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Click the links above for more
information on each item.
Computer
The type of computer you use is more of a subjective issue
these days, as most modern PC's are more than powerful enough to play music and
video on.
Some "higher end" (read expensive) software packages, may
have hardware requirements above and beyond what is of the norm. They will
mostly offer to sell you this hardware as well at a premium price, so read the
fine print of your software and see if it can run on most standard computers.
Laptops are becoming more and more popular these days due
not only to their increased power, but also their declining price tags. The
biggest advantages to a laptop are the size and weight, which is also one of the
main reasons many people switch to computer systems for DJ'ing.
Standard desktop computers are used as well, but don't
lend much to the aesthetics of your system when set up on stage. They are easy
to work on, cheap, and easy to get replacement parts and upgrade.
Rack mount systems are visually appealing, and provide a
professional appearance, although they can be expensive, hard to work on, and a
pain if you want to upgrade.
For the DJ just starting out in the digital arena, we like
to recommend a laptop computer. It is quick and easy to setup, and has plenty of
power to do any basic and many advanced types of jobs. It can also double as
your home or work computer, although we tend to recommend that you don't put too
much garbage on it.
You can easily upgrade the sound device on a laptop to a
plug in PCMCIA type card or a USB device, so that is no longer an issue.
One of the more important criteria's to look for in a
laptop, is a good service plan in case it should fail for some reason. You don't
want to be waiting 2 weeks for a replacement. Look for a service plan that will
give you a replacement with quick turn-around time and on-site service if
possible. Also, make sure you can upgrade your laptop fairly easily - most
laptops are not designed to be worked on by the casual computer user.
Processor
It used to be that the most CPU intensive part of DJ
software was the actual decoder that decodes and plays your MP3, WMA, etc. This
has changed, as most decoders in use in the software out there, were written
with processors much slower than today's. The newer breed of software is much
more graphically oriented, and may include video functionality as well, but the
underlying decoder engines still do the same thing they always did. Graphics and
video are much more intensive CPU wise, than audio decoding, so depending on the
software application you will be using, you might have different requirements as
far as CPU goes.
The make of the processor you use is not really an issue,
as both Intel and AMD make a full range that will do whatever you would like
them to. It becomes more of an issue of what type of processor, and what speed
it's internal clock and bus runs at .
Pentium 4 processors are the most popular, although the
AMD Athlon and 64 bit processors have made many inroads due to their usually
lower price tag.
Intel Celeron and AMD Sempron processors are the lower
priced models you will see advertised in many systems, whether they be laptops
or desktop/racks. They usually have much less on-chip cache memory, and although
they work fine for most computer applications, they are not the greatest speed
demons in the world.
For full blown DJ software, we would recommend the P4 or
AMD Athlon or 64 bit chips.
A word of advice on 64 bit chips:
99% of the software on the market today, cannot take
advantage of a 64 bit processor. Most of the compilers on the market (a compiler
is what a software developer uses to build their code), do not take advantage of
the 64 bit chip, and Windows is still a 32 bit OS. They are generally faster all
around, but you will not see any major real world differences until 64 bit
Windows and the associated compilers come out, and then it will be some time
before the applications software is rebuilt to take advantage of the extra
registers, memory, etc.
It took seemingly forever for Windows to come up to full
32 bit speed, so expect to wait some time to see the full advantage of 64 bit -
until then, it's a great buzzword to use around your computer illiterate
friends, and it's great that AMD took the lead here, as there is finally some
good competition in the processor world that might speed things up...
Memory
Today's bloated operating systems and software eat memory
almost as fast as you can put it in. Just to run Windows XP, you will need at
least 256MB to keep it from crawling itself to death, and 512MB to get a decent
response from your software.
The sweet spot for most people will probably fall between
512MB and 1GB of RAM for typical usage. If you will be running video, you might
want to push it up to 2 GB.
Unless you are running dual processors, you probably won't
notice much effect with more than 2 GB, and there is a point of diminishing
returns, as the software you are using will allocate memory for audio and video
buffers only up to a given size. Some people will say stuff it with as much as
you can get, but again, if your software cannot utilize it, you are wasting your
money, and the memory more than likely won't work in the next machine you get
with a different processor and bus speed.
You can get a rough idea of how much memory your software
is actually using by opening up Task Manager (right click the button bar at the
bottom of the XP desktop, choose Task Manager) and looking under Processes. This
will tell you how much memory each individual process is using, and the amount
of CPU utilization. Look closely, as some software packages will open up
separate processes for different things it is doing. To find out, open Task
Manager before starting your software, and note what processes are running, then
see what ones are running after the software is started.
Hard Drives
Hard drives are usually the easiest part of the equation -
get the largest you can within reason.
We say within reason, because remember you will have to
back it up regularly if you plan to use this as a professional tool. You will be
adding tracks, deleting tracks, making changes to them, etc., so if you don't
have the capability to back up a couple 400GB drives on a regular basis, don't
get them!
Typical MP3 files encoded at 160 -192 kbps, will take up
4-8 MB per track on average, which means you can fit roughly about 180 - 200
tracks per gigabyte of drive space. Just for reference, I took a quick look at
one of my drives, and it has 4,565 MP3's, all encoded at 192 kbps or better, and
it is using 18 GB of drive space. A few hundred of those are small sound effects
tracks, which accounts for the average difference.
Most laptops these days come equipped with a 40 GB drive
as standard. If you figured on using roughly 25% of the drive for the operating
system and software, page file, etc., that leaves you with about 30 GB of space
for your tracks, which averages out to about 6,000 tracks available. More than
enough for your average DJ gig.
Spindle speeds of hard drives (5400, 7200, etc.), are not
of any great importance to a DJ, unless your files are highly fragmented across
the drive. Spindle speeds indicate how fast the drive spins, thereby making a
particular place on the drive more likely to be under the read head at any given
time. MP3 and other files used for audio are usually of the streaming type,
which means the decoder reads them frame by frame in sequential order. Keep your
disk defragged, and you will have no issues with the spindle speed of the drive.
Buffer size is another issue which doesn't have much of a
major effect in streaming files, although it can be critical to software that
uses random access file types, and the operating system itself. You will
generally see buffer sizes ranging from 2 - 8 MB these days. Most people will
tell you that more is merrier, but that depends on the I/O system, and how it
caches within that buffer - a bad caching algorithm can make an 8 MB buffer
slower than a 2 MB buffer!
As your library grows, it is easy enough now to add on
Firewire and USB external drives, in fact, many DJ's keep their entire library(s)
on them, and keep only their software on the internal drive.
Any of the major brands such as IBM, Hitachi, Maxtor,
Seagate, Western Digital, etc. are fine drives. You will occasionally see people
bashing a certain brand, but as with anything else in life, there are sometimes
a bad batch or two that gets through the system. We've used them all over many
years, and one doesn't seem any better than the other on average.
Sound Cards (Devices)
We shall refer to sound devices as cards for
ease of use here.
A sound card is how music gets from it's digital form on
your computer, to it's analog form which you hear on your speakers. When you
store music on your computer, it is put into bits and bytes using an Analog to
Digital converter (A/D) - when you want to play it back, it goes through the
Digital to Analog converter (D/A).
The quality of your sound card is, among other things, one
of the deciding factors on how good your sound output to the audience will be.
But before going out and buying a $1000 sound card, consider this:
The average noise floor (the ambient noise if you were),
at a DJ event, is quite high. People talking, dancing, moving around, etc.
So, the difference between a sound card that has a 104 dB signal to noise ratio,
vs. 100, becomes not so much of a good factor in determining what sound card to
use. We have low end, mid range, and high end equipment to test on, and there's
definitely a difference using studio monitors in a quiet room, but no great
difference given the noise floor mentioned above.
A good portion of DJ's also run in mono output as well, in
order for the music to sound the same at any given point in the room. Add to
that, the fact that MP3. OGG, WMA, etc., are lossy formats, and you can see why
having the best is not always the best for DJ'ing.
A better judge of a sound card is often the outputs and
the driver software that comes with it. A couple points to remember:
-If your software can handle multiple outputs from the
same card, you can configure that to better suit your needs as far as the output
goes. If your software requires a certain sound card to function properly, that
should come as a warning to you, as you may be stuck with a certain manufacturer
if you use that DJ software.
-If the driver works reliably, and with most software
packages, then you are a step ahead of the game. Before you buy a sound card,
check the manufacturers website for updated driver downloads, tech support, etc.
Most of the well known companies produce decent hardware,
and keep their driver libraries up to date, such as Sound Blaster (Creative),
AudioTrak, M-Audio, etc.
USB and Firewire cards are all the rage of late, for a
good reason - they are easy to plug in to almost any computer, and most will
actually play using only the Window's XP generic drivers.
If you don't like tweaking hardware and driver settings,
use one of the established, well known brands, and you shouldn't have any major
problems unless your software is picky.
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