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[Hilton]

Hi all!

I'm DJ for a friends 50th on the weekend and want to use the Id running MC20 for playback with a surface pro 2 tablet as my main playlist controller and interface to control the Id.
The goal is to rock up with minimal gear and still have a rocking party with a DJ feel to the party, with song requests and curated hand picked playlists without having to be fulltime DJ.

The idea is that the Id will be headless (no monitor) sitting with his Hifi gear and I can put the Surface and FiiO desktop DAC and headphone AMP somewhere convenient and comfortable to work on the playlists and cueing and so I can also mingle and remotely DJ at the same time. I plan to take requests in the crowd or give them an iPad or iPhone to make song requests.

I'll have 2 iPhones and an iPad for remote control and song requests and I'll be taking several party lights and a smoke machine but using his HiFi gear.
I used to drag my own gear around and setup 2 subs and 4 floor standers (2 inside 2 outside) but I cant be bothered pulling my stuff apart anymore, the last party I did with my AMP, a thoughtless guest wound the volume up to +5db and popped a channel in my AMP triggering a hard cutout which killed the night. but I digress....

All the music will be on the 1TB SSD in the Id.
I'm taking a small pocket 4G Wifi router to create my own private wifi network to get everything on the same network, so I just rock up and it works without fiddling with my mates wifi.

I can have everything pre-configured, turn the Id on and it will connect to the 4G router, plug the Id into his AMP and all the other devices will be pre-configured for the network and zones.
(this is pretty much how I use the Id in the car now in headless mode but using the iPhone for control and playback via Bluetooth)

I can have other guests download JRemote or Gizmo and get them setup pretty quickly to make requests too.

Now this is the tricky part... Song Requests...
I think I've got it licked, but wondered whether anyone has another idea for how to setup for song requests.
My idea is to create the following Zones:

A zone called "Live Playback" on the Id for live playback on the Id.
A zone called "Requests" on the Surface for guest requests (with an unused audio device)
A zone called "CUE" on the Surface for finding and creating playlists before sending them to Live Playback zone on the Id.

I also have a Bluetooth media remote that's small like an apple TV remote that works great when paired with the surface too, for quick volume changes or track skips if guests try turn the volume up or fiddle.
It works up to 40feet away.

The Surface will have my FiiO desktop DAC as a headphone monitor AMP on the Surface in the "Cue" zone and my own iPhone 6+ will be used for finding tracks in the "Cue" zone before finally cueing them in the "Live Playback" zone on the Surface.
I can take the iPhone around and ask for requests or get guests to add their own requests to the "Request" zone on the iPad or their own devices.

My iPad and all guest iDevices or Android devices are configured with the "Request" zone as default in JRemote or Gizmo when I set them up.

They can then browse music with some simple instructions to add to playlist or add next.
Doesn't matter how they add the songs because I'll be curating the request list and using "right-click-send" to send the songs to the live playback zone or save them to mini-playlists for later retrieval.

I'll periodically save the "Request" zone song list to mini playlists from the iPhone with JRemote so I can then have several mini-playlists ready to load so I can still mingle and also DJ remotely. (load a playlist in JRemote)

Any ideas or advice how to make this work better, simpler or have additional cool things I can do with zones at a party.
I was thinking it would be good to have the "Live Playback" zone with a safety so it automatically loads a "safety" playlist if the cue gets empty or a song fails to play.
Haven't worked out how to do that yet!


PS. thought of another cool party trick on the idevices, I'll use guided access to lock my devices in JRemote and see if blocking areas works to stop them changing zones.
Actually that's a pretty cool feature request for JRemote...  Party mode to Lock Zones and/or prevent delete or reorder playing now... also defaults to add to playlist on select.

[Hilton]

The party was a success and the plan worked as I had hoped with the different zones all doing exactly as I wanted.
Guests were pretty impressed to be able to use the iphones and ipad, including their own, to make requests and I chose which order to cue the requests up to the live zone as I had hoped.

The Cue zone was perfect for headphone monitoring and listening to different tracks to decide whether to send them to the live zone.

Overall I was very impressed how the whole setup worked.  I even made use of the Car radio presets to have some pre defined playlists quick to find and handy to go, which I used twice during the night when playlists were accidently overwritten.  Once because I accidently overwrote a playlist and once because a guest connected to the Live playback zone and overwrote the playlist.

Guided access mode to lock my iPhones and iPad in JRemote worked perfectly too.