Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DJ6yr]

First,
Media Center 10 Kicks the Lama and anything else that has come along.  I am a professional Moble Disc Jockey and need different features to make my gigs better as I work live and have little time "to think" and possible distractions come by the minute.
I am listing the following suggestions in desperation and with hope for your consideration and emplimentation:

1. Plug In: Tempo and Pitch (already available in the constant mode): Ability to do per song on the fly tempo change and possible store in tag. The next song would not be affected by the last adjustment.
2. Option: use the visualizations widow for Playing Now to allow for browsing of tree locations like Audio/Disc/folder in lower window and still see the Playing Now window. I have to pay attention to my gig and not be distracted by the beautiful visualizations.
3. Creation of 2nd Player Window to preview songs with a second sound card and the ability to choose the sound cards.
4. A Drag and Drop small window for must play song list while doing a gig, this could be opened with a click and be enabled to "add to playing now list" and it  would be emptied upon exit of the program.
5. Cue feature of players: clicking once on the stop button would stop the song where it is while playing. clicking on play would play the song starting from that stopped point.  Double clicking on stop while the song was playing would stop the song and return it to the begining of the song.
6. When using search it would search all audio files and not just the opened folder. It would search for any  field information as BPM or Artist or etc.
7. Enable the tree window to be moved left or right with a scrol bar to open up more room to see more information in the browsing window.
8. Enable commands to be inserted into playing now for dj talk.
A. insert silence of 5, 10, or whatever seconds between songs for an annoucement or comment on the song coming up to be played.
B. insert a stop between songs for long talk between songs.  This allows dj interaction with crowd away from the computer and in place to corrdinate an activity while returning to the computer to start the music again.
9. Faster rip (Music Match Plus will rip at 26x) to save time for  the dj with thousands of songs and who is always in need of more time to get things done.
10. Quick Buttons that would allow a file like a special effect song to be played while the present song is being played. Just dragg and drop a file onto the button and then when the button is clicked on it would automaticlly play the file.

I HAVE SPENT HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS! AND TRIED OUT ALL AUDIO PROGRAMS UNDER $400.00 AVAILABLE IN THE LAST 2 YEARS. THERE ARE OVER 15,000 DISC JOCKEYS IN THE US ALONE AND WITH A PROFESSIONAL VERSION MEDIA CENTER WITH THE ABOVE FEATURES ADDED AND A SIMPLIFIED SCREEN DISPLAY MEDIA CENTER COULD BE THE BEST SELLING PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM FOR A LONG TIME.

Thank you for reading, hope you will consider the suggestions.

Respectfully Summitted,
Ted W. Patton
www.hmusicwt.com
Nashville, TN
President of Music City Mobile Disc Jockey Association
www.mcdja.com

[Dragyn]

I'll try and do my best.

2. You can have a 'Playing Now' Action Window. It's there somewhere. Build Playlists / Edit Playing Now

3. You can do that but you will need to switch zones. There's some hotkeys for that.

5. I agree. WinDVD does this and it's been a time saver for me.

6. I agree. Maybe they could use some other symbol to make it search the entire library like *

7. Don't see this happening. It was heavily debated when it first came out.

10. Sounds cool. Probably would be a tough thing to do though...with all the lists and zones MC has to handle. I'm sure other programs could maybe play into that while MC is playing.

[DJ6yr]

Thanks for your comments.  They have given me a few ideas.
Best Regards,
Ted

[Alex B]

I try to answer to #9.

I think that MC rips as fast as your drive can in Normal mode. The Secure setting is slower. Maybe you mean the difference in the encoding speed. That depends on the encoder and format chosen. If you are using MP3, I suggest LAME 3.96. You can use lame.exe as an external encoder with MC. Write %IN %OUT --preset insane --noreplaygain into Parameters. You get the highest quality 320kbit CBR MP3s fast.

You can get Lame 3.96 from here: http://www.rarewares.org/files/mp3/lame3.96.zip

[DJ6yr]

thank you for your answer.  I will probably stick with Music Match Plus at 192kps and 26x.  If I reconfigure I think I would have to do it with 3,000 files to get the same sound for all.
Thanks again.

[Alex B]

When I have gone out for dancing I am always happier when the sound quality is better. I don't complain about lesser quality, because I am not able to do any direct comparison.

In my opinion there can be more variance in CD recording/mastering quality among different audio CDs than what different bitrate MP3 encodings can cause at high bitrates. (= 192 kbit/s and over and if current LAME or Frauenhofer encoder is used. It is Fraunhofer's FastEnc in MM. Some old encoders generate unpleasant artifacts and distortion even at 320 kbit/s.)

192 CBR parameter for LAME 3.96 would be: %IN %OUT --preset cbr 192 --noreplaygain, although you get better audio quality with a quite fast VBR setting %IN %OUT --preset fast standard --noreplaygain, which often averages to 200 kbit/s.

"--noreplaygain" is there because LAME 3.96 does it's own analyzing by default and that standard is not used in MC. It is a bit faster with the "--noreplaygain" parameter.

[DJ6yr]

You are very right about the sound quality being important.  One of the reasons I switched to MC 10 was the 32-bit option for the sound card. I have been playing gigs weekly with otsdj and when I tired MC 10 @32-bit, it was like I had a whole different DJ Equitment set up. Being unfamiler with MC 10, I made a few mistakes and switched back, but when I used otsdj the next week the sound was a disapointment. Ots also cuts off at 16Khz.
I apologize for my inability to understand the other information that you have given me about ripping. I will just stay with MMp unless MC 10 goes faster as the default.

Thank you very much for you reply.
Best Regards,

Ted

[kaiynne]

I think what alex b is saying is that music match is probably ripping in default mode which is faster than secure mode.  Secure mode is slower because it will retry bad portions of the disc till it gets good data.  My 52X drive rips about 16X in secure mode on average, but up to 30X in normal mode.

I have a question though, how come you are ripping your tracks to mp3?  you mentioned 3000 files, if you were storing them uncompressed using ape for example it would only take up like 65GB or less.  It seems like the sound quality improvement from going lossless would far far outweigh any improvement you get from changing players, but I could be wrong there.  Now if you actually have 3000 cds then I understand using mp3, because that would be like a little under a terabyte I am guessing if they were uncompressed.

So have you made comparisons between uncompressed and mp3?  Is it because of the noise at a live gig that the difference is hard to hear?  Or is it a limit of the average PA system?  basically I am just curious,.

[DJ6yr]

You are right MMp is ripping in the default mode at 26x. So far I haven't  had any sound problems.

I am limited on 3 computers to 30/40 gb and there are more tweaking and player programs in the mp3 format. I use Mp3 gain, Mp3pro Trim, and do a double BPM set - 1 manually with WinBPM and an auto with Mixmiester Auto BPM which is very accurate with 75% of the music. Mixm gives an accurate BPM on a song with a good dance beat that allows me to choose one song over another when thngs are really rocking.

I have not used uncompressed at a gig and since I quit playing CDs from a mechanical player. There is a difference in sound but, with the DFX plug in-set at Mp3 no ambience, Eq at flat/ clip protect, 32bit sound card setting, and a BBE processor with proper amps and speakers the sound is so close that unless you're in the business it is very hard to tell that mp3s are being played. At big gigs 200 people plus I use the above with 3 amps, 3 sets of speakers and an active crossover to really make the sound come alive.

Thanks for your reply,
Ted

[GHammer]

Howdy,

Since you have spent 100s on software, you shouldn't wait on spending a litle on a hard drive. You can get a 250 Gb drive for under $200.00 online.

You should look into the DirectX host portion of the DSP studio. There are MUCH better DSPs than DFX. Some are free, some are not. One I think a DJ could use well would be Izotope 3. Pricy, but if it's in sound, it does it very well.

I think ripping the music into a lossless format (APE, FLAC) and using a good DSP would allow you to lose some of the audio hardware you use.

Finally, for the ripping speed, go to Options. Devices. Advanced Ripping Settings. Now select the CD you rip from and make sure it is using Max for the speed. Also note if it is set for Secure or Normal.

Normal is faster but will not handle errors as well. Secure is slow but should get all but the worst CDs ripped.

[Alex B]

Many DJ programs support only wave, mp3 or wma. That is one reason for not using APE or FLAC. Properly encoded MP3 is very good if you don't have to transcode it any further. For me the usual CBR 192 kbit/s is not good enough, but LAME "extreme" VBR files around 250 to 300 kbit/s are almost transparent when compared to lossless.

DJ6yr,

I was indeed trying to guide you to getting faster results in Media Center. According to instructions given here the ripping should be as fast as your drive can do.

The encoding part is responsible for the rest of the possible speed gap. Fraunhofer's FastEnc encoder in MMp is one of the fastest, but there has been significant progress in the new LAME v. 3.96. I manage to get about 16x encoding speeds with a P4 processor. By default MC uses LAME v. 3.93, which is also good, but not as fast.

It is actually quite easy to use an external LAME encoder with MC. Just put the lame.exe file somewhere in your drive, and choose External Encoder in Options-> Encoding -> Encoder and click Advanced. There you point where the lame.exe is (EXE path) and put in one of the parameters I gave here earlier. That's all.

You wrote that you use MixMeister software. I suppose it is the Pro version. It is advertised to be a very good DJ program. What is your opinion and what is missing there? I have also read about PCDJ FX 7.0. Have you tried it?

[jleerigby]

I'll try to add to Dragyn's comments.  Sorry if my comments duplicate anyone else's but if I read it all I won't have time to write an answer!

5.  Maybe I'm missing something here but doesn't the pause / play toggle button do that?

6.  Ctrl+F will search the whole library.  Press backspace afterwards to go back to the previous folder.

7.  I agree with Dragyn.  This isn't going to happen as most people found the scroll bar unnecessary and ugly.

8a.  As a workaround you could use a wav editor (there is one with MC) to make a file that plays n seconds of silence.

8b.  Use www.netremote.org on a WIFI PDA to control MC while 'in the crowd'.  You can view the playing now list, browse the library, cue tracks, play, pause, stop etc. etc.

9.  Having used both apps MC is much slower than MMJB but it does a much better job of it too.  I would never go back to MMJB just for the sake of speed.  Rip to WAV which is much quicker, and then batch convert to MP3 later (e.g. while you're tucked up in bed).

Hope this was useful.

[GHammer]

It is actually quite easy to use an external LAME encoder with MC. Just put the lame.exe file somewhere in your drive, and choose External Encoder in Options-> Encoding -> Encoder and click Advanced. There you point where the lame.exe is (EXE path) and put in one of the parameters I gave here earlier. That's all.

If you want to use a different version of LAME, it's just as easy (maybe easier) to copy the new lame.exe to Program Files\J River\Media Center\Plugins

[DJ6yr]

To Everyone who has replied:

Information Summary for "New Features":

1. no replys= I'll just leave the tempo window open and hit reset at the end of the song I am adjusting.

2. no replys= i'll just live with it and use the back and playing now buttons.

3. Using zone 2 set up with another sound card will enable me to preview a song. Thanks.

4. creating a new "add play list" during a gig will enable this idea.

5. Can use pause to stop the song at a cued spot in another zone and switch to that zone when I want to play the song in the sequence needed. Rough but it works.

6. C-F works well. Thanks

7. I resized the col. and this does fine.

8. I created mp3 silence files of 5, 10, and 180 seconds with the sound recorder changed the do not play silence control and is working very well althought the crossover is not as fast.

9. Wow! Lot of input here.  Due to availabiltiy of monies to work with and time to try all the suggestions I have decided to stay with my original set up, but your suggestions will give me thought for the future. Thanks very much.

10. no replys= Not really necessary but, would have been a "fun" tool.

To Dragyn, Alex B., Kaiynne, GHammer, and JLee  THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!!!!

I will now go take 2 asprin and soak my head to try to releave the strain this has put on a 53yr. Old Man  with a limited IQ.

Best wishes to you all.

Ted W. Patton

[Alex B]

Ted, you are welcome

GHammer (and the others who are interested of LAME usage),

You are right. I found lame.exe there. MC uses it if you change it to another version. I thought that Enc_mp3.dll is the encoder, but obviously it is transferring commands to lame.exe, which is run as a hidden process.

What happens when you update MC. Does it overwrite the changed lame.exe?

On the other hand, I find it useful to see information provided in the command prompt window when an external LAME is running. There is information about chosen options, speed, progress, VBR bitrates etc.

[KingSparta]

correction to the url on the orginal post

http://www.mcdja.com/

[DJ6yr]

Thanks KS, I corrected the spelling.

[kaiynne]

I will be directing my friend who is an aspiring dj to check this post out, thanks Ted, lost of good info in one place.

[IanG]

#10 is possible, though probably not to the standard needed - add Winamp (or whatever) as an external app and create a playlist of fx.  You can select the playlist fx and send them to Winamp with right click.  Selecting MC's internal volume control makes things a bit more manageable.

Ian G.