Going digital

It really does look quite high end and very ‘designer’. Does exactly what I need it to do.

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I’d anyone is after a decent portable, this 1TB is a decent price atm

https://www.johnlewis.com/samsung-t7-portable-solid-state-drive-usb-3-2-1tb-titan-grey/p5161575

Does it plug straight into Pioneers?

I tried to use a 1TB drive in the past for XDJ700 and it didn’t recognise it. Or was that a formatting issue maybe?

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Yes. I use it as a backup unit. Never had an issue with it.

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Was it formatted on Rekordbox?

A friend ran into a similar issue with one of those Sandisk SSD drives, but I think in his case it was a formatting issue. He never got it to work with CDJ/XDJ, but uses it as a backup.

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I exported Rekordbox playlists onto it but I’m not sure I checked how the actual drive was formatted. I’ll dig it out and try again.

1tb…pah amateur :wink:

43,800 tunes and counting here, roughly 1.2tb at the moment.

I’ve two western digital mycloud nas’s played throughout the house via an ever expanding Sonos system.

It’s by no means the perfect way but it does me.

I tell my kids I’ve two hard drives as I’m leaving them one each when I die.

:wink:

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This is just for gigs :wink:

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Show off :rofl:

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hi All - first post and it may be humungous, so please bear with - or ignore :slight_smile:
Might require some patience amongst more experienced digital DJs - proper noob here :hatching_chick:

First off - note to Admin. If there is another, more relevant thread, please move it to there and delete from here. Thanks

Right then.
Background: strictly vinyl for three decades. The whole CD-J thing passed me by. And now, that’s been superseded, too!
Thing is, I have a party abroad in two weeks and, like most of you, I suspect, have realised that life will be a lot easier courtesy of two USB sticks.
So I’m on a crash course in learning how to do this right.

I’ll get onto RekordBox shortly.

First mistake was that I hastily bought 2 USB sticks with the Apple external CD drive (to rip CD files). These USB sticks are USB-C, which doesn’t plug into my 2016 MacBook. And I’ve since been informed that Pioneer media decks accepts USB-B sticks. Is that right?
I’ll return the USB-C sticks and swap for USB-B’s. Although, I get the impression that most popular retailers are focussing on USB-C sticks. Are USB-B sticks easily available still?

Now RekordBox.
It’s worth noting that I don’t have any media players at home (Pioneer, etc), so it’s working off the laptop for now.
I downloaded RB’s Trial version (v.7.3) to familiarise myself with the user interface.
Here’s the thing… I can pull a playlist from Apple Music but when it plays a file, RB sounds like it’s struggling. The track will first distort, and then slow down. It reminds me of the early days of streaming video content on a computer when the player would buffer.
My first thought was, ‘maybe the laptop is low on RAM’. I checked. There’s 173Gb remaining of the original 500Gb. I hope that’s sufficient.

Next concern. I can’t seem to export the playlist from RB to an external unit. Is that because it’s a Trial version? The RB FAQs doesn’t mention what functionality is limited.
Once I have the USB-B sticks, I’d like to export the playlists from RB to the portable sticks.
Or, given the above issues I’m having with RB, might it be easier if I simply upload the playlists directly into a USB stick and bypass RekordBox?

At this early stage, I don’t need to do anything fancy, like export Hot Cues or other settings. I just need to be sure that I won’t have a horror story unfold at the party when the track sounds like it’s buffering.

I was signposted to Pirate Studios where I can practice on some media decks before I head off. I’m just needing to get the ducks in a tidy row before I book time there.

Any ideas/ advice/ insight/ support is greatly welcomed…
Thank you :pray:

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Hi. Welcome. I’m definitely not the best person on here to comment on RekordBox or Pioneer kit, but you can get USB-C to USB-B converters so that might be an option there. And if your files are stored locally and they’re buffering it could well be memory related, but are you sure you’ve got 500GB RAM in your laptop, as that’s really a very large amount and sounds more like typical hard drive space?

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Yeah your issues with playback sound either ram related or related to latency settings on your soundcard.

But ram is distinct from hard drive space as mentioned above. Having a lot of hard drive space which you seem to have doesn’t seem to be the issue here.
If I was you I’d max out the ram on the laptop (by buying extra cards if your machine has spare slots) if you can-or check latency (buffer) settings.

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The issue with exporting playlists from rekordbox is to do with the trial version. It’s easy to export a playlist on the proper version.

It’s worth putting your files through rekordbox before downloading to usb as I assume you’ll be playing on Pioneer decks and you’ll see if Rekordbox doesn’t like any of the files before you get to the party. Sometimes Rekordbox has an issue with certain WAV types. I’d also check what decks you’ll be using and the files they accept way before you get to the party.

No idea about the buffering. I’ve never experienced that.

Good luck with it all. It’s pretty simple when you get the hang of it.

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I’ve always used the basic version of RB, which is free and allows you to export. Remember, that when you do export, the USB needs to be formatted to FAT32.

Welcome, btw.

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That’s good to know about the USB converters, thank you. Saves me the hassle of returning and repurchasing new ones.
And, yes - I stand corrected on the ‘RAM memory’. I meant what remains on the hard drive.

Thanks. Latency settings sounds quite likely the cause. I’ll look into this more and how it can be resolved. Cheers

Thanks - appreciate the insights/ advice

If you really are struggling with RB then you can just swerve it altogether, so long as you don’t need cue points, loops or bpms (for synching) etc.
Just add the tracks to your sticks using different folders to replicate the playlists.
Then at the gig you can then access your tracks on the CDJs by folder rather than by playlist.
I operated like this for years b4 getting my head round RB!

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I’d def recommend using rekordbox. Once you’re rolling it’s pretty intuitive and makes organising and uploading a dream. Plus it means everything flawlessly loads once you connect to the player (CDJ, contoller or XDJ) like Elzorro said.

I avoid digital DJing where possible for my own reasons, but when I have to, I like it to be simple, and for the limited amount of stuffing around RB does make it simpler.

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You need to play around with buffer settings in Rekordbox to fix drop out/ lag:

Downside here however is that as you increase buffer size it might fix playback issues but introduce slight delay in playback so you need to find a happy medium. 512 is a setting that can be a good compromise

If this doesn’t work max out ram on your machine, optimise it for audio or failing that a new laptop that can handle audio better

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