rengel wrote:Ok, I'll jump right into Ableton and have a play, maybe I'll need to do it Mono, as I have no external sound card to have 2 stereo outs.
What's a good device that you'd recommend looking into if you were to buy an external one? Audiophile?
What I want to do is basically to sell my CDJ1000's, sell the DJM600 Mixer, and use my Laptop to mix my tunes. I have most of my tracks on .wav or .mp3 now, so I want to get away from using 'decks' as such, and just use Ableton to do my mixing. Basically 'replicating' my setup, but moving from physical turntables and a mixer to Ableton and a mixer.
I agree about the batman utility belt, looks mean and clean, but in all essence, it's not needed.
Looks like i'll need that external sound card though... hhmm.. now I just need to work out how to actually use it first!
Do you DJ? Do you use Live? I should have asked you that to begin with
I think you're one of the first (of many) DJs that are going to come stumbling onto this forum looking for ways to ditch their equipment and go "Live" after seeing what Sasha did. Now don't take that as offense, I'm actually a big Sasha fan myself, and like how he's popularizing this version of digital DJing (he is by
FAR not the first to do this, by the way).
A warning, though: you've stumbled onto a community of music
producers. Some of them (like our friendly tech-god AdamJay) started out DJing, then moved to production. I myself am a much stronger DJ than producer.
But
many of the people here are music producers to the bone, and have certain opinions about Sasha, about DJs, and about dance music. Some of them think that Sasha is a complete hack that plays terrible music. Some of them think that DJs as a whole are idiots that don't have the talent to play their own music. Some of them think that dance music is too commercial, that a high and mighty tool like Ableton Live is only for making music for people with ecletic tastes.
Now, of course, these are extreme opinions from months of being on this forum, but I wasn't used to them when I first came here. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the boards I participate in are oriented more towards clubbers and DJ Equipment geeks. I get the feeling you're coming from the same place.
So what's this whole rant for? I just wanted to let you know that Ableton Live has a user base much larger than DJs, and we're the strangers here - we're the outsiders, the hacks that want to use a full-featured virtual studio for something as mundane as triggering clips to DJ with.
This also means that Ableton Live has the same learning curve as a traditional Virtual Studio (think Cubase/Logic/etc.). If you want to use it to its full potential, you're going to have to spend a
very long time at it. As someone coming from a strong background in both DJing and computer hardware/software, I've had an incredibly hard time wrapping my head around how this all works.
If you want to use Live to DJ in the way you mentioned (cutting up tracks into loops, focusing on your "style"), you're basically going to have to become a music producer as well. Now, as you may have seen, the rewards for your hard work can be quite fruitful, but remember: this ain't Traktor - 99% of Live is completely foreign to DJs, and it takes a while to learn how to use it.
In a nutshell, if you want to go down this road, don't sell your gear yet - you're going to need it for a while until you learn how to use this amazing tool.
In terms of your hardware question - some Mac users have had some trouble with M-Audio products recently, I think with the Firewire interfaces. There are a ton of options out there, but for an affordable alternative to M-audio, you may want to look into Echo Audio's Indigo line (
http://www.echoaudio.com).
