dj labtop system for a club ...
 

ok i got a bud that wants to set this up but no clue..

the run down

he's looking to buy a note book .. to hook up to the digital sound system at the local club/bar. reason being security lacks a bit at some nights and he's tired of drunks and such bumping in to his system and trashing cd's.. (rare but happens.. dont ask)

he wants to convert what music he will take that night to mp3's and then set playlists to go.. with the options to put in requests..

the club/bar manager has given him permission to dl any songs that he dosent have.. which would be damn rare..

what does he need to do the notebook thing.. creative labs has a mp3 box that can run the bigger jacks and the normal computer ones with IR also.. its usb external.

would that about work out or does he need more.

I would say an external Audigy would do the sound processing job.

Pfft you don't need shit for fancy equipment...do it the easy way....The way i run mine through a PA for djing....get winamp pro....add the sqrsoft fader add on for fading in between tracks....and for hooking it up...1/8" male plug to dual RCA male ends..and then use rca to 1/4" plug adapters...then hook it up to one in and the other and fade one left and the other right...done...and it's cheap.

ahh good old winamp really kicks the llamas arse .. thanks alll

Whatever you do, dont' use MP3 format for playing music in a setting like that. Use the .WAV format. Sure, it'll use more hard disk space, but the bass and high treble will be better. And, if it's gonna be loud, you want the better quality.

high quality wav liner pcm;; space of course;; it would take lots of space;; but its for the better

whew! I thought I was going to have to get on to someone for not spinning real records.(yeah that kind of dj) It shouldn't be too hard to set up what you're talking about most people above me have given good advise.

Use a lossless compression format like FLAC or .shn

If he wanted to be a <i>REAL</i> DJ, he could always go for <a href="http://www.finalscratch.com/fs4/start.asp">Final Scratch</a>.

(shameless plug for a really cool product that I wish I had the $$ to actually own)

lol my friend just ordered it.. thanks all

no if here were a <i>REAL</i> dj he'd be spinning recs with some technics 1200's and a vestax mixer :D

Hopefully someone can give me some pointers here, I'm fairly new with sound systems and the like. I'm trying to run my laptop through a PA, and everytime I do I get a horrible buzzing feedback through the pa. If I upgraded to a better cable would that help reduce the feedback? Or do I need a better soundcard?

A bit late, but I take issue with the earlier statements that the mp3 format is not of sufficient fidelity for playing in a club. Given a high-quality encoder (LAME) and a sensible encoding bitrate (LAME's --alt-preset standard) nobody will be able to tell the difference, and your storage needs will be reduced by 80%. LAME -aps is indistiguishable from the original by most people most of the time, and a club environment won't be anywhere near revealing enough for the most golden-eared audiophile to hear anything different.

I am of the Old Skool that beleives that Vinyl is the only real way to DJ. However, if I were to do it by laptop I would probably get some MP3 mixing software, there are quite a few out there and it does come with a personal preference and what works for you. Many Demos for that type of software can be found at www.downloads.com Some of them even do al the beat matching for you (shudder). There is also one or 2 that even come with hardware interfaces. I think that MP3's would work fine if they were encoded from a raw format...ie: vinyl, CD, live, etc. as long as you a high bit compression you should be fine and not sacrifice too much sound quality, probabbly 256k compression would be fine.

I still stand by that vinyl is the best and like it was said earlier, 2 techs and a good vestex mixer.

A friend of mine DJ'd at a club last week, he was using FinalScratch, all with mp3's and there was no problem with any quality. I think FinalScratch is an ideal mix between tradition and new technology, it requires all the beatmatching skill normally used, just with the ability to carry your entire record collection on a computer, instead of on thousands of vinyl. I dont think this would be very appropriate in this setting as you did say there was a problem with people knocking into equipment, but I think it's a good way to go for a lot of dj's /clubs