Using headphones

[hyst-Erik]

First of all well done for the tutorials. They are very simple to understand and also very interesting. Good job!

I saw your tutorial regarding how to use headphones to mix and you mentioned those three methods. I am relatively new to djing and own a vestax vci-100 midi controller with traktor pro. On a proper mixer can you switch on both cue buttons (of both channels) and turn the cue/mix knob on 0% (fully towards the cue) during mixing? Does this have the same result as when you switch the cue button of the cued track and turn the cue/mix knob in the centre position? That's what I do on my midi controller.

In addition, I wanted to ask you about the bpm counter on the CDJ. To change the bpm of a track (looking at the bpm counter at the same time) you need to switch play beforehand? Or else even without playing the cued track the bpm could be changed to match the live track?

[etch]

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words. To answer your questions:

1. Yes you can cue both channels (or more) and then at 0% all cued channels will play. But why would you want to do this? You can then not modify the balance between the cued track and the live track which is useful to do sometimes to help beatmatching.

2. The BPM counter only works when the CDJ has found a beat in the track. So the track has to be played until it works out the BPM. After that, you can change the BPM when the track is not being played.

I hope that helps. Let me know if there is anything else. Maybe you could share some info on the vci-100, what's good about it, what isn't, what techniques you use with it.

Thanks,
Etch!

[hyst-Erik]

Thanks for your reply. I found it very useful. When you say you "could not modify the balance between the cued track and the live track", do you mean the volume balance (gain) or the pitch bending?

As for the vestax vci-100 I have owned it for about a year and cannot complain about it. I use it primarily for traditional mixing, although ocassionally I insert loops and it works fine. It is a rock solid midi contoller (at least till now) and it came with Traktor LE, but then I bought the Traktor Pro which includes much more functions, including recording your mixes. I had some problems regarding the external soundcard (audio interface) I went for, as the vestax doesn't contain one. But as far as the vestax and traktor Pro, I love working with them. It has all the basic functions a beginner needs, plus additional options if you want to experiment with loops and even some effects. The only cons I met, is that if you fade the eq's, it is not completely 0%, but one could solve this by assigning the switches on the controller the kill function.



One last question. On a proper mixer, to be completely sure that the two tracks are at the same BPM, I like to modify the BPM of both tracks (even the one playing live) until it shifts exactly to the next BPM (e.g. from 132 to 133), at the same time looking at the % increase/decrease. Is that right to do?

[etch]

Hey there, I meant the volume balance.

That's a cool pic of the vci-100, thanks for the info you shared.

Regarding your last question, I have never done this and have never heard of an other DJs do this. If you develop the sense to know that the beats are matched, there is no need to change them. Ideally you don't want to modify the live track.

Also, I can't see how that would help you. If you modify both tracks to the next or previous BPM, then the percentage increases won't be the same anyway. For example, going from 132BPM to 133BPM may be a 0.5% increase on one track and a 0.3% increase on another, because the starting point for both will have been different to get them to the same BPM (and you may also be using a different pitch range, e.g. +- 6/10/16/wide).

Hope that helps,
Etch!

[hyst-Erik]

Thanks mate. That was really helpful. Regarding the vci-100, I have just bought a macbook pro and it works beautifully with the vestax and traktor pro, much much better than with a windows pc. Cheers my friend.