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Hi. I used to do a lot of livingroom turntable mixing in the late 90s and early 2000s. As I play more and more with MAKING music I'm slowly starting to feel the itch to just sit around with a crate of ... well, MP3s now, I guess ... and donk tracks together for fun. Coming from pure turntables and a two channel EQ mixer it looks like I have so many more options to look at these days. I googled for the hotness right now and I guess with inflation it's the same eye-popping feeling I got looking at 1200s back in the day, so yeah no surprise there, but I'm pretty certain I don't need top of the line CDJs to just spin music in my home office or maybe at a party down the road or something. I guess I should probably go youtube the workflow since we went digital next. I don't know if they were NEW back in, let's say 2002 or 2003, but I do remember encoded records that would let you control DJ software being on the scene. I don't think I ever really tried it since I remember it being expensive, so to me the whole concept of digital cueing and beat/waveform visualization is kind of foreign still. Kind of exciting though, since I'm almost certain to have lost whatever muscle memory I had so any conveniences are probably welcome. Anyway, I'm eyeing somethig to maybe get me back in. Thinking critically my hitlist is probably: - nice jogwheels since the tactile feel of the turntable was always what I enjoyed most about the whole thing. Followed by, - nice feeling faders. Things I think I'd like are : - four channel inputs since I have a ton of stuff I can feed in now other than two decks, if I want. Things I don't really think I care about but maybe I should think through more are: - size. I don't think I'll ever gig, and realistically if I do play out it'll be infrequent. That is to say, I don't care if it's huge. And, - price. I know I'm basically "new" again so I should be looking at budget stuff, but I do have some prior tactile experience so I don't think I'd really have a good time on something that feels cheap or small. And I guess it sounds like some kind of weird humblebrag but while I'm not looking to blow fat stacks on like a brand new CDJ setup I'm also not opposed to spending money. If I can get something reliable that feels nice and facilitates a good workflow for $2k CDN all-in then I'll be happy to do that. So I think I'm kind of eyeing three, all Pioneer, probably all used, in no particular order: - DDJ-FLX6 - DDJ-1000 - XDJ-RR I threw the last one in because I kind of like the standalone aspect, but I doubt I'd ever find myself in a situation where taking a laptop with a controller would be any more burden than just taking a standalone system. OTOH, a standalone system gives me the option I guess. I think of all those the DDJ-1000 line has the biggest jog wheels but maybe I misread that. I feel like I babbled a lot. I'll be thinking about it for the next few days for sure so curious to hear if anyone has any immediate feedback on anything I said. e: My fav genres to mix were progressive trance, jungle/d&b, and whatever ambient/chillout fits into these days. Never really caught onto house and I'm not a huge fan of today's EDM so tbh I wouldn't be surprised if this is ends up in me just reliving my childhood music  Mister Speaker posted:What do y'all think of this? First time in a decade that I've uploaded anything but a DJ mix to my channel, but some folks were asking how the setup works so I figured I'd break it down. It's kinda corny and I kinda hate it but if it's not that dumb I'll make it public. I am absolutely a sucker for studio tours from talent I enjoy. Two thumbs up. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 23, 2022 02:36
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Good words, thanks gang. I’m not going to die on the 4 channel hill, and I’d give that up before I gave up nice feeling platters to be sure. I think I should probably go to long-mcquade and maybe see if they have something I can actually touch. I also think the 1000 is probably my top spot, but it probably tops out at my price range (new) so I’d definitely want to get hands on with it before I decide. Kijiji in my (our?) area has a suspiciously affordable XDJ 1000/mixer setup that I’ve kind of been idly youtubing over the past day or so. Not CDJs but wonder how that would compare, and probably around the same price as what I’d pay for a new setup retail. But sketch. I’ve also been looking at alternate brands but somehow I think I’m just falling back into Pioneer. I don’t think it’s rational since the options are so vast, but I’m falling into the “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” mentality, in the sense that the community around Pioneer seems to be huge and they’re just kind of the club standard so a lot of tutorials/writeups/discussions that aren’t high level theory seem to tip toward that particular brand. BUT I mean I’ve been looking at all options. I think I’ll spend the next few days just seeing if I can get an understanding of rekordbox and serato and see if I have any idea which I might prefer, though I imagine in the end it’ll just be A/B and at my novice level it really won’t matter much. I’m trying to hold off as long as possible before spending any money right now. I’ve been meaning to make this post for a month now, seeing if my initial impulse was just one of those “instant gratification” new hobby endorphin releases that would fade if I didn’t think about it, but I keep finding myself watching more mixing stuff on youtube, reading about it, etc. I guess if I get an expensive deck setup and it collects dust six months from now then shame on me, but I’m hoping that my interest remains genuine. Worst case I guess I can always reverb it if it doesn’t fit so I’m not going to overanalyze it 
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 23, 2022 04:11
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Sold the decks a while back unfortunately or I think that would be something I’d try. I have a single deck but I wouldn’t trust it to have enough torque to cue properly enough to get a second. The more I think it through the more I think I’ll look for a used 1000. I like the idea of a stand-alone but it’s probably worth sacrificing the stand-alone right now. Don’t be surprised if I change my mind next time I post. I grabbed rekordbox and I think I can figure this out. Haven’t tried serato or traktor yet but I imagine the differences won’t be huge for a beginner so maybe I just pick a camp now. Time to start finding all my old favourite tracks. iTunes has decimated me for collecting actual files yeesh.
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Dec 23, 2022 23:58
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Just match a beat and mood and it’s just putting two tracks together at a time in as fun a way as you want, from my prior experience I think certain genres are EASIER than others but yeah, you can do anything you want Catch me mixing baroque chamber music next week at the Toronto opera house.
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Dec 24, 2022 00:17
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My first memories of DJ mixes were “new wave” radio party sets in the early 90s every Saturday night and I remember the beatmatching or whatever being pretty haphazard but it still sounded fun as hell. I listened religiously. I still love new wave party sets. They’re such comfort music.
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Dec 24, 2022 01:39
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Hm, used market by me is really thin for anything I’m actually interested in, and DDJ-1000 is out of stock online right now. Going to hang on for any boxing day sales and see if anyone is doing an “i upgraded” local sale, but I’ll probably put in a backorder for a DDJ-1000 if nothing pops up in the next week. Some shops show 1-2 week “available at distributor” and l&m shows March ETA so I guess we’ll see what the truth is. And then there’s still this that I’m morbidly curious about : https://www.kijiji.ca/v-ipod-mp3-player-other/markham-york-region/pioneer-dj-setup-djm-900-nexus-and-xdj-1000-pair/1644659922 Pollyanna posted:Welp I guess I’ll play around a little with some tutorial DJ software when I get home. Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about
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Dec 24, 2022 21:10
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OK so I bought a DDJ-1000 in the end, but they are seemingly universally backordered through end of January. This gives me plenty of time to just kind of absorb youtube tutorials for a bit. I went to a shop and while they didn’t have a 1K, they did have a CDJ (or XDJ, I don’t remember) setup and a DDJ-FLX6. I tried to be reasonable and spent most of my time with the FLX6 and it was fine, I think I could have been perfectly happy with it. But then I touched the CDJ jogs and tempo fader and I was like.. ok yeah, ugh.. if the DDJ-1k is as close to a CDJ jog/setup as you’ll get with a controller than this is worth waiting for.. for me, I mean. Completely subjective. So I’m pretty excited, but also worried that Pioneer won’t actually have stock come late Jan as expected, but I guess that’s the tradeoff I get for wanting a nicer unit up front. If something used comes up in the meantime I can always just cancel my order so no real damage done. E: I will say this, I’m almost glad the XDJ/CDJs were exponentially more than the DDJ-1K. If they were like only $1k more I’m pretty sure I would have walked out with a three piece system I 100% do not need. But good god, they looked/felt nice ugh. E2: Finally, years of hitting the like button on di.fm are going to pay off! some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Dec 27, 2022 |
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Dec 26, 2022 20:04
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Ok I’m going to double post I guess because a big wall of text is just as annoying as two posts in a row. I’m just killing time now while my stuff gets delayed or delivered so I’m trying to parse the Pioneer ecosystem. I think I have a handle on most of it but I’m not entirely sure why some of their mixers have ethernet link ports. Does the mixer actually make any intelligent use of bpm/sync/etc? I get linking decks together for sync/file sharing, and linking decks to a laptop for rekordbox, but the mixer has me kind of stumped. And while I’m on it, some questions about CDJ workflow. Maybe a moot point if they’re linked, but when you’re playing at a club would you typically bring your set on two USBs, one for each deck? Would you split your set 50/50, or are club DJs not really that rigid and bring a ton of music in case the mood/crowd changes? I’m generally just curious how this works given I don’t really have club aspirations at all. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Dec 28, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 00:05
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Mister Speaker posted:Pretty sure that's it, it's useful to keep the BPM value in the Effects section accurate (although the mixer has pretty good BPM detection anyway). I think it's also for features like Fader Start. I never really considered effects making use of beats and phrasing/etc. That actually makes a ton of sense, even if the mixer has BPM detection probably best to just have source sync, thanks.
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Dec 28, 2022 00:20
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Ugh I’m dying why didn’t I just buy something in stock now lol
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Dec 28, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2022 00:24
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So spending time in Beatport or any other music service has made me realize I have no idea what the gently caress electronic genres even are. And I think I need to stop trying to figure it out before I go insane. This doesn’t bode well.
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Dec 29, 2022 01:01
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e: Leaving the weird story out. Have some new-to-me decks.
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 29, 2022 03:51
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Complaints aside, before I found this thread and Beatport, my iTunes was littered with a ragtag collection of lovely YouTube audio rips of old trance and ambient stuff I had no idea where to buy proper versions of. For some reason a service like this didn't even occur to me. Just under $100 later and I've replaced most of what I care about. Other than the genre mixer the only real problem I have with BP is that it's slow as gently caress at times. Switching pages on listings can take five or more seconds sometimes, like it's streaming the data off an old dusty tape drive sitting in the corner of a server room somewhere. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Dec 29, 2022 |
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Dec 29, 2022 12:26
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I mostly agree, but I don't think there's any way to just browse beatport (i keep citing beatport because that's the one I've been sitting in for a few days now) without guessing what genre you think your desired track is going to appear in. I kind of tongue in cheek complained about it, it's not actually anything that I'm losing sleep over
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Dec 29, 2022 17:58
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Somebody please help. My baby is very sick. She’s not moving   Realtalk. Gang, I am so beyond overwhelmed right now. I can’t stop fiddling with things. 
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Dec 29, 2022 23:08
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OK own a complete collection now. CDJ 2000 mk1s, and a DJM-2000NXS The CDJs are a real treat. They’re old and crusty but still feel really good. So many controls I’m slowly getting familiar with, but the more time I spend in front of this setup the less reserved I am about hitting buttons worried what they’ll do and just experimenting without worry. There are a few things that are confusing me, like that green tempo lock has turned on of its own accord a handful of times for reasons I can’t explain, or when I load a track and try to jog to where I want to set a cue point seems to reset back to the start of the track as soon as I lift my finger off the jogwheel surface. All things I’m sure have perfectly good explanations but just confuse me as a newb. The DJM is really nice and feels every part a professional mixer but it’s hella too busy for me IMO. I paid nothing for it so I’m not seriously going to replace it with anything, but the big hot mess that is the effects section in the middle is so visually distracting that it takes me out of concentration sometimes. This is a “me” problem, not a mixer problem. Like I said though, I have some immediate workflow questions but I think it’ll be easier if I just record myself making mistakes so I can ask, rather than try to articulate what I’m doing and what I’m seeing the CDJs do like I did above, so I’ll try to do that this weekend if I can. I’m really excited to figure out a proper workflow and while I’m starting to piece this together myself it would be stupid of me to not make use of the braintrust here.
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Dec 31, 2022 06:30
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1. I’m trying to keep identity theft to a minimum these days but it’s so difficult! 2. Thanks for the suggestions gang, I’ll play with the cue button to see if it will do what we may think on mk1 2Ks. It’ll probably be a moot issue once I go through and figure out where proper cue points are set in rekordbox. E: I think at least some part of the problem is that the springs on the jogs on my 2Ks have literally zero travel. I just tried service mode to see what’s triggering when I just spin the jog by the flat face and as I feared it’s just randomly buzzing between press and release. Thankfully it looks like opening the CDJ and getting to the springs is an easy 10 minute job so I’ll try that tomorrow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz67dtzVmrc some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 21:40
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I did a little exploratory surgery on both of my 2Ks and I'm really glad I did. They both had a fair bit of sticky liquid bogging up the cue/play button caps, making the action annoying and gummy at best. Five minutes in an ultrasonic cleared both sets right up. The jog springs were as flat as I'd expect after ten plus years of usage, so I extended them by hand to give them some life until I can buy something appropriate to replace them. The jog platters had zero travel before whereas now they are what I'd expect, and I can positively predict when I'm going to engage vinyl mode. Only real casualty was one jog roller wheel that I found rattling loose on the inside, but I've already ordered a handful of replacements and it doesn't seem to really affect usability for now. All in all a great experience to get inside some old gear and it feels much more consistent Not exactly sure why extending the springs would fix this, but you can see in the pre-clean video that the jog down detection was really intermittent even though I'm applying fairly firm downward pressure (not sure it comes across as such in the video) and seems much more stable after cleaning.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmbKRHgZzY4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwKIR2VRKlg  But of course the real question is "did it fix my vinyl cue seek issues?" -- I'll give it a try this afternoon, and if not I'll try to post some evidence for thought. e: There was a surprising amount of confetti inside too, for a sealed unit. I guess it gets in around the platters, but hot dang it was like a party when I opened the units. e2: First impressions is that yeah, I think it did fix my cue issue. I can load a track with no cuepoints, then scrub to where I want and it isn’t just resetting back to 0. Presumably that was because the jog thought I had taken pressure off, previously. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 21:13
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Ok so 135 pages this has probably been brought up before but seaching “cue” is proving to be painful. I’m trying to think of a beginner friendly approach to setting cuepoints. I’m starting to settle into setting a memcue 8 or 16 bars on a track before I expect to bring it in, to give me a bit of time to beatmatch, then another memcue at the point where I actually expect to mix in, and set same set of points for one or two places I want to mix out. Unfortnately the 2000mk1 doesn’t respect rekordbox colour cues so as I start to get more and more accustomed to the CDJ workflow I’ll stop seeing a random collection of cues and more of a “fixed set”. Also entirely possible that I can just stop setting the actual mix/flip cues as I get more accustomed to the music phrasing itself. I gather the newer CDJs have convenience features like bar/beat countdowns to markers which probably make one or the other cuepoint unnecessary. As I get more comfortable beatmatching I can probably reduce from 16 bars to 8, but I guess that then requires updating all my tracks accordingly. That sounds like a problem for future-some-kinda-jackal though. But had my first experience mixing through a few tracks with these set memcues and I’m going to be honest — way more adrenaline and big grins than I ever had with vinyl, mainly because the conveniences made it so much easier (for me, at least)
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Jan 3, 2023 16:07
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Dude I am in love with the writeup, thanks so much! Means I'm on the right track. Local, absolutely. I really want to get into D&B sets since that's 100% my fav genre -- you better believe I'm going to have to latch on sometime once I get the basics down. I've been prepping all my tracks in rekordbox. It's way easier at my baby beginner level to let it do all the prep stuff like analyzing the phrases (even if it is woefully weird about it sometimes) and just try to place my mix points based on what I see/hear at that point. The 2Kmk1s lacking basic large waveform for precision visual alignment and a beat-jump button (I gather newer units would be way better at this, having both) would probably be really overwhelming for me at this point. I thought I would use hotcues all the time but it turns out I haven't seen even the slightest need for them yet at my level. I can call cues and loops by hand just fine. If I ever get to the point where I want to juggle inside tracks maybe that's where they'll come in handy, but I went from "oh I need as many hotcue buttons as I can afford" to "I guess 3 will be enough" to "what's a hotcue" in no time. It'll be interested what other "oh I absolutely need that" features fall out as I get more accustomed to how this works, and then maybe start to rise back up to the top as I get better and more accustomed to the basics  So I'm making what you'd expect to be typical newbie progress where you ramp up from nothing to "hey I can do this" pretty well. Starting/stopping quick loops and juggling them between decks quickly is going really well, I've had some good success mixing tracks into themselves, and with cues set up now I've started to mix different tracks with fairly good results. I think my next hurdle is getting a feel for what tracks in my, still limited, library sound good together. I don't even mean mixing in key, just what sounds good and what clashes. My first attempts at expanding beyond two carefully selected tracks invariably leaves me mixing in something that has a big booming jarring beat into something with a simpler beat, for example, or just something that doesn't vibe with the preceeding. Probably something I can fix with EQ and strategic fader control and better track selection, but I'm honestly not too fussed about it at this point. I'm less than a week in and still working on expanding my library. The trap I'm hoping not to fall into is just going to beatport and buying random tracks because "eh I guess that sounds good and it's on the top chart" on impulse, but really think about what I want my sound to be. Genre is still a thing I'm kind of working around. I love trance, but I think prog house is something I enjoy too, now that I try to nail down what all the mixes I enjoyed over the years fall into. But the two don't always complement, so it's just finding the right sound. So far I'm absolutely loving the standalone workflow. Some of the niceties I wished the 2K had, like coloured memcue markers, have fallen off my radar once I started getting used to how I marked my tracks. I kind of wished I had the big waveform but as I realized I don't actually use the decks themselves to line up/create cues right now it became a non-issue. It would still be nice to see the cues approaching at a more granular level but I'm trying very hard to not mix visually but instead to do it by ear. The only place where the lack of a big waveform and beat stream seems like it would be a pain is if I want to mix in a track with no discernable beats in the intro. Like a quiet buildup into a beat that you mentioned. I can cue in at the right part without too much of an issue by beat jumping back in rekordbox, but making sure the beats are matched right at the start might be a challenge without stacked waves. So I guess I'd have to just be really quick on the jog to adjust. This all seems like it's a little advanced for me right now but I'm excited to try anyway To combat the "i don't know what sounds good together yet" problem I have a pet project to just grab all the tracks someone's mix I already like and know intimately, and see if I can replicate it at some basic level. I'm not going to do a 1:1 of Sasha and Digweed's Northern Exposure mix, but I can probably use it, or something like it (maybe something simpler), to at least work on mix with songs I already like without the pressure of figuring out a flowing vibe. @Virgil, quick Q for you on the DJM -- do you find the cue/master pot to be cue-hot? I may be articulating this in a dumb way, but if I have my cue/master pot at 12 o'clock, where I'd expect a 50/50 mix, I find that the cue feed overpowers master by a fair amount. I probably have to go to 30% cue before I feel like it's even. If I just cue the master out and bring both decks to 100% volume then everything sounds even and levels look about equal so I don't think it's my source material. Not sure if this is completely normal or if I've got some more learning to do on how this works. Either way, not a big deal since I just wobble around the pot all the time as I try to get a feel for both tracks, just something that came to mind. I'm not sure if other mixers exhibit the same behaviour, only have experience with the 2KNXS. I was also going to ask the thread for monitor recommendations for a small room setup, but at the moment I think I'm actually happy to not annoy everyone else and mix through headphones entirely. I still want to buy a pragmatic good/affordable pair for music production in general, but it's not a priority. A better use of my time right now is to hook up a cable to route mixer master outs to my iPad or laptop so I can record and check what it sounds like after the fact. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 13:38
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Thanks for that. I was 99% sure it was just “a thing” so not worried at all. I tried the split cueing thing and I guess it has some utility if you’re super spatially aware but to me it was just easier to keep it mixed and play with the wet/dry if I want more clarity on cue or master. When I was into vinyl a hundred years ago one of my friend was also adamant that split cueing was The Way You Should Do It™. Who knows, maybe he was right and my resistance to split cue was the difference between me being an aging DJ headlining festivals in 2023 and some guy posting about cue levels on a forum in 2023 Virgil Vox posted:madness  Apropos of nothing, I ordered my DDJ-1000 before all this CDJ madness and wish I’d cancelled the order while I still had the chance. Now I’m locked in on a “reserved” unit. I had some weird aspirations of using it as my mixer + deck 2/3 with the CDJs, but the more I think about it the more I think it’s a dumb idea and I’d be keeping a $2000 piece of gear for no reason. RedOne told me I couldn’t cancel the order once I confirmed I wanted to be on the waitlist/reservation for the next DDJ shipment, but I’m going to call them to see if I can cancel anyway. Like literally I’m going to tell them that if they send it out I’m just going to send it right back so maybe they can save themselves some hassle processing a return. It’s not like they won’t sell it if it’s sitting in stock, you can’t keep them on shelves now. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 21:47
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gotcha gotcha gotcha, for some reason I thought the nxs2 had the stacked waveforms but maybe I was confusing that with the 3000 and XDJ like you mentioned. I'm perfectly happy learning without the bells and whistles right now. The form factor and memcues already make this way easier than I remember vinyl DJing being. I've had good success beatmatching like a baby for a few days now, and even the tiny waveform is enough to give me enough of a preview of what's coming up that I'm not forever paranoid like I was trying to frantically remember where I can expect what on a record. But that's just me. Good advice on the monitors, I'll have to see how I feel about adding a pair in the near future. Have some credit from returning my lovely Mackie CR5s a while back so maybe it's a good impulse buy regardless. So for now I'm practicing and building my library. Pretty happy to maintain status quo. Not sure where I go from here, I think it would be fun to set a goal for myself to do something like a recorded set in six months? Maybe a livestream by December? I love making up stupid goals to push myself so maybe I'll aim for that.
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Jan 5, 2023 00:56
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Another rekordbox question from a newbiw: Have you guys ever come across a track that just won't beat grid properly over the long term? I'm working on preparing this track and while it initially stays very on grid, it quickly and visibly drifts by like 1/16 of a beat. I tried to find the first instance of "wow that's wrong" and hit the "make adjustment from current position" but after half a track it's visibly off beat again. If this wasn't a new track I'd swear it was digitized off a medium playing on a wobbly motor, as it is I can't really understand how a track produced digitally drifts this naturally all over the place. Is there a better way to handle this than just going through the track and seeing where you can't bear the sync discrepancy and adjusting forward from that point? I'll caveat this question by saying it's not actually a big deal IN PRACTICE-- on the CDJs I have I don't really rely on the beat grid for anything granular enough to notice an 1/16 drift and I can easily compensate for any discrepancy given four or eight bars to beatmatch and mix in, but my pseudo-OCD is gnawing at me knowing there's some kind of discrepancy that is going unfixed, hence why I've spent the last bit meticulously adjusting the beat grid by hand. I know Rekordbox has a dynamic analysis mode -- is this what it's for? I always imagined it was for much wider swings in BPM like transition tracks where you start and end with like a 5-10% delta.
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Jan 5, 2023 12:36
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My dudes, I love my CDJs but I opened them up to replace a broken plastic bearing and took the time to add some moly grease to the spindles for each, as well as the two metal rollers that hold the top platter in place and they feel SMOOTH. Not CDJ-3000 smooth from my 30 second spinning one at a shop, but they don't feel like an old 20 year old PC fan. What a cool quality of life improvement. Not sure if lubing is recommended or not, but I'm not in a club and they're not going to get super gross quickly so I'm not fussed at ALL.
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Jan 5, 2023 20:51
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Maybe there's a more appropriate audiophile thread for this but does anyone have a good recommendation for either a Mac app that will a) rip a CD to a 320 bitrate MP3 with any relevant metadata fetched or, b) assuming the answer is the most ubiquitous tool, ffmpeg; are there any optimal flags beyond "-ab 320k" I should be passing to get a good quality 320 bitrate mp3 conversion? I can extract raw audio from a CD just fine so I guess question A is just a tool that will do both the extract and conversion at once. Otherwise the only actual important question is B. Have a few Trance singles from back in the day that I could buy but .. hey, I already own them so.. Long story on B is that the laptop I want to dedicate to rekordbox is somewhat older and only has 128g with obviously far less actually available . I am only playing at home so 320kb is likely 100% acceptable for literally anything I will do before I die so I'm happy to sacrifice some theoretical quality for space right now. My first few beatport downloads were WAV (then AIFF once I quickly remembered WAV doesn't come with coverart and metadata, $0.70 I'll never get back wah wah) so I also want to run those through conversion but I guess I want to min/max my quality setting before I do. I also plan to store my media on my Synology NAS with significantly more space but I don't relish the idea of streaming my data to rekordbox over wifi and having to deal with "oh cool the network share didn't mount for myserious reasons" when I might need the tracks to be there, so my plan is just to stage and analyze any purchases to my NAS, then drag them into rekordbox on the laptop. Or maybe there's a better way to backup my rekordbox library with media to a network share, I haven't really looked into it. But the gist is -- small laptop drive, don't seriously think I'll be filling it to the brim but it'll last longer with MP3s than WAVs. Not sure if progress blogposting is getting tedious, hope not, but I had a lot of fun trying to impromptu mix without cues on the fly picking multiple different tracks. This is easier as my collection grows because now I can start to at least default to dummy mode "play something in a complementary key" and it doesn't sound like trash when I mix. The beats may still sound different and there are probably lots of tricks I'll need to learn to make the transitions sound less jarring or noticeable, but it's not for lack of a beatmatch or becuse I mixed in in the middle of a phrase or something. Slow progress but I'm glad it's coming back to me. e: I think I'm going to take the DJM-2000nxs to long & mcquade and see how much they'll give me for it, then go pick up one of the djm-900nxs off kijiji locally. I am REALLY hurting for space and as dumb as it sounds I really think the 12" vs 17" form factor will help. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jan 7, 2023 |
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Jan 6, 2023 12:45
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Thanks friend! Also signed up to zipdj for a month or two to start filling out my library and I’ve gonw down a nice rabbit hole of things I like, but most of my “keepers” have been me listening to sets and just really gelling with a track. I don’t always remember them by name after the fact so I think I might start adding a quick comment to my rekordbox library, most of my tracks are “filler” that sounds good, but then maybe highlighting the ones that were just love at first sound with a quick comment. Also picked up a DJM-900nxs (1) locally. I lknow if I’m just using both as an eq mixer with basic effects there’s nothing on the 900 that I couldn’t get from just ignoring the middle third of the 2000, but the fact that it’s visually less complicated, combined with the fact that it’s narrower and just those few inches keep my decks from precariously pushing my lamp off the edge off the table just makes this feel like a winner to me. I think I’m much happier for all the weird reasons. Still have the 2000, haven’t gotten around to listing it or taking it in for a trade in. I imagine it might be worth enough in trade in value to get nice set of monitors at the very least so I’ll have to get my rear end out to the car at some point. On the actual learning front, I’ve been busy with work but tried to do a little every day. At the very least just juggling the same song between both decks for a few minutes. I managed a few longer mixes but I’m still really rough on picking the right phrase to mix in/out of, and my actual song selection leaves something to be desired. So in the end the mix may sound seamless in that it doesn’t sound like shoes in a clothes dryer, but it doesn’t sound like a natural progression just yet. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 00:41
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Does beatport now let you preview an entire song? I could have sworn it would just pick like a 1 or 2 minute section in the middle when I first started using it not too long ago.. Or are they on some system where I've already given them probably a hundred bucks or more so they figure I'm actually paying for the content? I've been doing a lot of shamefully blatant poaching of tracks from 1001tracklists lately. ZipDJ and beatport have been GREAT for random searching, but I find that my tastes vary a lot when I'm just randomly finding things I like, and I'm not really trying to piece things together into a coherent .. I don't know how to describe it, I keep saying vibe, but that may not be the right term. That is to say, I feel like I pick out one or two tracks that sound good together, then another sound catches my ear and I go down the rabbit hole of trying to match that, rinse and repeat. At the end of the night I have 1/10th of ten different sets in my basket. That's not a complaint or gripe tough. I'm really enjoying finding things I like -- playing with the CDJs is great fun, but I'm getting almost as much enjoyment from expanding my horizons in artists, labels, etc. But I have been leaning on 1001 to just get sets of songs that sound good together when I'm not blindly clicking through the pool or beatport. What a great resource
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jan 27, 2023 |
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Jan 27, 2023 01:38
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Ohhh I forgot I subscribed to that thing for a month just to try the rekordbox integration but immediately cancelled it when I realized you could only use it in perform mode. Well that explains that, should have known it was too good to be true. But it is nice to get the full preview  Guess I should see what perks I can enjoy before Feb 7 when it disables. E: For someone who’s just starting out with absolutely zero prospect of playing to an audience in the next while, streaming really appeals to me for bedroom DJ’ing. But since I have a pretty awesome CDJ setup I have absolutely zero interest in hooking up to my Mac :/ If I think about a professional losing WiFi in the middle of a set, or tethering off a phone in a super crowded nightclub or something, that gives me hives. If you could integrate streaming into export mode so you could call tracks up over Pro DJ Link then that would absolutely change it up. I already do most of my music streaming from rekordbox, just not in perform. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jan 28, 2023 |
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Jan 28, 2023 01:27
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So I grabbed Mixed In Key 10 and I've gotta be honest -- it's auto cuepoint algo seems to be doing a really good job. Every track it's analyzed, I've gone back in to look at what it recommended and it's either really close to what I already had, or it felt really right to the point where I almost just want to let it take a first crack at it. I don't really expect it to do the job for me for for every track, but as I start to build out my library I find I'm grabbing a lot of filler material that .. eh, I may never play again because I listen to it and I'm like "why did I download this again?", but I'm ok letting it live in the library until I decide to prune. That's the kind of track where I'm probably happy just letting an algo go to town. Mildly curious to see if ZipDJ has a practical limit to how many songs "unlimited" actually means. I'm usually grabbing 10-15 tracks a day just playing connect-the-dots on tracks I like to artists I like to labels I like. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Feb 1, 2023 |
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Feb 1, 2023 02:14
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Yeah, I have no idea what the logic is but it seems to be doing as good a job as I was, so I’ll go with the more generous “it’s good” and not “I’m robotic” interpretation Right now I’m just using it as a reference for doing the cues manually on the less interesting tracks. There’s a whole workflow to get them from MIK into rekordbox but that involves exporting your library as xml and then running it through MIK and honestly I’m just too lazy to figure it out right now. It has a “don’t overwrite existing cue points” setting but I’m paranoid that it’ll reset on some app update or something and I’ll accidentally blow all my hard work away e: Ok I figured out the workflow. Mildly annoyed that it automatically inserts both hotcues and memcues for the same. I think I'm just going to use the MIK window as a reference to set them by hand if I'm feeling lazy rather than have it do the auto-cuepoint rekordbox import. e2: Ok I just made a holding queue/basket in both beatport and ZipDJ that is essentially "do I actually like this or am I just downloading noise?" for things that I have suspicions about. Throw it in there, let it steep and come back to it later to see if it's actually interesting or just a habitual download/buy some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Feb 2, 2023 |
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Feb 1, 2023 03:03
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I am having a nightmare of a time trying to mix this into anything else gracefully: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77mYUgek3_c I'm starting to think it's a song I just need to smash cut to.. But also maybe I need to start thinking about expanding learning how to mix things that aren't just simple 4/4 house and more breaks-y. e: I magically turned my DJM-2000nxs into a nice pair of KRK monitors for my setup and it's heckin nice to ear things outside the cans on my head. But speaking of DJMs, now have a 900nxs question (gen1). Is the x-pad supposed to effect the select channel even if the ON/OFF button is lit (not flashing)? If I drag the x-pad around it absolutely affects the selected channel (main, in my experiment) if the level depth knob isn't at Min. I would have thought that would only be the case if the ON/OFF button was flashing but I guess not? If that's the case I presume that there's no way to cue preview the effect before you start effecting with the x-pad which kind of sucks. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Feb 5, 2023 |
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Feb 5, 2023 01:02
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I'm sure 1000 people here better suited to this than me but I guess I'll take a crack with the obvious: I think the Pioneer DDJ-400 is kind of the "standard" for someone who is starting from zero. Or maybe I'm confusing it with the DDJ-200. I think Pioneer is in flux with the DDJ models right now. I /think/ the DDJ-FLX4 is the new equivalent? Pioneer is also super weird on stock right now so there are definitely alternatives. I've since discovered I'm friends with some folks that play gatherings and they do just fine with a Hercules 500 each, they're way better on those than I will be for years while I learn my CDJs. You'll probably see talk about making choices about software before too long if you pick one or the other, but if you're just starting out then I think the DDJ will let you choose Rekordbox or Serato (lite?) which is enough to get started, I'm sure. I only say this because at some point you'll either care about choosing software or like me you'll just get comfortable with the first thing you tried (hello my good friend rekordbox  ) and not worry about how the other half lives. I think you can go cheaper but from everything I handled at the music shops in the last few months the lower you go the more like a toy it feels. They'll probably do the job just fine, but since you're manipulating these with your hands I think a nice solid feel is a bonus. I think a bunch of the top ten youtubes aren't unreasonably outlandish to be honest. I think the guys from crossfader did a pretty good round-up of controllers for each price tier. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 23:05
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Don't worry about rekordbox. There's a lot of things to push but you don't need to know most of them to just start mixing two songs together. Go find a rekordbox cue point tutorial and you've got pretty much what you'll need for the next little bit. I have a pair of MDR-7506 Sony cans that I have no reason to replace.. Seem good enough. While you're practicing I don't even think you need to play audio out loud. I've been learning 100% in-ear for the past month and change, I only picked up a pair of studio monitors last week because I traded in some gear I had lying around taking up space. Honestly I'd start with nothing else but the controller and rekordbox for a while. Spend your money on a DJ pool or beatport tracks if you are building up your library like me. Everything else will probably be a distraction from practicing mixing (in my experience). e: Oh and watch your levels. Tinnitus and hearing loss is a bitch e2: I don't know if this course is any good, but I grabbed his other main paid course when it was on holiday sale because YOLO and I have nothing but good things to say about it. I think collectively you can find all this info for free on youtube but he seems to present it well: https://www.clubreadydjschool.com/free-videos/ It's listed free and has a bunch of stuff I'd want to know if I was learning so hopefully it's not full of weird shady upsells or anything, sorry if it is. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Feb 10, 2023 |
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Feb 10, 2023 00:05
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ZipDJ has a valentine’s day sale, 40% off a 3-mo subscription. I’m on a $50/mo plan while I fill my library so it was a no-brainer to update my sub. Figured I’d post here in case anyone else on the platform wants to save a few bucks. There’s nothing more romantic than unlimited downloads. I would presume.
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Feb 15, 2023 12:38
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Mister Speaker posted:Anyone ever had to tune up the jogwheel on a CDJ? I've taken apart my old 2Ks before and there's a friction adjust you can turn to adjust tension for sure, but if it's suddenly different then I'd suspect the dirt thing you mentioned. Have I ever done the clutch adjust? No. Is it seemingly easy? Ridiculously, as long as you're comfortable with disconnecting the ribbon cables and maneuvering the jog wheel PCB out of the claustrophobic nightmare that is where Pioneer decided to jam it. It could also be the plastic roller wheels are dirty and just need lubing too. Mine were pretty easy to deep clean and lube up, but also two of them were just snapped off on the axles since they're plastic. I have some spares if you ever need since I ordered like ten just in case. If you're in there, it's a good opportunity to also make sure your vinyl-mode springs aren't compressed. Again, super ez. There's a pretty good video about the tension adjust somewhere. I'll see if I can find it. I also say this with scant 2 months CDJ experience under my belt, so I might be talking nonsense. e: Oh wait, I guess you don't even need to move the PCB out of the way, it's just there, accessible once you pop the rear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm1Soxf59PM Apropos of nothing -- I didn't know Afro House was a genre, and all of a sudden it's where a non insignificant amount of my ZipDJ favourites are. The heck is going on that I didn't even know this existed? There's some consistently fun stuff in there and it mixes with prog house really easily (IMO). some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Feb 17, 2023 |
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Feb 17, 2023 18:18
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I’m glad you went the upfront route. I’m probably the same kind of personality who would have obsessed over potential implications of something that hasn’t happened yet, so it’s always nice to hear sometimes it’s unwarranted. E: It’s so weird to me to read about how when the CDJ-3000 came out everyone was hyped about how it has these beefy processors and could be expanded like crazy in software, and now I’m surfing through the Pioneer forums and all the feature suggestions are just like “nah no thanks” replies from Pioneer staffers Like custom logos for the CDJ jogs. What reason could they possibly have to not let people customize their deck a little that isn’t “we’re not interested in coding that in”, meanwhile Denon is like “you want custom logos? Sure! You want DMX? What else you want? Come an’ get it!” Like I get that Pioneer doesn’t actually have to do ANYTHING and people will still trip over themselves to still buy their gear, so I probably shouldn’t be so surprised that big company wants to do bare minimum to make money is a thing. My quick foray into the Denon Engine system felt a little lackluster though. I mean Rekordbox isn’t amazing or anything, but somehow Engine felt really unpolished. I wish I could remember what my big gripe was. e: lmao I can't use Cue Link to preview tracks on my DJM-900 because it's not an NXS2  Pioneer
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Feb 21, 2023 |
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Feb 19, 2023 22:02
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Tried to mix without a plan twice this week and both times it kind of fell flat. Technically it sounded ok — it’s getting kind of hard to mess up beatmatching and I’m getting better at mixing into phrases mostly correctly, but somehow I managed to flub the flow again and again. It’ll be going really well and all of a sudden the track I’m mixing into pops a vocal I totally forgot existed, or I’m accidentally a beat or two off and I’ve got a breakdown starting early that I have to panic eject into, or the songs mix well but even in matching key and proficiently mixed I find that they’re just not complementing each other and it sounds like a jarring transition after the fact. I mean no big deal, I’m not playing for a crowd, but I think I hit that part where I got the basics down and now there’s soooo much more to learn that isn’t “can you make unts unts unts unts line up right?” I’m going to go back to 1001tracklists and find more complementing tracks.
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Feb 22, 2023 00:36
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Yep, I'm still digesting a lot of information from earlier in the thread, mainly because I've got such a backlog of tracks to apply all that logic to that it's turning into a bit of a part time job. I've had some mild success letting Mixed In Key set the cue points and then playing around with them after the fact, but if I'm being honest maybe that's part of the problem -- I'm letting a tool do the job for me and then apply very limited logic to adjusting, instead of learning the track well enough. I didn't really throw it around in here but I divested a bunch of surplus hobbies and ended up moving to a pair of 3000s, since this is the one hobby I've actually taken an active interest in, so I'm pretty much state of the art with whatever Pioneer thinks will help a dummy like me not sound like shoes in a dryer. I'm still using them like 2000s for the most part, though, just recently started peeking at the phrase meters and cuepoint countdowns to better time my jumping in points outside of just listening to 4/4. I'd be absolutely lying if I said I did habitually, though. It'll probably be way more handy once I take some of your other advice to heart and actually plan where my memcues sit. But I'm forever grateful for any and all advice. I mean I'm in it for the long haul and all you friends have helped me make sense of it enough to feel comfortable behind the decks. Any frustration here with "boo hoo i sound bad" is just normal progress in anything that one starts from scratch IMO so I'm not actually disheartened or anything, just know I have a long way to go
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 01:16
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I mean for some reason it sets eight cue points which is really unnecessary, but generally one or two of them have always been where I would have put them anyway, so it's just been an exercise in removing the others. But yeah, I mean I won't argue. I think my whole process has been flawed and I think I'm conceding that I'm going to be way more hands-on now. Going through the 5-600 tracks I built up feels like an incredible chore right now, so I'm going to chunk them rather than try to tackle too many a day and just start to give them bare minimum effort in cueing.
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Feb 22, 2023 01:29
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Mister Speaker posted:You lucky skunk. How did you even get them? I've still not seen a set in person even at Long & McQuade. Thanks yeah, I feel incredibly fortunate. L&M was the indirect financier by buying a ton of my old garbage, but I ended up forking over a small wad of cash to a guy on Kijiji. Was sure it was either a scam or stolen goods but I got a L&M receipt that I verified with the shop before I haded over cash so I dunno, I guess I got very lucky. I paid BNIB price minus tax, but they were basically BNIB with warranty. I didn't really ask too many questions once L&M verified it wasn't stolen goods.. but like.. why didn't the guy just return them? I dunno  I was actually only looking for a pair of NXS2s to get the "big waveform" display and a bit of a better menu system than the 2000s, but there were actually none on the market when I did the deed. abuse culture. posted:Yeah Don’t start with 600 tracks lol. Start with like 50 and add to your collection 10 or so at a time Where were you with this advice 550 tracks ago 
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Feb 22, 2023 01:42
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