Sasha Crashes in Middle of Set

stallos · Post by **stallos** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:39 am

So I was at the Arches in Glasgow on Saturday Night to catch Sasha.

About 45 minutes into his set, his I-Mac appeared to hang and all of a sudden there was no sound coming from the PA. I couldnt see what he was doing on screen before-hand but he obviously re-booted the Mac as it took a good few minutes before we had sound back. Everyone stood around in silence wondering what on earth was going on. There was rapturous applause when the music did finally start again.

It may not have been Live that crashed so we should maybe not jump the gun before talking about performance. I presume he is using version 5??
Perhaps it might even have been a hardware problem. Maybe someone pulled the cable to his audio interface?

He didnt look too happy when it happened but managed to regain his composure and deliver a good rest of set. I didnt understand why he didnt fire a CD on while the reboot was happening. Maybe he doesnt enjoy synchin live to the CDJ-1000 (but he did this for his opening track)

The set itself was pretty solid but there was a couple of instances where he was using some delays which were not sounding pretty at all.
There was also a couple of things dropped in the mix that sounded as though they hadnt been properly warped.
Its clear he is still experimenting a lot at present.

He appeared to be really enjoyin the last hour and was quite animated in the DJ booth. On the whole the music was excellent.

The incident sparked a massive debate between me and fellow DJ about using computers in the DJ booth. He is an "old school" decks and mixer guy and said this would never happen with 1200s. He has a point...

I think everyone agrees that you can do so much more with Ableton or other music software than traditional DJ setups. The issue comes down to reliability...

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:44 am

Maybe he should get a PC?

j/k

Remco Halderhooter · Post by **Remco Halderhooter** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:49 am

I was there too and it happened at least twice. In the liner notes for the last CD, he mentioned a CD of FX (similar to his essential mix intro) for playing during reboots. As there was total silence during the two breaks, maybe it wasn't a laptop problem..? Whenever Live has crashed on me the music kept playing, allowing me to start another instance of Live before killing the original.

The music was great though - way better IMHO than Fabric late last year.

cheers, RH

mosca · Post by **mosca** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 3:54 pm

Its clear he is still experimenting a lot at present

that should read - it's clear he still doesn't know what he's doing in Live yet

m

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:23 pm

Whoa whoa - If anyones has ever dj'd the conventional way (2 turntables and a mixer) than you already know the sound / systme can go down for any number of reasons

The Amp blows
A circuit blows
A mixer comes unplugged
A needles tip goes bad or the needle breaks
A cord comes unplugged

The possibilites are endless - I saw Christian Smith play once at a super club on turntables and the sound kept going out - like every 5 minutes

It's sort of unfair to say you know what happened before your really know

Being up there with a computer makes it seem like it's all the computers fault or the CJ doesn't know what he's doing but that's not always the case - If you've ever been in the situation you know exactly what I'm talkign about

Peace

a

robin · Post by **robin** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:27 pm

djadonis206 wrote:Whoa whoa - If anyones has ever dj'd the conventional way (2 turntables and a mixer) than you already know the sound / systme can go down for any number of reasons

The Amp blows
A circuit blows
A mixer comes unplugged
A needles tip goes bad or the needle breaks
A cord comes unplugged

The possibilites are endless - I saw Christian Smith play once at a super club on turntables and the sound kept going out - like every 5 minutes

It's sort of unfair to say you know what happened before your really know

Being up there with a computer makes it seem like it's all the computers fault or the CJ doesn't know what he's doing but that's not always the case - If you've ever been in the situation you know exactly what I'm talkign about

Peace

a

well said....any kind of equipment can fail. maybe the reason there was silence was it was something other than computer issues and a cd couldn't have been played either.

TheAnimal · Post by **TheAnimal** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 5:13 pm

I must say that in opposition to Live 4 version 5 crashes quite often on my Mac Dual 2GHz. But I never lost any data so far. Live notices that it crashed and restores the old data. Which of course still isn't anything I'd like to happen during a live gig.

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 5:21 pm

i had a crash live a year ago ,the sound enginer wanted to unplug some lights & unpluged my system .shit happens .rumble can also cause the hard drives to crash .

DISUYE · Post by **DISUYE** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 5:36 pm

I've had skips where bass has caused the HDD to stop delivering audio - but that's like only for a second or two. There was a gig here in Asia where someone uplugged Sasha's firewire drive (when he was using a laptop, not an iMac) and that caused a minute or so's silence.

Have had more trouble with crappy deck+mixer+monitor setups than I've ever had with my G4 laptop. God knows how many CDRs have left me looking like a d-d-d-d-d-dick.

Dan

stallos · Post by **stallos** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:22 pm

Funny, I thought I'd made it clear in my post that there could have been other reasons why the sound was lost. Obviously, there are a multitude of reasons as to why the sound went.
I wasnt in the booth at the time so cant say exactly what happened only that it happened.

All I was wondering was if it was a Live crash then I wonder if he is using version 5. Some people have raised questions over 5s performance and I myself have had a few crashes.

I agree totally that all technology carries a risk of failure in the club, be it CD, turntable or laptop.
This is exactly what I argued when I was having the decks vs laptop debate.

Remco, what did you think of Paolo Mojo? Pretty awesome I thought, some really nice tunes.

ekko · Post by **ekko** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:33 pm

Even a simple blues singer accompanying himself on acoustic guitar can break a string.

There are always things that can go wrong in even the most basic performance situations.

As a matter of fact, my iBook is extremely more stable than my Fender Jazz bass. I've had 4 strings break during gigs over the last few years. No laptop problems at all (yet.)

BanTheRetard · Post by **BanTheRetard** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:54 pm

There is a funny joke about how Sasha prolly overloaded his Suck filter, but we all know he don't use one.

Oh, yeah. BAN DTARD

djastroboy · Post by **djastroboy** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:56 pm

The funniest story of a sound stoppage that I ever heard came from David Hollands.
He was playing at a rave on New Year's eve many years ago, and in good rave style the turntables were set up on folding table out in the room.
Well, one set of legs on the table collapsed, and the turntables slid down the newly created ramp to the floor.
I mean just picture the poor DJ, headphones on, hunched over mixin the beats and all of a sudden there's just nothing under him. I can't stop laughing ....

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:34 pm

A friend of mine told me that John Digweed once allowed a record to play out .... and the music stopped... When that happened, he grabbed his beer... drank the rest of it.... then burped into the Microphone on the PA system.... hit the echo effect on the mixer... and started a new record.

anonymouse · Post by **anonymouse** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:36 pm

subterFUSE wrote:Maybe he should get a PC? j/k

Maybe he should get a PC?

not a j/k