I’ve learn’t over the past year on controllers. Omni then the S4. I’m looking to buy used CDJ’s over the next few months as well (I keep watching STR8’s on ebay too and will get a pair when I’ve got some money)
It’s easy to be elitist about vinyl and cd’s however, without controllers I probably would never have gotten into this and would not now be looking to increase my set up.
Either way, you still have to feel the music 
I started with controllers, now i use CDJs and USB-sticks. Controllers really kickstarted my DJ-career, in a few months i had ‘gigs’ at party’s of friends and i didn’t massively fail. So i learned crowd-reading and song-selection, with that in the pocket i bought a pair of CDJ350s and a DDM400 mixer, within a week i was able to beatmatch.
Really can’t wait for every club to have 4 CDJ2000s and a DJM2000/DJM900 
, I love to only have to carry 1 USB stick and a headphone .
I love my controllers and I love my decks… to me you need to have beatmatching as a skill to fall back on when your laptop craps out or some promoter wants you to B2B with a CDJ/technics DJ. It’s bread and butter, and you really should learn it - like EQing for example. Most people now are starting on controllers as they are so much cheaper than Technics, but that doesn’t mean that you HAVE to use Sync. For the sake of your own career, stop using sync for a bit, ignore the on-screen waveforms & BPM’s, and do it by ear… at some undetermined point in the future, you WILL thank yourself that you did.
By the sounds of it, this is the route that a lot of you have found your way to go… controllers are cheap, that gets you into the scene, so you want to learn more. Right attitude guys! I have read so many of the sync vs technics debates… some of the people using sync (and refusing NOT to use it 
slight_smile: you can tell that they have been doing it for only a few months and think they know it all (hey, I know I can be like that on occasion ). On the other hand…
A lot of old(er) DJ’s are pissed off that by using Sync, you can do in a second what took them (& me ) maybe a year or 2 to learn well. Personally, I love sync, as I can then use the time to.. blah blah (you’ve heard this bit before, so I won’t go on!). My mate is 100% Technics (he even loathes CDJs!), but by god, 80% of his mixes are pretty boring! Use the technology to help you, but ensure you still have the basic skill-set. Analogy: Think of the cars with auto boxes… yeah, they are easy to drive, but you get into a manual, and you are stuck (or you can just crunch the gears - ugh!).
Do you really want to pass up that great gig, cause the promoter refuses to let you plug in your lappy & VCI-400 (or maybe there aren’t enough plugs??), or maybe just messing around at an unexpected house party where you don’t have your 400? Learn/appreciate what has gone on before (controller bods) or after (technics guys) and you might learn something new.
See http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2011/06/10-commandments-for-better-digital-djing-2/ for a great piece and a good vid.
im still learning on a mouse 
I’ve gone from Numark Stealth-> DDM4000-> Stanton SCS.1D->Ecler Nuo-4.
i did. on a keyboard and several other controller afterwards.
I agree that the crowd could care less, but it’s about personal pride in your craft at some point. Maybe I’m thinking like a dinosaur, but at some point there has to be a way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
You develop the base of your fundamentals this way.
Another analogy, this one pertains to my profession. When you write a flight plan you use software that a monkey could use to dispatch an airplane, but when the power goes out in the building you NEED to be able to pull out the aircraft performance manuals and charts and generate a release. They teach you this way in school, and don’t show you software until the last weeks. The purpose? To force you to learn the fundamentals, to make you stronger when the shit hits the fan, and better apply the regulations as you generate computerized releases.
That feels like an apples to apples comparison. Just because you don’t know the rules exactly, doesn’t mean you couldn’t show up to a dispatch office and use their software to release an airplane (LOL, if that’s your kind of thing). Or show up to a club and rock a controller. But if the feds are sitting on your desk and say “Hey IT just fucked your system up, release this plane”, or if the promoter says “You don’t have room to bring your controller, can you just bring a binder of cd’s?”, you should be able to hang.
Again, maybe I have an antiquated way of thinking about this but I think this is how it should be. Anything you do, you should appreciate the history of, and build a base of knowledge of those fundamentals that founded the craft. This is meant in no way to belittle controllerists/ism, just a way in my opinion to legitimize it.
Quoted for truth 
boss
Headphones/IEMs + 1/4" Adapter + 2 identical USB keys.
Rely on the club to have modern Pioneer CDJs, which they pretty much all do.
Pioneer killed the portability argument for controllers a while ago. And the best thing is, if all your shit gets ganked or you wind up to fucked up by the end of the night to bring anything with you…you’re out less than $350 with HD-25s. And you’re carrying at least 16GB of music, which is plenty for anyone but mobile DJs.
Zedd too
I am in the middle of doing this right now. After 3+ years of Traktor, I felt I needed to learn how to beat match with CDJ’s in order to take myself seriously. My brother has a set and I am home for Christmas until Jan. 2nd, so I am in his basement every day like I’m punching a clock. I’ve made about 9 hour long mixes and the last couple are quite listenable (the others are repulsive).
I might write a whole separate post about how I’ve gone about it and why it is a worthwhile endeavor, but a few things I’ve learned is that when I have Traktor I make Insanely long transitions because I can. With CDJ’s there is constant fear of your two tracks coming out of sync, so you have to be surgical with the transitions. I notice myself picking the perfect spot in the track to bring in the other one, where as with traktor I just put the new song in when I get bored and let the fx cover it up if it sounds bad. I can keep going about this, but I may have fallen outside of the bounds of this thread, and am probably boring people.
Take the time and learn to do it, you’ll grow as a dj in the process.
Well for portability I kind of met all around I guess cause it is ez to take a controller to frat gigs college parties etc. But that argument about a couple of usb sticks is nice.
And actually if you know the place has 900/2000’s linked all you need is one usb stick.
And a set of cans 
I still believe controllers r gonna end up being the future. Beat matching will always have its place cause nothings worse than your laptop taking a crap
Below, I am not just replying to DJ Cosmo’s thoughts but let me take his comment as my starting point…
my guess is that the next generation of pios will feature sync. (maybe the latest cdj generation already has it? idk, i don’t use them.)
i think beatmatching is a relic of the past. being able to match phase and phrase is still critical for two reasons: (i) being able to phase-match comes in handy when the automatic analysis did a less-than-perfect job; (ii) common DJ software (EDIT: does not) sync the phrases for you ldo. but why would djs have to be able to tempo-match? a computer can do this much faster and with higher accuracy than a human being.
and let’s be honest, software can do amazing things that are either impossible or at least extremely difficult for an old-school dj who beatmatches manually by ear. remember ean’s tutorial where he demonstrated how to warp mix-in and mix-out sections of tracks with unstable tempo in live? that way, you can properly mix tracks with live drummers and so on, something that is extremely difficult for someone who beatmatches by ear.
i am a little stunned that so many DJTTers consider manual beatmatching an important skill. tbh, i think it has to do more with credibility in the DJ booth than with technical necessity.
wow you are wrong in just about every way.
i’m totally cool with you disagreeing. but you might wanna explain why i’m wrong.
so far, this thread has demonstrated that it is pretty hard to find examples of well-known DJs which haven’t dabbled around TTs or CDJs at some early point in their career. (i’m still curious to hear if there are more DJs which stuck to laptops & controllers throughout.) and it’s not clear to me why that is…
Fixed
Why? People need get their basics right before moving on to something more complex. It will not only help them in case something goes wrong but train their ears to know when something is starting to go wrong and fix it. How are they supposed to identify phasing if all they ever heard were perfectly matched beats? This goes for general use too, I see lot’s of people who can’t tell when an acapella or beatless sample isn’t aligned properly (or in key). Melodyne/Autotune are great technological advancements too, still I prefer a singer you can hit the right notes over someone who knows his voice is going to be fixed by some studio nerd.