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Never trim a DJ mixer for unity gain. Always know where their meters are when they are soundchecking and maker sure they cannot clip you. Many will intentionally leave their masters below show level so that you give them more gain, some do it unintentionally because they don't know, but literally all of them will do it once they start drinking. Any show at 116dB is ridiculously unsafe for people in the audience, and this is extra true in a night club. I have mixed on all sorts of major arena PA systems, I have no idea how those ridiculous "loudest show ever" measurements are taken but there are no concerts running at 130dBA+. A Jay-Z concert will never meter that loud because he doesn't want to get sued and he only does a 90 minute set, not 3-4 hours of constant music. You should really set your rig up to RMS limit at 102-105dBA at full-tilt (peaks aren't really worth measuring for this purpose, you want a slow average), drop the peak limiter in around 110-112dBA. But I am now curious what PA you're using that you can measure at 116 with no red lights.  I limit the poo poo out of DJs on the channel strip. They won't get to my mix bus above -12dB ever (on a digital console... I guess +3 on an analog meter) and it will start to sound like complete dogshit if they push it. If they prove they don't care when it sounds like complete dogshit, I'll trim their input down so they stop burying themselves in that limiter because I can't stand sitting in front of it. If they're distorting on their end before it even leaves the mixer I'll go talk to them if I think they would understand what I'm saying, but most DJs can't seem to have the informed conversation that oredun likes to have. 0dBu is more like a suggested reference voltage than a limit of what gear can theoretically handle. +24dBu isn't actually a "clipping" signal unless either the input or the output aren't meant to handle it. My RME Fireface can take a clean +24dBu input, and some DJ mixers and mixing consoles can output that. If your inputs can't handle the output of a DJ mixer, I recommend running it through this first: http://www.radialeng.com/r2011/jdiduplex.php. ChristsDickWorship fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 21:52
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Can you guys recommend some good websites for DJ type news/reviews/technique/etc? I've started writing for one site in particular and I'm looking for some ideas for articles. Is there any topic or subject area you feel hasn't been written about enough when it comes to DJing and the business side of things?
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Jul 29, 2013 23:15
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I fully agree that 116db is ridiculous but when the system is clean it doesn't seem that loud which is why I need to piss about with my EQ to dirty it up a bit. I know that when I RTAd the system in the room it pulled the subs down at least 9db from about 30-70hz and I adjusted a little bit for my personal preference but obviously what sounds good to me isn't always the same as a 'club' sound. Next gig isn't at that venue though so I'll need to get in early to get things set up differently. Kit wise I have a pair of these T60s doing the low end:   And 4 of these OT12s doing the top end:   They're a Bill Fitzmaurice custom build (by myself) and the room was a 300 capacity, we hosed around with placement of the subs and they were absolutely hammering. This next venue is smaller which will probably bring more problems seeing as it's basically a little bare brick room for 200. I'm not really looking forward to that one in terms of getting it to sound nice. The only reason I'm doing this is because a few friends knew I had the system and wanted to throw some parties so I'm still getting my head around how to go about things, when they were playing they were barely flicking the yellows and it sounded beautiful, the DJM800 we were using fell to bits in terms of sound quality when it was smashing the reds though and that was after I'd tweaked the master attenuator to -12. The A&H mixer I was using took the signal fine and wasn't peaking at all, Mr DJ was just being a twat basically. Thank you for your advice man, I'll definitely have a look at that Stereo DI box. It seems like it'd be very handy to have around.
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Jul 30, 2013 11:20
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A DJM 800 isnt going to sound bad if its hitting red.(look at any "famous" dj playing and theyll have a DJM 800 loving slammed) Its a digital mixer with so much headroom its not funny. An AH mixer will clip because its analog but its not all that easy. Youre doing something wrong. Why would you turn the attenuator down when you could just pad the input? You should have padded that pres and then adjusted the gain accordingly. I have a question for you, are you using a mixer after the DJ mixers or are you just sending the DJ mixer outs to the amps? Do you have limiters set up correctly? Do you even have limiters? And 116 db is loud as DAMMIT, your job isnt to make people go deaf. 116 db is literally against the law for worker health laws.
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Jul 30, 2013 16:32
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oredun posted:A DJM 800 isnt going to sound bad if its hitting red.(look at any "famous" dj playing and theyll have a DJM 800 loving slammed) Its a digital mixer with so much headroom its not funny. An AH mixer will clip because its analog but its not all that easy. To clear this up, nobody on the night made any complaints about the sound quality (quite the opposite) but I noticed the sound get harsher when he was playing into the reds compared to everyone else who was just licking the yellows. The DJ mixer had the attenuator adjusted because the owner of it was having issues with his own equipment and I showed him how to do it. Genuine question; what difference if any is there in using the attenuator on the mixer itself versus padding on the desk? I was using an A&H Mixwizard WZ3 14:4:2 and the limiters are set correctly for my system, there was nothing untoward going on with those. And yeah, 116db is crazy, I'm well aware of this. It was actually shocking just how clean the sound was though, several friends noted their ears weren't ringing after the event. I put this down to the non-shrill EQ on the tweeters which I capped at 16.9k with a 24db per octave filter, that and the design of the subs themselves filtering out distortion. Forgive me, I'm still learning here and have had zero formal training so any advice is more than welcome. I've not found a pro audio thread anywhere, is there one? Olympic Mathlete fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Jul 30, 2013 19:34
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88h88 posted:To clear this up, nobody on the night made any complaints about the sound quality (quite the opposite) but I noticed the sound get harsher when he was playing into the reds compared to everyone else who was just licking the yellows. The DJ mixer had the attenuator adjusted because the owner of it was having issues with his own equipment and I showed him how to do it. Genuine question; what difference if any is there in using the attenuator on the mixer itself versus padding on the desk? I was using an A&H Mixwizard WZ3 14:4:2 and the limiters are set correctly for my system, there was nothing untoward going on with those. The majority of DJ mixers put out a signal that should be padded, so instead of messing around with the dj mixer, just make it easy and pad it right off that bat. It really lowers db so you arent barely getting by you have plenty of room. You need to goto gearslutz.com, its way more what you need.
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Aug 1, 2013 05:01
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Check out my trap mix thing. It's not great and I had a little too much fun on the last song but I've also never worked with dubstep/trap before and also it's like my 2nd recorded mix ever. So yeah https://soundcloud.com/z0d14c/trap-uno
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Aug 2, 2013 03:17
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an skeleton posted:Check out my trap mix thing. It's not great and I had a little too much fun on the last song but I've also never worked with dubstep/trap before and also it's like my 2nd recorded mix ever. So yeah Dont ask people to listen to your mix, and then say its not very good. Im not going to listen to something when the person who made it said it wasnt even good. Just post your poo poo and leave it at that.
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Aug 3, 2013 02:42
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an skeleton posted:Check out my trap mix thing. It's not great and I had a little too much fun on the last song but I've also never worked with dubstep/trap before and also it's like my 2nd recorded mix ever. So yeah You should post a track list (and also post in the DJ mix thread!) Also what oredun said, no one is going to spend half an hour of their life on something they are told is going to be terrible* *may not always be true
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Aug 3, 2013 19:11
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Amon Tobin on DJing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ_exjCaoY0
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Aug 6, 2013 03:03
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I'm still quite a newbie at DJing, and my current gear consists of a Mixtrack Pro and a Macbook running Serato DJ. I'm very comfortable with it, and will probably be upgrading as soon as I have some money for that. Anyway, I've been invited to DJ at a party, using a DJM 600 and a pair of CDJ 400s. I do get to practice on that gear once or twice soon -before the actual party. I'm really excited about finally being able to learn and play on CDJs and a real mixer, but I have some questions regarding preparation to do so... 1) All my MP3s are 320Kbps bitrate. I'm saving a bunch to USB sticks formatted in FAT32, this should be fine, right? 2) Just in case, I'm burning CDs. I'm making playlists in iTunes, and burning them as "audio CDs". Is this the way to do it? 3) Anything else I should do to prep as far as having all my tracks ready to go?
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Aug 7, 2013 20:09
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Alfajor posted:Anyway, I've been invited to DJ at a party, using a DJM 600 and a pair of CDJ 400s. I do get to practice on that gear once or twice soon -before the actual party. I'm really excited about finally being able to learn and play on CDJs and a real mixer, but I have some questions regarding preparation to do so... Yeah, that is pretty much exactly what you want to do. The only thing I would add is that you want to pay attention to the filenames of your mp3s and maybe put them into some kind of folder structure by tempo or genre. The CDJ 400s don't read mp3 metadata so the filename and folder structure is all you'll have to go on. It's near impossible to find anything if all of your tunes are in one folder and the filenames start with track numbers. edit: I'd also recommend using MP3Gain to normalize your tracks if you haven't already. Set the normalized volume to around 92 or 93dB. The default of 89dB will make your tracks way quieter than other people's. Dopo fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 21:14
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Awesome, thank you!
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Aug 7, 2013 23:00
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Hmm, any suggestions for software that will read MP3s and rename them after reading the tags? I'd like to re-write all my files to be in the format of <bmp> - <key> - <artist> - <title>.mp3 It can be for Win or Mac, and freeware is preferred.
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Aug 8, 2013 18:54
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Foobar2000 can do that on Windows.
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Aug 8, 2013 19:05
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I think I used Tag&Rename years ago and I don't remember having a hard time with it.
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Aug 8, 2013 19:44
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MP3Tag is also very helpful for fixing ID3 tags and/or filenames.
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Aug 8, 2013 20:19
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I use a program called Jaikoz that I like a lot, partially because it's available for both PC and Mac.
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Aug 9, 2013 00:00
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I just have to vent real quick. I'm currently at a new spot (to me) a gay bar that's honestly pretty empty tonight, but they decided to book 4 djs, and the first girl played peak hour dirty Dutch, which is fine I guess because it was pretty empty and she's 20, but the second guy... Holy poo poo. I'm sort of loving livid at the 2nd dj. No mixing skills, no crowd reading skills, motherfucker dressed straight out of the 2004 PacSun catalog, his girlfriend looks like a fat meerkat with a bad wig, yet he's trying to walk around like he's hot poo poo, telling people to move and everything. Dumb bastard went over his time slot by 20 minutes. This dude is the epitome of lovely newjack dj and I haven't had to deal with anyone like that in years, if ever.
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Aug 9, 2013 06:40
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Was there a crowd when he was playing?
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Aug 9, 2013 07:00
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keevo posted:Was there a crowd when he was playing? Nope. There was a small group in the main room and a decent sized group lounging in the room next to it, which has the music fed into it. If he had played a proper opening set he could've at least had some people moving, but instead everything was too loud and too fast and people left.
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Aug 9, 2013 21:15
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LISTEN TO ME posted:Nope. There was a small group in the main room and a decent sized group lounging in the room next to it, which has the music fed into it. If he had played a proper opening set he could've at least had some people moving, but instead everything was too loud and too fast and people left. Its called a "lovely dj", About 85% of the people who are "DJs" completely loving suck and dont take the craft seriously. At all. Just get used to them, dont get mad, laugh at them instead and take solace in the fact that they are loving horrible and they make you look shitloads better by comparison. They wont be DJing in 6 months anyway.
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Aug 10, 2013 04:43
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oredun posted:Just get used to them, dont get mad, laugh at them instead and take solace in the fact that they are loving horrible and they make you look shitloads better by comparison. They wont be DJing in 6 months anyway. Nah, they will. They'll be that DJ that takes your spot because they were able to bring a group of people in.
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Aug 10, 2013 04:51
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keevo posted:Nah, they will. They'll be that DJ that takes your spot because they were able to bring a group of people in. Because a lot of promoters are lazy rear end shitheads who want you to do all the loving promoting, instead of booking you for the music their fanbase enjoys.
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Aug 13, 2013 03:03
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Old Man Pants posted:Because a lot of promoters are lazy rear end shitheads who want you to do all the loving promoting, instead of booking you for the music Isn't this more accurate?
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Aug 13, 2013 04:02
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epalm posted:Isn't this more accurate? Depends on the venue - in some cases no / definitely no - in some cases yes.
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Aug 13, 2013 04:41
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Promoting a show these days is pretty drat tough, I don't know many promoters making a ton of money, they're in it for the love these days too. So I always think it's cool for the DJs to at least hype it up, trying to bring out some friends, get people excited with a couple quick facebook posts. But as a promoter, it's your job to go to the guest DJ's other gigs, flyer for the next show and talk about it to people that already excited about the DJ. Smart promotion will always make a better vibe than blanket flyering and facebook spamming... And having the guest DJs help promote can really help keep that vibe to people that are interested in the music and not just randoms.
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Aug 17, 2013 01:02
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keevo posted:Nah, they will. They'll be that DJ that takes your spot because they were able to bring a group of people in. If no talent shitfucks are takin your gigs you need to up your game. Theres no excuse. If they suck but can pack people in, and youre loving AWESOME and cant, well, you need to reexamine your strategy. Seriously, if people that "suck" are taking your gigs, its because you suck or/and are having a difficult time understanding what djs do(SELL loving DRINKS). P.s. SELL ALCHOL AND YOU WILL GET GIGS, nobody cares about your music.
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Aug 18, 2013 18:45
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oredun posted:P.s. SELL ALCHOL AND YOU WILL GET GIGS, nobody cares about your music. Ignore if you aren't DJing in a certain type of club, obviously. Otherwise, yeah. Should be fairly clear which kind of club you're in.
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Aug 18, 2013 19:46
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oredun posted:If no talent shitfucks are takin your gigs you need to up your game. Theres no excuse. If they suck but can pack people in, and youre loving AWESOME and cant, well, you need to reexamine your strategy. Eh, I'm not denying that I need to step my DJ game up. I'm still learning how the industry works where I live. I'm just saying that there's a fair amount of talent that can't play at the nicer clubs because some whack rear end DJ who will play peak hour music at 9-10pm, managed to bring 20 people to the club. I hate talking about this poo poo though, so let's change the subject. keevo fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Aug 18, 2013 |
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Aug 18, 2013 22:41
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Yeah, let's change the subject. My learning to play on CDJs is going along. Hardest part is forgetting to rely on beatgrids and waveforms, and also on precise auto-loops. Challenging but fun, will find out in a week if I can make it an hour without trainwrecking 
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Aug 20, 2013 17:35
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^ You'll get used to it fast, especially if you were already using your ears before beatgrids/phase meters. It's so loving liberating to not have to stare at a laptop. On a related note: Because I'm a total gear whore, and because I have pretty good standing at my local Long & McQuade... I'm thinking of trading in my CDJ2ks for the brand-new Nexus models (for the added RekordBox functionality). I've taken ridiculously good care of my decks and I have the original boxes for them. What would be a reasonable price to ask on Craigslist/Kijiji for the pair? I'm thinking $3200. EDIT: Even better... anyone want to buy my CDJs? Goon priority.
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Aug 20, 2013 19:46
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Mister Speaker posted:EDIT: Even better... anyone want to buy my CDJs? Goon priority. How much, and where are you located?
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Aug 20, 2013 20:05
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Toronto, and I'm open to reasonable offers.
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Aug 20, 2013 20:23
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Not enough DJ talk! What song are yalls hot songs this week? Ive had great luck with holy grail, blurred lines(its starting to get worn out, but still an A+ on the dancefloor), cant stop us(the girls loving love it). And i think the new avicci song was the hit of the night. I also had opiou/rack city mashup(patchouli dump truck vs rack city), sam f remix of ayy ladies(best weird song of the night), and wickit the instigator "golden trap"("STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!! CANNNNOOONNNBAALLLLLL!!!! then the bass drops, crowd loved that). Schools back, the bitches are in, and its goin down.(SEC football helps too) (im excited if noone can tell) This is my weekly spot that my buddy and i do the DJ duo thing, this was first week since school came back:    I put the hat on the dude because it was in the photo brightening app i used, and after i put it on i really liked it.
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Sep 4, 2013 04:35
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Our worlds are so different, it's almost like we're not in the same industry! Hahaha This is my banger of the moment, looking forward to playing it this weekend: Untold - Glare [50 Weapons] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLZMBUXGvXI reichsten fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Sep 4, 2013 |
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Sep 4, 2013 05:50
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reichsten posted:Our worlds are so different, it's almost like we're not in the same industry! Hahaha I know what you mean, if I tried to drop anything related to Blurred Lines at any of my gigs I'd get at minimum a bunch of disgusted looks and more likely get thrown off the decks. Pretty much anything off BT's new album has been killer for me, but I really like dropping the middle bit of this one: BT - City Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKRc0PGhiIk Something about getting an entire crowd jumping to essentially J-pop just does it for me.
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Sep 4, 2013 06:43
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oredun posted:Not enough DJ talk! Are you doing all that just on Technics?
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Sep 4, 2013 22:46
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Dessert Rose posted:I know what you mean, if I tried to drop anything related to Blurred Lines at any of my gigs I'd get at minimum a bunch of disgusted looks and more likely get thrown off the decks. You have to remember, if I dropped a BT song people would give me about 15 seconds to change it just like they would for you if you played robin thicke. I dont play for the heads, i play for the crowds. I would honestly rather have girls "twerking" on stage and be pounding champagne and poo poo going crazy than introducing folks to interesting new songs that ive discovered. I do appreciate the art of playing to heads, just aint my thing. Lump Shaker posted:Are you doing all that just on Technics? I have a DJM T-1 and use traktor, if you look theres an macbook air at the bottom left of the pic.
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Sep 5, 2013 02:03
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| # ? May 10, 2024 00:12 |
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So how about those new Pioneer/Rane mixers and that new Serato DJ 1.5.
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Sep 5, 2013 02:55
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