Hello everyone. I've found my way to these forums after following Ean's invaluable advice on the main site (thanks, Ean!). I also just took my very first step toward realizing a DJing hobby that I've wanted to pursue for a very long time, by snagging a new black VCI-100 on eBay (after reading the consistent complaints about the original's stiff buttons, I feel the small premium I paid is worth it -- my only concern now is that the documentation might be Japanese-only ).
Anyway, before I can begin playing around with it, I need a few more items: a sound card, a set of headphones for previewing, and a loudspeaker(s) for monitoring the house mix/master out (forgive me if I have the terminology wrong). Since the first item has already been well-covered several times here before, I'll spare you of having to repeat the same recommendations.
However, it seems to me that the choices for quality headphones and loudspeakers are dauntingly numerous, even for simple scenarios such as bedroom DJing. On the headphone side, I initially did some googling and found the Sennheiser HD280s to be a sure bet. Someone else later recommended Equation SR-21s, saying it offered far superior quality in the same price range. After reading Ean's article on IEMs, I'm really interested getting one so long as it offers a comparable price-performance ratio.
On the speaker side, things are much less certain. The most reliable site I could find was OnSpeakers.com, which puts the Polk Audio RTi6 in a very favorable light. After briefly browsing these forums, I'm also thinking of browsing the KRK, Event, or Mackie brands. Overall, still very undecided on this.
I would appreciate any suggestions you have for these two categories. Please keep in mind that I plan on using the headphones both at home and at parties/clubs (whenever that happens). Also, I'm very concerned about the possibility of permanent hearing damage due to prolonged exposure to extremely loud volumes, so whatever helps in that regard would really be appreciated.
Finally, I wanted to bring up the topic of external hard drives. Currently, I'm on a 2005 iBook G4 that has had hard drive reliability issues for years now. As a precaution, I recently picked up a cheap Western Digital 500 GB USB 2.0 drive to use as a primary backup for all my music. I also plan on getting a new laptop to use as a dedicated DJing unit (a netbook, assuming it can keep up with Traktor -- can anyone advise on this?).
I've now run into a bit of a dilemma in terms of how I want to bring my music to a venue in the future. Should I a) swap music into and out of the internal drive between gigs, gradually degrading the laptop's performance, or b) mirror my entire library to a secondary external drive, pull tracks on-the-fly from USB, and risk the hassle of bringing another piece of equipment to the venue?
Thanks everyone. I look forward to your replies and participating in this great community.
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