My DJ setup

So I thing I’ve achieved all I want with my live dj setup. I still have tons of work to do with my production side, but thats another story. These were the goals of my setup:

clean (wires, cases, etc)
fast setup
practical
fully functional / no setbacks
ergonomic

THIS WOULDN’T BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT HELP FROM SOULSONICA

http://s177.photobucket.com/albums/w234/Soulsonica/

he’s also on the ssl forums.

My setup is mostly in 4 cases: 1 mixer, 2 turbtables, another record sized case with a handfull of records, efx, assorted cables / adapters. backpack with laptop, more cables, hard drives etc.

My setup is as clean as humanely possible while being completely mobile.

at home setup

Each turntable case has one audio connection and one power connection

I never need to reach under my turntables to get cables again.

Mixer too. This needed a little extra work.

Outside the case: two xlr jacks, usb, power.

Inside the case: sl1, power strip with 4 available spots, power for sl1, power for mixer.

At home I use the regular Ortofon. Sometimes I use the scratch needles, but I find that they need too much weight to stay in the groove.

I used the digitracks once and of course I opened the case upside down and they fell to the floor behind the dj booth so…

MUSIC MANAGEMENT:

A huge part of my dj setup is my giant music collection. The problem is, its so big that It’s a pain to keep organized and backed up. I keep my music on my desktop, which I moved into my bedroom recently.

I have 2 750 gig hard drives that I try to keep backed up as often as possible. (check out the hot swap spaces, that way I don’t need to undo my whole setup to take out hds)

I use clonezilla to copy the whole 750 gb drive (about 80% full) which takes about 4 hours.

I also have 2 external cases that I use for backing up drives which boast both usb2.0 and esata for both quick transfers and flexibility.

from time to time I just unplug the hard drive from my pc and plug it into the external enclosure I have at my setup and play off of it so I can set my cue points and such. Doesn’t make sense to set cue points on a backup.

I reformatted my pc to windows xp pro so I can share the entire drive on the network. On my laptop, as soon as I’m on the network it sees all my crates and I can set cue points and such as if the hard drive in my desktop was plugged into my laptop. This is the most efficient way for me.

When I know a gig is coming, I’ll move my music to an external drive and use that.

Velcro on the bottom.

Velcro on my laptop

Clean.

Since I’m not always going to be using my mixer (I have never taken my turntables and not used my mixer) I made another set of cables that have rcas at one end.