Looks like the forums ate my first attempt to post this. Long story short, bought a twitch, couldn’t get it to power on for anything so had to return it. Now I’m trying to figure out what to go with.
I want to keep cost down because my production setup sucks all my spare money and honestly the dj gear is just something to relax and have fun with. I doubt I’ll ever have the skill to gig with it. But I also don’t want to buy something that I’m just going to want to replace in a year or two (mixtrack) so i’m pretty sure I’m going modular. There’s the added fun of getting to build midi the way I want, which I always enjoy in ableton.
I got this idea from a few of ean’s recent videos where he uses two X1s and a mixer.
I’m thinking of getting two X1s and a behringer cmd mm-1.
The x1 seems to have great community support on the mapping side, and the mm-1 is really the only option I could find for my mixer section that wasn’t an analogue mixer. 4 faders and 4 knobs for eq/filter seems like the necessities.
Does this sound like a good setup? Would it cover everything I need. I already own traktor pro 2 and the couple times I messed with it I found myself mostly interested in cue juggling and strange FX tricks. I’m obviously not experienced with DJ gear and am hoping for some opinions before I start buying these.
Thank you for sharing, it was good to see it in action. i didn’t have time to watch the whole thing but did enjoy what I watched. It must be hard to get things meshed right when working as a duo instead of alone.
What do you have there in your setup? it looks very similar.
Two MidiFighter Pro’s with a handmade mapping based off of “dSharps” mapping.
Two X1’s with a custom donwloaded mapping that mirrors their functions for sake of logical symetry when on either side of a mixer.
One A&H K2 with a handmade mapping.
One RMX-1000 with custom preferences set through Rekordbox and saved to an SD Card. (Not in this video, but can be seen in use in VOL. 002 which can be found on that same YouTube channel.)
Focusrite 2i4 Soundcard.
HOW WE PLAY
“michael133” has it dead on. We each go from the sound card to the ZOOM H6 that we use to record and use the mix out to go to the mains and the monitor out to go to the sound reactive light we use to make things a little more interesting to watch. Between the Mac’s there is an Ethernet cable. MY clock is sent over that cable to Chris’ MacBook and hey presto. We are sync’d. It’s where there is very little BPM changes that happen during these mixes, but we’re also aiming for a very mechanical, precies sound so it works out. Pretty soon we will be getting an external MIDI Clock Gen and sending that over 5-pin to our respective sound cards so we fluctuate evenly.
How crucial is it to be modular? i wont lie, it does look pretty cool, by why not get 1 controller? then you wont run into the problem of so many cables connected to a laptop (which depending on your laptop, might cause conflicts), or usb hub (must be powered), you could even get one with a built in sound card.
Professor Strangeman and DJ Vanksta aka Mirror Concept,
Thanks for sharing your vids! I watched parts of both vol 1 and 2. Very refreshing and fun to watch Awesome song selection and looks like you guys are having a great time. Keep it up! I’m looking to change my setup to exactly that of yours Strangeman. Keep up the goood vibes!
x1’s are fine but there is a new generation to it that I would say is superior and I would personally go with a different mixer.
Whats the reason for going 4 decks, cut the cost down by ALOT of you roll with a 2 ch mixer and one x1 and maybe a the z1(i think thats what its called) for remix decks?
Update on this, I got a cmd mm-1 and a single x1. Paid a total of $190 for both together, so a great deal. I would have gone with the mk2 x1, but I couldn’t pass this deal up.
I was going to look at other mixers, but couldn’t really find any other other midi only ones, or any analog that were decent for less than $800.
I’ve heard most djs, even great ones don’t bother with four tracks because the mix can just get overly busy. What I’m planning for my third deck (grand scheme, we’ll see) is to have one channel for ableton where I can use the step sequencer on my push(love the push) to do little fills on the fly.
I do think I’m going to pass on the second traktor x1 and instead maybe get an f1. My background being building songs in ableton in parts then doing arrangement on the fly I feel like I’ll want a pallet of random one shot samples and remix deck loops easily accessible.
I’ve already had a blast with just the mm-1 and the single x1. Very fun.
Awesome song selection and looks like you guys are having a great time. Keep it up! I’m looking to change my setup to exactly that of yours Strangeman. Keep up the goood vibes!