work out some kind of cuing scheme. My idea about it is this: when VDJ detects small movements it says, "now he's cuing." When I stop for 2 seconds it means I'm done and I've set a cue. When I play the disc and I stop it for 2 seconds, it means I've stopped the disc and VDJ should return to the cue.
Obviously, a fundamental part of DJing is mixing. I think the magic beatmatch feature is pretty cool, definitely the best I've heard, but it still doesn't do a perfect mix and I'm not so sure we should expect it to. (BTW the automix feature works very nicely for breaks and dinnertime.) The only alternative that leaves us for true mixing is to buy some kind of controller. This just should not be. I was able to mix decently (not great) just using the mouse in Traktor, dragging the pitch fader around like you do on a turntable. I think the mouse is a viable instrument for mixing if you have the right interface. Has anyone seen the way the faders work in Cubase? There are small faders, more like indicators, for various parameters of tracks, effects, etc. When you click down on the fader, it pops up a bigger version of the fader that can be used to make more accurate adjustments. Hold the shift button and it's even more accurate. As far as I'm concerned, I could mix on a laptop if we had something like that.
Another thing I noticed about VDJ was the auto gain feature. I was running the audio interface at 0db, I had the gains, line and master faders maxed on my mixer, the 2000 watt Crown amp was turned all the way up, and still I was lacking volume. Earlier on it was plenty loud, but with autogain on it seemed to slowly be reducing the volume. Turning autogain off did not solve the problem, so I assume I would have had to use a shorcut key to reset the value to... ??? There is no description of the value range in the shortcut dialog.
A last and somewhat insignificant thing I noticed about VDJ was that it if you start the program after having removed the audio interface, it pops up a directx error. There should be a way to save the last working state and suppress error messages about the audio hardware, since anyone who uses this seriously in a mobile environment will not have the interface hooked up every time they start VDJ.
Overall, I'm very happy with the way Virtual DJ works and I'm thankful for this fast-moving, quick thinking and extremely innovative company. I look forward to future versions of the software.
So this past weekend, I gave VDJ a go at my club gig on Friday and at a wedding on Saturday. I'm using it with an Asus M6BNE-based laptop and M-Audio Firewire 1814 interface. I got to the club early at about 8:40pm and set everything up to run with timecode. Everything was hooked up but nothing seemed to be working. Actually, it was that I couldn't get a signal from the disc player on the 1814's inputs, and my laptop power supply was introducing an extremely obnoxious noise into the sound system. I did some troubleshooting for a bit, and 9pm came and went. I had also forgotten my MP3 discs to use as a backup, so I made some calls in an attempt to get them there. During the next half hour, I rebooted several times, switched the firewire from a PCMCIA card to the built-in port, and pulled all the wires out and recabled. In the end, I was running on battery, without timecode.. but I was happy just to have the music playing. The rest of the night went well and even though I didn't feel great about it, the bartenders and bouncers thought the music was great.
The wedding on Saturday was also not without its problems, though at that point I started blaming the M-Audio 1814. The inputs kept disappearing, same as the night before, so I couldn't rely on the timecoded discs for control. Once I got going, the only other problem I had was one where the the currently playing track starting looping, like about a 1 beat loop. At that point, the system was hung and I had to reboot. This happened twice. I suspect it had something to do with the 1814 driver.. is anyone else using the 1814, or has anyone else experienced this problem?
The rest of this post are my first impressions and things that will make Virtual DJ a better program.
One of the things I'm used to in oldskool DJing is to be able to track through a disc and pick the best song, which is not nearly as easy to do with VDJ. The consequence of this is that on every mix I'm forced to just open my mind and think, "what song should I play next." This could be a good thing because I'm sure it will sharpen my selekting ability, but I still think previewing a song should be no more than one click.
The timecoded disc thing is amazing and it works really well. I can't believe Final Scratch and Serato are forcing their users to buy proprietary interfaces and lame software to do the same thing. The only improvement I can see with VDJ's implementation comes about because of the difference between the way you play CDs versus the way you play vinyl. With vinyl, the timecode will work perfectly because your hand cues the record, so VDJ always knows where it's supposed to be in the timeline of the track. But when you cue with discs, you play the track and set a cue point. The first time you do it, VDJ is set up correctly.. but what if you then decide to listen to the track? When you stop the disc, VDJ stops at that position. The CD goes back to its cue point, but VDJ doesn't know it should follow. When you hit play again, VDJ [sometimes] does a vinyl emulation sounding thing, as if you rewound the track really fast to the cue and played it. This is not really acceptable for professional use, but I think if the guys at VDJ can engineer a webcam as a scratch interface, they should be able to work out some kind of cuing scheme. My idea about it is this: when VDJ detects small movements it says, "now he's cuing." When I stop for 2 seconds it means I'm done and I've set a cue. When I play the disc and I stop it for 2 seconds, it means I've stopped the disc and VDJ should return to the cue.
Obviously, a fundamental part of DJing is mixing. I think the magic beatmatch feature is pretty cool, definitely the best I've heard, but it still doesn't do a perfect mix and I'm not so sure we should expect it to. (BTW the automix feature works very nicely for breaks and dinnertime.) The only alternative that leaves us for true mixing is to buy some kind of controller. This just should not be. I was able to mix decently (not great) just using the mouse in Traktor, dragging the pitch fader around like you do on a turntable. I think the mouse is a viable instrument for mixing if you have the right interface. Has anyone seen the way the faders work in Cubase? There are small faders, more like indicators, for various parameters of tracks, effects, etc. When you click down on the fader, it pops up a bigger version of the fader that can be used to make more accurate adjustments. Hold the shift button and it's even more accurate. As far as I'm concerned, I could mix on a laptop if we had something like that.
Another thing I noticed about VDJ was the auto gain feature. I was running the audio interface at 0db, I had the gains, line and master faders maxed on my mixer, the 2000 watt Crown amp was turned all the way up, and still I was lacking volume. Earlier on it was plenty loud, but with autogain on it seemed to slowly be reducing the volume. Turning autogain off did not solve the problem, so I assume I would have had to use a shorcut key to reset the value to... ??? There is no description of the value range in the shortcut dialog.
A last and somewhat insignificant thing I noticed about VDJ was that it if you start the program after having removed the audio interface, it pops up a directx error. There should be a way to save the last working state and suppress error messages about the audio hardware, since anyone who uses this seriously in a mobile environment will not have the interface hooked up every time they start VDJ.
Overall, I'm very happy with the way Virtual DJ works and I'm thankful for this fast-moving, quick thinking and extremely innovative company. I look forward to future versions of the software.
Inviato Tue 24 Aug 04 @ 12:46 am
keyon
I can't offer any tech support or input, just wanted to say that you gave a really thorough and great write up that I for one appreciate it. The more that post here there experiences with vdj, the better for everyone else to learn from and compare notes to. So thank you for taking the time to do that, hope your technical issues are fully resolved in good time.
Inviato Tue 24 Aug 04 @ 5:45 am
rugo211
So are there still no fixes for cueing on the Denon DN-S1000?
Inviato Sat 24 Jun 06 @ 9:01 am
Manquín
Just wait for version 4 and you'll see these little problems solved, Manquin DJ.
Inviato Sat 24 Jun 06 @ 5:44 pm