Help getting started and connected

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Help getting started and connected

Hello all im in need of some advice.
whew.. where to start.
here is the gear me and my friend (we are teaming up) have at our disposal.
Macbook unibody ( not pro)
Traktor pro and kontrol x1
tascam-us122 interface
alesis multimix 12 firewire edition

can i make all of this work? i dont know

i got tascam drivers and plugged in the interface, and selected it in traktor settings. we outputted into the alesis mixer, and then out to speakers. sound would come out here and there for a split second, also my computer started to freeze up and traktor was not responding, i would click settings, nothing would happen.. i pressed play, the play button showed as playing but nothing played ( weird stuff)
my research then led me to find that the tascam interface needs to be connected to a powered usb hub because the macbook usb doesnt supply enough power, thats why it was half working, shorting.
so here are my options now.
get a powered hub and use the tascam( i hear it has good quality also it has xlr mic input etc) … or get an audio 2 dj or something.
And do I even need to get an interface if i have the alesis mixer? I cant connect to it directly because i dont have firewire on my macbook.

another topic is that another friend is offering me an older dell. it has a little bit lower laptop specs than my macbook but it has all kinds of ports like firewire, eSATA, and express card. do i really need those for djing? i also want to do simple recording of me playing piano, no instruments plugged in. acoustic, one mic. am i fine with usb 2.0?

sorry for all the questions! hope someone can help!

2

I’m not familiar with all that equipment but from the looks of it, it should all work. You’re problems are most likely coming from either overloading the computer’s USB bus power (which can be fixed by using a powered USB hub as you said) and also possibly from your latency settings. Try changing the latency and see if it helps.

Also usually when the play button lights up but the track doesn’t move as if it’s playing, this means that the audio is not correctly routed. Make sure that the box that says “Audio” up the top of the Traktor screen is not shaded red. If this is the case then that’s Traktor’s way of telling you that the audio doesn’t actually have anywhere to go ie. its not routed properly

3

my research led me to discover that basically i need a new interface. im thinking of getting the NI traktor audio 2 dj as it fits my budget…
do you recommend it? with that could i then output from it to my alesis mixer and precue with headphones?
also about the other computer… do i need firewire?