Laptops vs Flash Drives
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  1. #1
    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Default Laptops vs Flash Drives

    A conversation started arising in the second page of this thread http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/sho...?t=1273&page=2

    Basically it comes down the the old cdj vs laptop argument, i suggest reading the comments on the page before commenting.

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    Quote Originally Posted by steveboyett View Post
    I bought an aftermarket Arctic cooler. Great fans. I can't believe I used to gig with this, but mycole is right: laptop DJs were The Future for about 2 weeks. Now some dude with a thumb drive walks in and plays a gig and looks at me setting up a laptop, and you can see him thinking, Wow -- old skool!
    Convenient yes... but the future ????

    Laptop djing is still future over loading a cdj with a flash thumb drive - there is just simply so much more that you could ever do with a computer than anyone could ever hope to do walking in a club with a thumb drive and sticking it in a cdj.

    I don't use a pc to mix because its convenient, obviously walking into a club and slipping in a couple flash drives into a cdj is easier. I use a pc because it takes mixes to the a level that some guy with a a couple flash drives and a couple cdj's could never ever hope to achieve.

    The market is slowly moving away from cdj's and towards Laptop djing. Laptop djing is and still remains to be the future - or am i missing something ?

    What do the rest of you guys think ?
    Last edited by BentoSan; 10-18-2008 at 04:36 AM.

  2. #2
    DJTT Dominator JesC's Avatar
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    i hear you bento, if i saw someone walk in with 2 flash thumb drives...i would be like WTF where is the rest of ur gear....cds, vinyl, laptop...something! Plus i hate cdj every club that I've played at the settings are all different so I really dont have time to set both tables the same. Thats why i rather use traktor and my lappy b/c i know what im getting into and I really dont have to mess with the house system which is crap about 90% of the time.
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  3. #3
    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Well walking in with flash drives does make more sense than carrying in cd's or vinyl, i will give it that. The flash drives can also store settings for the device which is pretty handy if you have a residency somewhere. I still certainly wouldn't call it the future over a laptop mixing though.

  4. #4
    DJTT Ninja Mod tekki's Avatar
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    True that, but you can also carry around live images of OS-es on the thumbdrives, as that you will than have you're own OS and application environment.
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  5. #5
    Dr. Bento BentoSan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tekki View Post
    True that, but you can also carry around live images of OS-es on the thumbdrives, as that you will than have you're own OS and application environment.
    The problem with that is drivers and there is no standardized club computer system that everyone use - infact 99% of the time the is no club computer system at all. And if there were you would plug in your OS only to find out that you don't have most of the drivers needed to run the system properly. The OS on a thumb drive thing only really works well on a single system, its not some sort of portable OS you can plug into any computer anywhere with no troubles.

  6. #6
    Tech Mentor nemo's Avatar
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    Haha, This just gave me a business Idea. Thanks guys! You prolly made me a very rich man!

  7. #7
    Tech Mentor kidfromkibbly's Avatar
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    Yeah, I don't see this as being more 'future' than laptop dj'ing. There's no difference between throwing in a flash drive with your mp3s and throwing in a cd full of them.
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  8. #8
    Retired DJTT Moderator DvlsAdvct's Avatar
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    Carrying in a flash drive or two is a great backup procedure, but realistically, it's the same thing as carrying two mp3 CDs with you, or maybe a small book of 10 mp3 CDs.

    Laptop DJing is the present/future. The FUTURE is going to be touch screens, imho
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  9. #9
    Tech Mentor steveboyett's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JesC View Post
    i hear you bento, if i saw someone walk in with 2 flash thumb drives...i would be like WTF where is the rest of ur gear....cds, vinyl, laptop...something! Plus i hate cdj every club that I've played at the settings are all different so I really dont have time to set both tables the same. Thats why i rather use traktor and my lappy b/c i know what im getting into and I really dont have to mess with the house system which is crap about 90% of the time.
    Okay, now that's funny as shit -- a perfect example of how antithesis become status quo. I probably don't have to go back four years before I can find you quotes from DJs saying, If I saw some dude walk in with a laptop and he had like ten thousand tracks with him, I'd walk out.

    My comment wasn't intended to advocate thumb drives over laptops (storage media are storagemedia, CD, flash drive, hard drive, vinyl). My point is simply that one of the great advantages of a laptop was the portability and convenience. But I just came back from a gig where it took me longer to set up and break down than I actually played. The CDJ guy who followed me was ready in about four minutes. That's what I was pointing out, not whether one system is better than another. Ferchrissakes, I've never used turntables and don't really care if I use CDJs; I love using my laptop for all of this.
    Last edited by steveboyett; 10-19-2008 at 09:07 PM.
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  10. #10
    Tech Wizard Walidism's Avatar
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    i've seen guys at a club come up to me with flash drives hoping i would play their song cause they think their chick would love it, or they assumed i didnt have the song because i've never played it, really i play what i feel is right, but i just told him to look at my shirt "this dj does NOT play requests" hahaha.

    that's just a side note. but seriously i think that flash drives don't represent anything more than a way to store music, documents and pictures. if people try to compare laptops and flash players, its like me saying "oh, i have a turntable with a slot loading cd drive, so i can play cds instead of vinyl if i wanted to, and thus cdjs are the thing of the past... but we all know that turntables with cd drives (hybrid turntables) are just an expanded form of a turntable and were not the future of anything.. so its safe to conclude that cd players with flash input are a hybrid cd players and flash drives will not take over anything. its just a perky addition to the cdj line.

    now moving from turntables to cdjs was a future "step", and then cdjs to laptops is the next one. finally, everything will be controlled by eye movements with a screen device in our retinas to control it with our mind power. 2015, mark the date.

    now, as to the comment about being easier to set up, sure its easier if there are cdjs in the club and stuff, but if you're using your own mixer that you think is better or equipment that you favor over club equipment it would take you a lot longer to set up than me having to route audio cables from my soundcard to the club mixer, turning on my laptop and loading the software and controller. this isn't the set up i use, but its just a general setup of laptop dj ing. i use a korg zero 4 and mbp with 2 controllers and it takes short time cause i only have to reroute the amps... everything else is through firewire... oh and my korg emx1 sometimes. but that's easy stuff.
    Last edited by Walidism; 10-19-2008 at 11:45 PM. Reason: forgot something

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