A question of size

[safefire]

I know, I know, no pun intended (I promise!). Those of you who looked in here with perversions of mind can leave disappointed, I'm not about to bring naughtiness into the DJTT forums

However, I would like to humbly ask the DJTechTools community a question related to the size of gear, portability and such.

I've been thinking about the size of controllers, and after giving the S4 a spin a few nights ago, I kept thinking that it was awfully small compared to an old 1200's setup. However, back then most DJ's could rely on having the gear set up in the club before coming in to play, a luxury that the multitude of controllers and custom gear has robbed us of.

So I would like to ask you the old question, how much gear can you be bothered to bring to a club, how big a factor size is when putting together a setup, etc.

I'm asking because a couple of Danish techheads and are I about to undertake a small custom built project, and with the possibility of making more for people who would want them, it would be interesting to learn how big people like their controllers.

Any and all input generously welcome, thanks!

[MrPopinjay]

I find vinyl + soundcard + laptop + lpd8 annoying. Still, better than vinyl.

I know this one dude who carries his entire music collection about on cd's. It's ridiculous.

[Filterkat]

personally i think the s4 is quite large for a controller. thats why i got rid of mine. Great peice of kit, but just not very practical to lug around to the clubs. Personally i use my VCI-100 in the clubs along with NI maschine. They both easily fit in the one backpack along with my laptop.

Id say a good size for a midi controller is anything that can fit in a descent sized backpack, without being too small either obviously, because you want a certain amount of controls. Anything bigger than a backpack and you start having to need custom casing, which is just more added space and weight. id say maybe the same dimensions of a VCI-100 plus maybe an extra 15cm width. wouldnt go any bigger than that though.

you also gotta keep in mind the booth space in clubs. Some clubs your lucky, and you get plenty of room to set up, sometimes even your own table, but other clubs you have to work with minimal space, and sometimes even have to unplug stuff and move it around just to make enough space. and size matters then.

[cormacp6]

10 inches

[ctrld]

how much gear can you be bothered to bring to a club

all of it.

how big a factor size is when putting together a setup, etc.

none.

but then I'm a crazy person. just wanted to mess with your statistics

[deevey]

Before all this midi / controller stuffs .. a bag of records was all I needed to walk into ANY club and play a great gig.

its a shame IMHO that 10 years on there is still no "standard" midi controller where we can just walk in, plug in a lappie / hard drive or something and just start spinning be that something like a 4D / V7 / S4 etc...

I know a pipe dream, but it'd be nice.

[Filterkat]

yeah it would be good but there are some advantages of bringing your own midi controller aswell. if you bring your own controller, you can have it pre-mapped how you want. I dunno, i like my controllers to be able to do some whack stuff. That and your more than likely very used to how your own controller works. Mind you, if there was a standard club controller, youd get used to it pretty quickly aswel i guess after a few gigs. but you still wouldnt be able to map the clubs controller how you wanted it to.

[safefire]

Thanks for the input so far, people.
I really appreciate it.

I've been considering a sort of modular approach, similar to how the CDJ's have evolved around a mixer.
Instead of each controller producing the audio, then to be mixed externally, the center "mixer" would be the sound card, midi-based mixer etc.
This way, a bit more space could be allowed, while still being easily packable.

I'll throw up a render of the what the controller looks like right now.

Thanks.