The best portable DJ Setup?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

The best portable DJ Setup?

Hi!

I have been thinking about finding a good portable dj setup since I plan to be moving around a bit, i am not yet a serious dj with gigs just got myself some stuff to have as a hobby at home so far. (i already also have a pacemaker so no need to suggest that i want something a little bit bigger at least :slight_smile:

need-list:
*controller
*soundcard
*computer
*some small keyboard for production etc, (havent gotten started producing any yet but i want to :slight_smile:
*a good bag to fit it all in

and what I have atm is:
*VCI-100 se modded
*audio 4 dj soundcard
*17" hp laptop with traktor pro, few years old
*laptop bag

now its not actually that easy to squeeze it all into the bag and the bag is not great, so im wondering if someone has any good suggestions for what stuff to get from the “need-list”, and what you would keep!

thanks all in advance!

2

For production I’d recommend trying the demo versions of well known products. Maybe try ableton, reason, fl studio and see if you like them. If production turns out not to be your thing you might not want to buy the keyboard.
If your pc is still good I wouldn’t buy a new one and I think the vci+audio4 is a great combo.
Bag wise I have no clue but I saw some bags by mono which looked cool and came in various sizes..
If you plan on moving around soon the first thing id do is buy a proper bag so you don’t break your current stuff. Good luck

3

You’re going to be hard pressed to find one bag that can hold a computer, a keyboard and a controller like the VCI. I think there are options out there, though. Do some searches for bags and you’ll get tons of answers.

Don’t forget about cables, converters, and general needs. Really all you NEED is what you have listed. Everything else makes our lives easier.

4

Being portable and working with little space is what im all about (aka fitting everything into a civic)

Check out the Ogio bag, if you seach that and my name youll see some pics with all my stuff in it. Personally i LOVE IT. It has enough little compartments for everything as well as enough space for my vci, surge protector, very long wires and more.

Im sure others would agree the audio 2 will prob be the most portable on the sound card side. For producing i believe the new Oxygen keyboard is quite slim, and if you want to get even smaller look into the korg nano controllers.

hope that helps

5

Audio 4/2 DJ
Akai LPD 8
15 inch laptop

That’s all you need, and it doesn’t get any more portable than that.

6

thanks for all your replies!

you mean djing with just the akai?.. is that viable? you would need something else too right.. or ami wrong?

7

It’s possible. In fact, it’s been proven to be possible without LPD8. For portability thats 10/10

8

I have 3 EKS xp10’s, all picked up on Ebay for less than £60 a pop.

http://eks.fi/product.php?p=products&id=2

9

Laptop, audio2dj and a midifighter should be enough to rock hard. :slight_smile:

10

It works great. All you really need to mix is EQ controls right? 8 knobs is perfect for 2 decks. For the pads I map play, cue, cup, and sync for each deck. Plus you get 4 banks so I can switch to the other banks for FX. If you need to be able to scan through the track to find the right place you can map the knobs in the other banks to do it, although I always just use the mouse and cuepoints for that.

11

i would say a macbook & vcm-100.

12

I would take a vci 300 with the fx controller a laptop and that’s it.. fits well in a bag..

13

cool, its interesting, and stuff like volume fader and ptich fader and maybe xfader, that something u map the knobs to? or not use at all?

14

You said you need a soundcard, a computer and a controller. Yet you already have a soundcard, a computer and a controller. :confused:

15

haha yeaa… but i want to maybe get rid of some stuff and get it even more portable if possible thats my idea :slight_smile:

16

Ah ha, I see. Well I know I’m trying to get as portable as possible as I want to go travelling. What I intend to use is my macbook 13", audio 8 (if you’re not using 4 decks then you can probably get something even more compact), the novation launchpad and I intend to build my own midi controller consisting of literally around 6-8 rotary dials (for FX) in a strip formation which will be as wide as the launchpad and I intend to some how connect it to the launchpad so that it is one unit.
Right now I dont have a launchpad so I use an apple slim line keyboard and I haven’t built the midi controller for the FX yet so I use a nanokontrol.
If you find a more portable set up with the same amount of buttons as a QWERTY keyboard or a launchpad please do let me know.

17

Yeah something like that. Remember that you get 4 different banks with the LPD and for each bank the pads can send 8 notes and 8 cc’s. So you really have 32 knobs, and 64 buttons. I would have posted my mapping, but I’m still changing a lot of things around. Plus I feel that it’s really specialized to things that I do. Might not be very useful to anyone else.

I have my different banks setup for different situations. So sometimes I have timecoded vinyl and a mixer at my disposal. In these instances I just want to control the FX. So banks 1 & 2 are used to control the 4 FX banks and hotcues. Other times it’s just the LPD8. So for bank 3 I have the knobs setup for volume fader/eqs, and the pads/cc control play, cue, cuplay sync for each deck. I just kinda screw around with the 4th bank. It has buttons setup to browse your collection, switch the timecode modes, and scratching.

I don’t make use of the crossfader when I’m mixing, and if I don’t have vinyl I just let sync take care of the pitch.

18

sounds like what you really need is a case for the vci-100se and audio 4