Sync def can be a great thing to have
I was guest DJing the main room of the 15th annual InFest industrial/alt.electronic festival this weekend in the UK, playing the opening 4 sets between the various live acts and bands for the Saturday.
http://dark-cide.com/images/stories/infest_15.jpg
Was really excited as I've been going for years and played the 2nd room last year and this was my first time in the main room, so prepped 4 sets in rekordbox and had my XDJ Aero with me. Got to the venue and set up, sounded great, and did my first set no probs (loved getting to play some punishing things). After the first band had played, I started my second set and all was going great until the 2nd act started to do their line checks. The 2nd act were the amazing Polish powernoise duo Wieloryb.
The DJ booth is right next to the stage and seperated by just a heavy black curtain, but as this was a fest the headline bands had the lions share of the soundcheck time before it opens, so they had to check some of the earlier acts gear while the djs play. However these guys are earsplitting white noise and blast beats, with tons of analogue gear and noise boxes, so straight away I could hear almost nothing and it got worse. from my second song to nearly the last of the half hour set, even with my noise cancelling earplugs and my hdj headphones held tight over my ears, I could hear almost nothing and all beats were just random. Beat matching would've been beyond impossible, tbh so would cueing up so thankfully I'd prepped my start points in rekordbox and also written down when I wanted to mix in the next track as picking tracks on the fly to suit the crowd would've been impossible too.
Am so glad I took the unit as they had cdj 1000s, but without sync I wouldnt' have been able to do the set I wanted. When I usually play with it at home, I usually hit sync for a second then turn it off just to get the bpms matching rather than move the pitch fader up/down to match just as with them being rekordbox they're pretty accurate, then use the jog wheel to get them tighter just as often rekordbox is a little off with beat grids and am too lazy to go through all my tracks anyway.
Thankfully the other acts line checks were a lot less *INTENSE* haha, and when I listened to the set I recorded on USB back at home yesterday it actually wasn't too bad - the speed up from track 2 to 3 from 125bpm to 135bpm was a lot less smoooth than I was hoping for (I was pretty much panicking think it's fair to say at that point), but on the whole theres actually less errors on there than my other sets.
So guess, just wanted to say, Sync has it's detractors but it's a very handy thing to have especially for certain situations. If you want to experience the joy of this yourself, just fire up couple of youtubes, add a Wieloryb track or two and anything else you'd like and play them at random and deafening levels and then start your own mixes :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_tDECMVy6s
I had a quick breather after my set then went back in to watch them and they were incredible. Was a great experience playing the festival, and saw some great acts.
