I'm excited!

Hi all

Wanted to share my excitement with people who'd understand!

I've DJ'd at weddings and birthdays for around 18 years, including many hours bedroom dj'ing and a season dj'ing in Ibiza.

I started out with a dodgy "cloud" wheels of steel set up, graduating to 1210's, then on to two conventional cd players, then cdj500's, and most recently dnd4500's with a tasty tascam mixer.

I decided to join the laptop era after downloading the Traktor 3 demo and being blown away!

I've bought an Acer intel duo core 1.6mhz laptop for £400 from misco. I've got my Vestax VCI 100 arriving tomorrow, with an Audio Kontrol 1.

I looked at the Behringer BCD3000, but read about problems with duo core pc's. The Numark Total Control with their IO device was a very close contender, but I just felt I'd always wish I'd sprang for the Vestax instead! The xponent was also in the running - but build quality issues and the lack of a mic input lead me to dismiss it.

On the soundcard front, The AK1 won over the connectiv after broadly very positive feedback for the AK1. I wish there was a suitable PCMCIA card with a mic input...

So this time tomorrow I'll have it all set-up, ready for lots of 'practice' runs before it starts to pay for itself at a 30th birthday in 10 days time.

Can't wait!

Matt.

 

good to hear!

happy spinning!

 

well my gear arrived...

The AK1 was damaged so the vendor is replacing on Friday.

The VCI 100 is working great. However, I am finding that every 5 mins or so the track or tracks playing will jump forward a split second. You can even see it happen on the waveform.

Any ideas?

Having searched the forum I've disabled all but the essential drivers, and ran the latency checker (as recommended in the NI hardware guide). That gives a red spike every so often of up to 2500 micro secs. That is with or without the VCI plugged in.

My laptop is an Acer 4202WLMi. Intel Due Core T2300 processor. 1.66 Ghz. 2MB L2 cache. 1GB DDR2.

 

It sounds like you might need some Beatgrids!



http://www.beatchemistry.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Music+Preparation

Maybe...

Possibly...

Any other ideas?

 

Cheers Weed - I'll give that a look.

Actually I hadn't seen the Wikki until I spotted it on NativeGirls signature, so I took a look there yesterday.

I recon the latency checker is the key - If I can get that to show good results I'm hoping that the skips will vanish.

I went through the "stopping services in XP" proceedure, then ran the latency checker again - no real change. Then I tried to click the power button in the properties section on the taskbar, and I got an "Microsoft .net framework" error message (I assume as a result of closing a service). From that moment on my latency checker gave me 95% tiny green bars with the ocassional yellow! WOO HAA!

I don't understand why, but at least I've got there. Will test again tonight to make sure the skipping has stopped.

 

don't want to derail your thread but what are the problems?
I'm running a BCD3000 with an Intel E2140 Core2Duo and am just curious.

 

Wuz,

I'd read it here and there on the net, plus on the Behringer site: http://www.behringer.com/05_support/bc_download/compatibility_notes.cfm?lang=eng

 

I'm happy to say I've sorted a nice low latency result on the checker!

As previously posted, I reached a stage where I'd ended every service I dare, and disabled every driver driver I dare. I'd run the latency checker and they'd still be the occasional yellow peak (around once a minute).

Then I went to device manager and disabled "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery" (I'd not done this before as I was unsure of the implications). BINGO! Yellow peaks gone and a consistent 10 - 20 micro seconds latency!

Am now running T3 full edition with all drivers and services running (including wireless modem) bar the battery driver, at 12 ms and loving it!



Just another note - "A friend of mine" had over 500 Napster tracks he'd paid for over the last few years but couldn't play in them in Traktor. NI told him there was no way round it.

edited by native_girl: no advice to work around DRM, please!

 

ah ok, no wonder i had no problems, i use a micro atx system (945GC chipset), not a laptop

 

Well, I've take my new gear to two gigs now.. and the programme has "crashed" four times.

Three times it suddenly inexplicably played what sounded like a beat being repeated very quickly (like that bit in "The Rockafeller Skank") for a second, then closed Traktor (without saving anything) and went to the windows desktop. Once it crashed with a "C+" error message.

I'd love to have any suggestions. Quite honestly, I'm getting fed up of the time and money I've spent. It is fast seeming to me that this is DJ gear for computer geeks, not computer gear for DJ's.

 

is that with LE or with T3?

 

T3 full version. (I only continued the post on here as their might be relevant info from my previous posts)

 

I hate to be a slight dickhead, and jump into a conversation I don't know about..... but, if your running a firewire sound card, and you don't have a T1 chipset, your going to have problems..

 

ok, then you should contact NI support!

 

From your posts above about drivers and latency you seem to have enough technical competance to solve these teething problems, even if you have to resort to tech support.

It may take you a while to get a stable setup (due to all the different components and variables you have) but once there, you won't be able to/want to go back.

 

I can't wait to love it - honest!

Will call product support, but I'm sceptical about how much someone one the end of a phone will be able to help about a problem that occurs once every couple of hours.

 

Now then... a lot of time has passed! But I thought as I'd been on here moaning, I'd set the record straight.


I sold my Vestax controller and opted for a Denon DN-HD2500. I had one or two minor problems getting it set up, but nothing major. Have gigged with it around twenty times without hitch.

During setting up the 2500, I found a few files with faults. Following advice, I used ashampoo to weed them out and clean them, and then tagged them with tag&rename.

A week ago it occured to me that the corrupt files might have been the cause of the problem, so I connected my 2500 to my laptop as a midi controller and gave it another go.

It has behaved itself flawlessly. I gave it a good few hours at home, re-aquanting myself with the features and seeing if it would hold up, then, last night, gigged with it.

I had a brilliant night. It was all indie, so no need to use the great beat-mixing features. But the way I could stack-up future tracks, then swap them around, dump them etc was fantastic, and something the DN-HD2500 lacks in stand-alone mode.

Quite honestly, I really hope it continues to work out for me, because even after 1 gig - I'd be gutted if I had to work without it!

Thanks for posters suggestions in trying to sort it.

Cheers!


(ps - just a suggestion, but a dump feature (temporary reverse sound without loosing time) would be nice for a future version - useful for blanking out effing and jeffing)