DJing New to digital djing ... help !!

[mai]

My background - vinyl bedroom / small gigs DJ early 90s, never used CDs and just got first MP3 player! > totally inept when it comes to technology

Now - Living in China, lots of DJing opportunities BUT cant be carrying around CD/Technics decks so now considering Total Control/LEorCue & DJio set up with laptop.

Right now looking for tunes on youtube and downloding them via cucusoft youtube mate (later will return to UK and buy the hardware---its cheaper there!). I am downloading now - before get the equipment - because cheap and fast d/l speeds here.

At the download stage am offered something like this :
standard resolution 400x226 flv
medium resolution 480x360 4:3 mp4
standard resolution 320x240 flv

1. Which should I use to ensure they will work on totalcontrol & be compatible with future hardware. I have heard about converters but don't really wanna be converting 100s files at later stage.
Neither the flv files or mp4 files work on my mp3 player, but not too fussed about that. More important they work on total control/LE/cue

2. Am I kidding myself that these files on youtube (often with scratches,etc) are going to sound ok in club environment? Again, heard about software to clean up files ,but don't really have the time for that. Are wmv files which I sometimes see on youtube better?

3. Am I looking in the wrong place for music files. Where is the cheapest (ideally some free) place for mp3 files? Most stuff I look for is early 90s house and not really commercial.

4. Any better alternative to total control/DJio which is less than 200pound mark ? Gotta be cheap as most things get stolen out here sooner or later.

5. Anyone tried this numark stuff? Is getting the tunes in beat a nightmare with them small finger pads. I guess it probably has auto beat match or something..but seems a bit of a con to me!

Cheers for any advice.
=======

ok...seems like cucsoft has its own inbuilt converter...just converted 4 files (3 flvs and mp4) to mp3. It worked and only took about 2mins.....is that the way to go ? - just convert them all to mp3 or does that create unnecessary further loss of quality ?

[kassios]

Re: New to digital djing ... help !!

Right now looking for tunes on youtube and downloding them via cucusoft youtube mate.

I think you ARE kidding yourself if you think youtube tunes will sound good in a club....jesus christ man and you've been Djing Vinyl? make a google research about digital djing and find out some important info that will help you choose the right equipment for your needs and what type of file formats is best to use.

Good luck

Oh and btw welcome on board !

[PeteWDJ]

Re: New to digital djing ... help !!

Alright man? I'll address your concerns 1 by one here starting with 2 because you've solved 1 yourself!

2) Youtube converted files aren't really up to the mark to be honest, they're usually uploaded from low quality files and youtube themselves compress them, and then when you download them they're most likely compressed again, so that's the file being compressed a minimum of 3 times. You're ideally looking for 320 kb/s MP3's or WAV's.

3) Beatport and Juno have a lot of the older house stuff, though they can wind up being expensive. illegally downloading tunes is easy provided you know where to look, and a lot of the stuff is in 320, though they can be reecoded lower quality tunes to make them look better quality than the actually are. there are a lot of blogs out there that do free downloads, though again at lower quality, which can be fine for in the house playing but far from perfect for playing in clubs. if you are looking to download tracks illegally, which i wholeheartedly disagree with, googleing the artists name and the track name along with the word 'zippy' can be quite effective.

4) seeing as you already have a soundcard i would recommend using a cheap mixer and a Traktor Kontrol X1, which is purpose built for use with Traktor. for a second hand cheap mixer and a Kontrol X1 you could get it for around 200 pounds, and speaking from experience the X1 is a quality piece of kit. The total control itself isn't a bad controller at all!

5) For Traktor, as an experienced user myself, I would say that trying to manually beatmatch with jogwheels and crappy short pitch faders is FAR from the way to go. MIDI faders are definately not precise enough, and neither are most jogwheels, especially not ones on a fairly low-end product like the Total Control. Sync on Traktor is a valuable function, and don't think of it as a con because in reality, it's progress. Many people will say 'It allows me more time to select a perfect track' or 'It means i can do so much more with my time' which is true, but in reality, DJ's use it because its easier. Many big name DJ's are moving over to digital and using Sync, such as Dubfire, Luciano and Carl Cox, as well as Richie Hawtin who has been a high-profile advocate for many years. Consider getting your hands on a copy of the Traktor Bible (google it) and also, for controllerism issues DJ techtools forums are the way to go!

[panoulix]

Re: New to digital djing ... help !!

Hello and welcome to the MCast & Mercuryserver forums.

I guess that PeterWDJ covered thorougly and perfectly all your questions, however I would insist on 2 things.

a) Since you are going to get money from DJing, consider buying some serious equipment that will last for more and will never betray you on a love gig.

b) Especially for the same reason, BUY any tracks you want. It is illegal and strictly out of the question to gig and make money from tracks that you have illegally in your possession. Furthermore, it us quite unprofessional to try to gig with low quality tracks, let apart that it proves that you have them illegally for sure (i.e. youtube rips).

Not everybody can be a DJ (or at least a DJ that knows what DJing really stands for). So if you love this job and if you respect yourself, then try respecting the producers of the tracks by supporting them and try also respecting the crowd that attends your gig so that both the files and the equippment you use to reproduce them, will not betray you on stage...

Take care and good luck

P.