Mostapha's Setup - Page 7
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  1. #61
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    The door is not a terrible idea. I was thinking about basically shelving, but I wasn't sure about the overhang that I would have to use not breaking it. Would something like this work, or would I need to find a door that's flat and solid? (Lowes's website seems to be sucking right now...all of my searches just generate db errors).


    And I'm not selling them again....I already made that mistake. I used to have 2 1210mk2s and an m5g. I sold them to finance other gear at some point and regretted it almost immediately.

    The current ones are beaten up 1200 mk2s. Functionally, they're good...solid pitch, new cables, and internally grounded. But the face plates are pretty dinged up. And they were more expensive, since I sold about a year before they were discontinued.

    Never again. These have been basically gathering dust for....3 years. The only way I'll get rid of them is after I pull them because I have m5gs to go there. Or possibly a more modern deck....if the pitch is stable enough, the RP-8000s actually seem pretty darn cool. But, I'm not sure I'd actually sell the Technics even if Reloops are better...'cuz they're Technics. Frankly, if I could have found M5Gs for a decent price even while I wasn't using them, I probably would have bought them.

    Let me know how that bozure build goes. I'm excited.

    And I'll ask. Mine tends to stick to GLP pretty well, and just about everybody I knew from working there has left.

    Also, I realized the reason my meter looks so dim is that the LEDs are recessed from the faceplate. It's plenty bright if you look at it straight on. I might see about just taking the faceplate off and seeing how long it lasts. The thing is.....well, accuracy still isn't it's strong suit.
    Last edited by mostapha; 11-07-2014 at 11:27 PM.

  2. #62
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    Yeah, a door like that will work for a table top, but 32" is too wide, but is perfect if you want to add a shelf to it. Maybe a smaller linen closet door (18"), or a bathroom door (24"). They are hollow, so if you cut a hole in it for the mixer, you can see the hollowed out part of the door, but you can fix it by adding 1"x"1" pieces of wood and trim them to fit. A solid wood door is going to cost some big bucks if you can even find one.

    I got a mint condition M5G that I was using as my audiophile table until I got my SL1200-GLD. I need to either sell it, or get another one, since I am not using it. There is a guy up in Dallas that rebuilds 1200's and paints them any color you want. He can probably rebuild yours and repaint them cheaper than you can buy one M5G for. A friend of mine had his 1200's done and they look fantastic.

    I have seen guys take the faceplate off those LED meters and flip them backwards so you can't see the numbers or the writing. You might want to take it apart and see if you can push the circuit board forward a little so the led lights stick out further.

  3. #63
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    I think I'll do the door tomorrow, then. But, I was also planning on building pipe/flange/board stands for my speakers. I also want to have the space to experiment with the layout to figure out how I want to do the console.

    The 2 ideas right now are just put everything in one row with speaker stands behind it....which works out to about 70" wide, which might be too much for the frame I plan on using. It also wouldn't have much extra space if I wanted to add other controllers later. There would only be about 5" of turntable inside the frame...so a lot of the weight would be pretty far out to the side, though I guess COM is only a couple inches out. That one wouldn't need to be too deep to also fit the laptop and the speaker stands....only about 18-20".

    I thought about doing it in 3 rows; Mixer & controllers (right now, just X1s) in the front, Turntables and laptop behind them, speaker stands behind those (so I can put them over the corners of the frame). That would only need to be a couple inches wider than my frame....but like 8" deeper to have a good 4-6" for the speaker stand mounts (hence the 32" door). So, if I leave all that overhang at the front, I can have the mixer (and probably the vu meter) in front of the frame. That seems safer than having 2 28lb turntables mostly outside of the frame. and depending on exactly how the flanges (for the speaker stands) are shaped, I could probably push the TTs back far enough to fit something like a Maschine or a Push if I decide to go that route.

    The 32x72 door would allow me to do either...I'd just have to drill (and probably support) a couple extra holes to run cables under it.

    I'm just honestly not sure about drilling/cutting holes in a hollow door, probably just because I haven't seen a cross-section. It works on the ikea cardboard furniture, but at least it has the cardboard keeping the shape.

    I'll look into taking apart the VU meter as well. And, let me know if you decide to sell that M5G, depending on when and what you want for it....been spending a lot of money lately.

  4. #64
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    I believe the hollow doors are full of cardboard just like the Ikea furniture. You can also buy a door with the hole cut out for the door knob so you can run your wires. Those doors are pretty sturdy. They can hold your turntables on the ends without sagging. People have been making desks out of doors for years. I'll give you first shot at the M5G if I decide to sell it.

  5. #65
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    Awesome.

    I actually went by a local mom&pop shop this afternoon to talk about things. Among other things....wow M5Gs have gotten expensive. Like....wow. I'll appreciate first dibs, but I'll probably never own them again based on Atlanta prices.

    I also picked up an F1 for a hundred bucks and had a brief play. Remix decks make sense now. I just need to bury myself in Maschine for a bit to make some of the loops to play in it. And I want to re-record some vocals that I can't find a'capellas for.

    I'll deal with it all later, I'm going out tonight.

  6. #66
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    So....I laid out all my equipment (with the 1200s) on the floor. My plan was to make sure I had the right measurements (I was off by a bit), and then tape off where the new table was going to go.

    Whether I put everything more or less in one row or do the 2/3-row thing I explained above....it will not physically fit in the space I have to use, which is constrained by being on the inside corners of a bay window with our bed just a couple feet behind me. With the 3-row plan, i'd have about 18" to move around in, and moving the bed is not an option because of other furniture that can't be moved. And there really isn't anywhere else to put it all.

    The only other thing I can think of would be adding a pair of Expedit (Kallax, whatever) 2x2 units and feet and put them of to the sides of my table. It'd be even more uselessly wide, and I'd never actually use them. I'm not even sure if I could reach the left one with my headphones on without a longer cable, and I wouldn't be able to reach either deck while mixing.

    So....that's too bad. The 1200s are back in their cases (well, one is...I can't find the other case) and will stay there until we move.

  7. #67
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    Incremental updates. Also, I really need to use my real camera. Android cameras suck indoors.

    How I've been spinning for a bit:


    The isoacoustics stands are...a mixed bag. The speakers are higher and actually pointing more or less at my head, and the low-mid muddiness KRKs are famous for seems to be a bit reduced, but the mids still suck, there's (predictably) less bass, and they're more fatiguing. It's an experiment. I also got some shims to try raising and angling the mixer and controllers, which I like....a few bucks well spent to figure that out.

    With the turntables:


    The back feet of the 1200s overhang the back of the table about 3/4", and the controllers are hanging off the front by about the same amount. But, that's fixable. I also don't like having the laptop high and centered, but maybe I can figure out how to put it off to one side when I build the new tabletop.

    The harder thing is to figure out where to put the speakers, since the tabletop alone probably won't support them out on the sides. That tabletop is 36" high, so I could put any old pair of studio speaker stands off to the side with the isos set for full upward tilt and get basically what I have now as long as my cats don't knock them over.

  8. #68
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    So, this happened...



    The speaker stands have been up for a few hours now, and my cats haven't knocked them over yet.

  9. #69
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    Got to love that Rotary 👍
    Kontrol X1MK2 <3

  10. #70
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    Oh, I do. It's an awesome mixer. While I still believe that digital audio is generally an "upgrade" from what you can get from affordable analog gear, there is something to be said for nice analog gain stages and summing. It's metering leaves a lot to be desired, but it's easily the best mixer I've used....which is not a small compliment for something cheaper than a generic-sounding DJM-900.

    So, as for updates to the current setup....

    One of the TTs is packed away, and the other one is set up to control any deck at the push of a button. I'll probably sell them at some point but build the new tabletop so I can add decks again later if I decide to. After "upgrading" to the TS A10 and being able to use the decks, I kind of just don't. And as I said in the thread about them, they don't feel like "my" decks....I sold those a few years ago. Eventually, I might own M5Gs again, but I'm not fussed either way. I'm just past needing turntables to feel legit. X1 MK2s are plenty and work better with the way I think.

    I don't see myself using the TTs except maybe for the occasional "just for me" oldschool house sets. I know it's weird to use a classic(ish) rotary without decks, but....meh. "Better" > "Traditional", IMHO.

    And I'm liking the F1 a lot. I don't use it very much, but I can. And what I do with it definitely seems worth the hassle. That plus a 3rd deck to add flavor to a set still runs into the "doing too much" problem that so many DJTT guys face, but when you get it right...it's awesome.

    Also, you'll probably notice from the X1 colors in the previous pic that they're mapped well away from the defaults. The buttons display pre-fader VU meters and the default layer works as beat jumps rather than hot cues (+/- 1 bar, 8 bars and shifted for 1 beat, loop length) with 4 hot cues being available via shift+flux that I use mainly for organization and phrase-matching reminders.

    One of them controls a pair of xone filters, which I can assign non-exclusively to any deck with the buttons next to the effects knobs. The other one controls the simplest traktor Delay and Reverb effects, which I actually like because....

    I'm running my traktor channels really cold. Like...-16dB on Traktor's channel gains (no auto-gain). The reason for the cold channels is this thread on gearslutz. I've been running my DAW like that since reading that thread for the first time several years ago, and things do sound/work better in general. Traktor is a bit better about not sounding terrible when run really hot than PT/Live/Maschine/etc., but Traktor's effects still do sound better to my ears with a quieter signal from the decks. And all of NI's software seems to be built so that it would work better at a reasonable level but with everything set hot as hell for no reason.

    For the first time since switching to Traktor years ago, the reverb effect actually sound like a reverb effect instead of a giant noisy mess that starts as soon as you turn that D/W control the least bit up. Plus, that makes it so I can just run the 2016's channel gains wide open and still have headroom left to just mix with the channel levels....that's not, by itself, a reason to run Traktor that way....but it sounds better to me than running traktor hotter and turning those gains down.

    The TechnicalPro VU meter that I have above the mixer is terrible. The meter ballistics are all wrong; It's impossible to set the sensitivity right; and it's sampling/measurement frequency is just wrong for the music I play. Every few snare hits come through the meter insanely hot and the rest of the time it reads several dB cold. So, it's a distracting light show and only still in place because there's a hole in the desk. I'll either replace it with a better one or just not bother with one on the new desk...I've been using Traktor's record meter (fed off the mixer's post-effects tape output) as my actual master level meter, and that works....mostly because I use so few effects (that never change) that I don't care about seeing them on the screen.

    Now for the fun part....planned upgrades...

    I might look into an actual VU or K-meter to replace the Tachnical Pro, but as long as I'm using Traktor, I don't need it. And they're expensive. If I switch to recording my sets with Pro Tools, I could see using an app that would let me put a VU meter plugin on my old iPhone screen and using that. But, I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble. Traktor's record meter is pretty decent once you figure it out.

    The speakers are going to be upgraded, but I'm going to wait until my wife and I move, which will happen in the next few months.

    I'm working with GiK acoustics to treat the new room (it was going to be this room, but it will also being delayed until we move). I doubt I'll post a picture before then, but when I do....it'll be a fully-treated room with DJ gear on one short wall and my desk (work and music production) on the other. The new DJ speakers will either be Event Opals or B&W 600 series with a used Bryston amp. The new Production and general listening speakers will probably be Tannoy 802s, and I'll use a Presonus Central Station so I can send either the DJ mixer or the Mix Bus to either set of speakers. And because that's going to be an expensive upgrade, I'll probably keep using my Focusrite for the production side until I can justify the expense of nicer converters (probably apogee).

    If it seems weird to put the better speakers on the DJ rig instead of the production rig, just keep in mind that I'm a much better DJ than a producer. So it seems to make sense to invest the better gear there by default.

    I'm also planning on having a carpenter friend help me build a new tabletop for the DJ gear, so it'll be nice-looking stained wood instead of the ikea black-ish cardboard with the gear raised and tilted the way I like.

    Depending on the speakers I go with, I'll either use the existing stands (for Opals) or build shorter ones (for 683 S2s). I still need to actually go hear the B&Ws, but fortunately there's a place in Atlanta that demos them. Based on what I've read about them, I think it'll depend on whether the B&W floordstanders still sound good with the DJ desk between me and them vs. the Opals being above it. So....big thing in the way vs. comb filtering.

    On the production/work side, that friend and I will probably build something like the Argosy d15-800 desk, except that I was hoping to put a pair of 22" 1080p screens in place of the 8 rack units on the side...which means playing with the angles so that the screens look right (and don't cause bad light or sound reflections) and figuring out the height so the speakers can get above it without problems.

    I'll also probably end up upgrading to a better 4K monitor than the one I have for the main, which means upgrading the video card in my hackintosh to one that will use displayport (+ 2 more 1080p screens on either HDMI or DVI) so that OS X can actually use it (I've been using one with my linux desktop for about a year and it's the best computer upgrade I've ever made). If my new job gives me enough of a signing bonus, I could see replacing the hackintosh with a Mac Pro, but I doubt that'll actually happen, since that's a $9000 computer that's only a small upgrade from my current hackintosh (I'll probably just upgrade it to a xeon instead of the i7 instead).

    I'm also planning on having a pair of freestanding bass traps to move from one end of the room to the other to block out reflections from the desk that isn't being used at any given moment, but I'll have to talk to GiK and do some experiments to see if that actually works the way I think it will. Fortunately, GiK is also in Atlanta, so if I spend enough with them, I might be able to demo pieces to see what actually gives the biggest benefits.

    The plan is for the room to have a closet to use as a machine room for the computers (other than the DJ laptop), USB-Cat5 cables for the keyboard and trackball (and eventually an Ableton Push), HDMI-Cat5 cables for the side screens, and an optical displayport cable for the 4K screen. Mostly that's just because I'm sick of all the fan noise from the computers and the fan/drive noise from my NAS when I'm at my desk.

    So, in the next few months, I'm looking at spending next to nothing on DJ gear, a thousand on the room, four thousand on speakers, probably $500 on the desk, and around $1500 on my computers....so seven grand or so.

    Obviously, this depends a lot on the details of my next job and how expensive the house winds up. The sad thing is that if my new job comes with health insurance, not having to pay for good Obamacare-inflated insurance will easily bankroll the whole thing.

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