what are the Advantages & Disadvantages of using a labtop to DJ?

I don't use a laptop (yet) but the biggest advantages would be not lugging lots of CD cases, finding tracks in seconds and being able to tuck it under your arm!!

The disadvantages - you still need some form of back up in case the thing locks up or fails in some way and at present it's not legal to make back up copies whether you have the original or not (as stated on PPL licence)

PaulS

Microsoft Windows..................need i say more

Hi

What, like Windows XP was meant to be more stable???

Darren

Hmmm something thats less fragile than Windows...

hmm "Microsoft Doors", with the new communications protocol "Doorbell" perhaps?

I can see people trying to upgrade and getting into a righ' ol' ding dong.



I think that the two things which will keep me on dedicated hardware, rather than laptop/PC, is Control and "single-point-of-failure" issues.

The Control element speaks for itself, in so much as I've seen many of the DJ software applications, and most have only limited mixing/loop control, compared to some CD-decks around today.

More worryingly is the single point of failure issue. Even if you've got all your MP3's backed-up onto a 2nd harddrive, if the laptop develops a problem eg: Windows wont load, wont switch on, boot errors etc...you've got a fair bit of explaining to do to the organiser. True "back-up" gear is going to mean a 2nd laptop/pc, and a strict regime at home of backing up all files as you load them on.

A tiny grey area (to my mind) is that of the duplication of music. Personally, I'd say that if you've got 10000 original tunes at home on their original records, tapes and CD singles, then you SHOULD be able to store ONE copy of them on a laptop, however, its a grey area legally - and none of the required organisations seem to be interested in anything less than 5000 copies of Now 56, in a shed at 'eathrow.

Windows is about to be replaced with a product from Microsoft, which doesn't have "Windows" anywhere in the title, nor look like a conventional Microsoft Product .

This product, marketed as being a "More stable platform" is due for release during 2005, however early beta versions of this are already being sold in the U.S for $2 by software pirates

Which reminds me of the old saying:-

Oh, I forgot to mention above...

Theres no doubt that the age-old game of "Hunt that tune" (A game which I've sometimes spent almost the whole gig doing, inbetween tracks) is really easy on a PC solution. EG: Type in a word or part of a word from the title, or artist name and within seconds you'll be presented with 30 to 30000 songs which feature that word, much better than even a paper database filing system, and better for those obscure tracks which you "know its in here somewhere..."

I have just bought a laptop, and am intending to use it along side my CD's.

I will use cd's most of the time, and will use the laptop as

1. backup incase any goes wrong with a cd player or mixer
2. playing background music early on etc
3. if i need to find a tune quickly
4. storing all thos songs you carry, that you hardly ever us

I think it's safe to say that we are all a little bit reluctant to change over to solely, one piece of new technology, and my own reluctance was kind of how I was handing over to 100% CD based from vinyl - back in the early 90's. 10 Years on, I thought nothing of running 100% Cd based with no vinyl back up...and i'm sure that given 5 years of relatively trouble free laptop running, that i'll be doing the same.

I am still quite new to laptop D.J'ing, and my own suspicions about using anything Windows based to run music, haven't yet been proven, and I can say that so far the OTS vs laptop combination has worked 100% faultlessly . I will admit that I am still in the process of converting my CD's to OTS files (which is possibly the most annoying part of changing over depending on the size of your CD collection) and am running part CD and part laptop at the moment, and even when complete I'll possibly still have my CD Players within Dashing distance .

On the thought of "back up" has anybody considered using one of the more conventional 20GB portable MP3 Players with popular tracks installed instead of a CD Player - Just for back up?.

I used to use an Archos 20gb hard drive as a back-up, but I found Archos products extremely unreliable and after the retailer replaced the product 3 times and having problems with all 3 units they eventually gave me a full refund.
I now use 2 cd/mp3 players for back-up.
One is connected to a spare channel on my mixer and is constantly running during my show so if anything were to happen I would be able to instantly switch over to that channel. The other cd/mp3 player is with me so that if ever there was a real problem, I would be able to connect that to the mixer as well, and still be able to operate virtually normally, i.e. no gaps between tracks, and choosing from a large selection.
Further; I have burned 3 CD-RW's with about 600 tracks on them, including the most popular songs for the dancefloor from different music genres on the 3 CD's.
As yet the back-up plan has never been called upon, and I'll be quite content to leave it that way

Regarding Windows; I would estimate that in more than 95% of cases where there are problems with windows, it is usually driver conflicts caused by drivers from different software. Anyone intending to use a pc/laptop for dj use would be insane to install any other software on the pc/laptop other than the dj software needed to play the music. If you have only one item of software on your pc you are FAR less likely to have driver conflicts and any problems with windows in general.

As for the advantages of using a pc/laptop:
You're able to bring thousands of tracks to every gig; note, not thousands of albums but thousands of tracks. We all know that almost any album you buy will always have many tracks on it which you will never use. Using a pc allows you to be choosy as to which tracks you include on the pc.
You have far less weight to carry about.
Mp3's do not skip or jump like vinyl & cd's do and so you receive exactly the same music quality EVERY time you play the mp3, it will not deteriorate over time like both cd's and vinyl will.
You're able to find a track within a couple of seconds. You can search by the name of the artist, the name of the track or even search by using just 1 word from the artist or song title.
If you're mixing you can put all your songs in order of bpm, so if you're in a mixing set and your mind goes blank as to what track to play next, by viewing all your tracks in bpm order this will allow you to find a suitable track that will mis into what you're playing.
You can also sort the tracks to just show music from a certain genre, or era etc.
You're able to play the same mp3 file two or 3 times at the same time, meaning you can do some extremely creative mixing, or if for example you were playing a track and couldn't remember how the song ended, whether it faded, ended on a cut etc, you're able to listen to the end of that track while the track is playing.
You can create a playlist containing 5, 50, 500 tracks (however many you want). This is ideal for the start of functions such as weddings, xmas parties where you need to play background music during a meal.
Rather than leaving a cd playing which will nearly always contain unsuitable tracks for the function in question, by creating your own playlist you can ensure that the playlist is perfect for the function.

One negative which should always be taken into account is that you do need a reasonable knowledge about pc's in case something should go wrong so that you're able to quickly troubleshoot the potential problem.

The main advantage I see for my own requirements, is having more time to be a D.J rather than a record libarian - as I stated previously. I now no longer have to dedicated ages to searching for Aunt Ethel's request, along with finding the next track as well, and DEAL with the punters!.

The other night, I got the usual "What Metallica have you got mate?" - and YES, it was a function where said band could be played. Now it's been a while since I played any Metallica so I could maybe only rattle two or three more popular titles off that I was certain of. Having already converted most of my 80's / 90's into the Laptop I simply typed "metallica" into the lappie and I found I actually had 9 tracks lurking in there!. The guy was impressed, and he got the track he wanted - the whole operation took around 10 seconds to find and cue the requested track, I even played it next for him. 3 Months ago it'd have taken me ages and a lot of searching!.

I don't like running solely on the Auto DJ feature and I don't use it continuously but thats just a personal decision, but the Auto cue & Play feature is great should you have a touch of Stomach Flu and work alone , Simply add the next 3 or 4 tracks and OTS will fade them in and cue up the next one automatically!. For me, the search and find feature is more than worth the money, I no longer leap into panic mode if I get an iffy request, I can tell them there and then if i've got it. Birthday's are good too, no last minute rush to find "happy birthday" and cue it!

I agree Chris.

I use two versions of laptop software.

PCDJ Pro & PCDJFX, depending on what sort of gig.

Generally, PCDJ Pro is good enuff for all round search, cue and add to a 'waitlist', with the 'autopilot' handy for background music before the 'main course' requirements.
PCDJFX is 'clever' in keeping 'master tempo' for mixing dance music, requests, etc, but I find it a little unreliable in the 'stability stakes'.
Both work happily with the dac2 controller but if trying to run both programs at once, the 'first' program running will take 'controller settings' preference - which really 'peeved' me.

It's a long process having to add all your music 'mainplays' and 'librarys', but I get around once every one-two weeks updating old and new.

The Laptop is excellent for aiding the DJ - no matter what (la la la la la la la) software you're happy using!

Guy's

I use pc's to dj and control lights. Can i point out that laptops are great and small but expensive and not very stable for djing and bad spec's.
Concidering most gear is in 19inch racks, why don't you buy a rack mounted pc.
You can chose what you want, eg AMD or Intel, HD sizes, plus they keep cooler easyer. And on software, desktop installation of XP are more stable than limited Lapton one and check out Linux, there a build of it made for DJing.

Adrian

I too found Archos unrealiable, and brought another laptop, and another hard drive as back up, use it as my main business machine too, and as of yet, three years as laptop only have never used it.

I think nowadays Laptops (Provided you spend a bit on one) are quite realiable and well constructed, I'm still new to using a laptop for D.J'ing purposes but I have yet to have a problem with the one I use (Sony Vaio) and other D.J's here have used them for years without issue, so I think the reliability rumour is down to either being unlucky or how you treat your Laptop.

I find that the biggest hurdle was transfering all of my CD's over to OTSDJ which takes months , but then that would be the same whether you used a PC or Laptop!. A high speed way of doing this from OTS would be welcomed for the price of the Software you think that they would be able to produce something that would convert an entire CD far quicker than it does currently. But this is my only complaint so far.

For me, carrying full size computer systems around would be out, I simply don't have the room in the van (Or the parking for a bigger vehicle) and one of the advantages of changing over to laptop was the size of the unit, and the fact that eventually I want to reduce seven CD Boxes down to one "back up" box of popular titles .

Look after you laptop and it should run faultlessly, scrap the carrying bag and invest in a custom made foam lined flight case to carry it about in!. You would have to spend £100's on one for a full sized PC, so look at the cost of one for a laptop as peanuts compared to that.

My next purchase is likely to be the aforementioned ADS-recommended USB Hard Drive since i've nearly filled the 20gb internal one already, and perhaps a better external soundcard. The Vaio Souncard isn't to bad, with it being marketed as a multimedia laptop anyway, but I think it could be slightly improved with a 5.1 external card.

Chris as a guide I have 6000 songs (it is surprising how much 'rubbish' you carry around with you) I only ripped track 1 on most CD's as I don't want the US Shaggy Remixed by Doggy Snooppy Bass Vocal Extended Mix on the same track, hence only 6000 'unique' songs and I use 25GB of my 120GB hard drive

Sorry for being stupid here but once you have your laptop what software would you need? Converting to laptop seems very tempting and eventually seems like a good idea to use a laptop.

Chris

I can see the portablity factor for you, but when you handle the size harddrives I do, I have Nearly 500gb of music storage, so having that many portible HD would be stupit.

Plus I need the ablity to get threw 1,000,000+ files to find my next song, so I need P4 or AMD 64bit processors. Laptops normally have Celeron (about 333mhz FSB). P4 have 800mhz+ and Amd 1.2ghz+.

I hate having to wait to rip cd's, normally do it in my spare time, but i have 52x cd drive, so its quicker than some laptops, don't get me wrong here, I want to use laptops for mobile dj's, but have a 'MP3 Server' set up, to handle the music and ripping and network, download the need files. One thing I find with Laptops is the more you have on them the slower they will run.

With programs I reckomend PCDJ, it has ripping features, but don't use them. You can find ripping programs from the net, for free. And PCDJ (RED) can play CD's threw your cd drive, I don't get any lag, but on another pc, older (AMD 400mhz) there was heeps.

And I agree with what I read on here, use one labtop for music and another for lights or what ever. Martin Lightjockey on idle, takes 17% of my 1ghz of ram, when running it can get up to 72%. And when you try to play audio, it can crash.
(It hasn't happened to me yet, but I have seem it happen during a gig) And always 2 processors are better than 1. I run dual P4 3ghz, one for searching, the other for playing, lol.

Plus, if I was going to get a Labtop, those Sony ones are the best. Plus make sure you get USB2 for removable storage or it will be slow and an external sound card with at lest 4 outputs, so then you can have deck A and deck B (the 2 players in PCDJ red or any Djing program) run sepertatly into a mixer. No matter what you do on a pc, the computer based mixer isn't worth having and you canr't cue tracks.

Adrian