This toy really is the ultimate in Ableton Live control, extending the interface litterally to your fingertips and bringing a whole new world of possibility. You can read all about it on Akai’s site, but if you really want to see the potential, check out these YouTube links that just sum up the potential in full from my perspective:

Ok, so its going to take me a while before I get  this good, but thats what its all about.

……watch this space

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The Xponent is an awesome tool, it is the perfect transition medium for anyone thinking of moving into digital and is very well featured. Its a little on the plastic side, and the faders feel like they are fisher price, but it works like a dream and is portable enough to follow me around the country!

I now have two primary setups, home & away.

Home is the Xponent, married to my main desktop feeding a pair of KRK RP6G2 Active Studio Monitors, and it sounds awesome!

Away is the Xponent. married to my X200s Laptop & feeding a pair of M-Audio AV20 portable studio monitors, although it lacks base, it has punch, power and clarity and lets face it, we don’t want to piss off the neighbours in the hotel now do we

I still suffer from the age old problem of not actually having time to use this lot, but the away kit helps with that problem a fair bit, so once I get fully transitioned, expect a flurry of new mixes on the way!

                          

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What I have at this stage is a premise and an outline set of requirements. The premise is simple, go fully digital, but retain analogue controls. The outline components are as follows:

• A powerful PC/MAC + Essential Apps such as Ableton Live
• A High Quality Multi-channel sound card
• A midi trigger device
• A Good quality Mixer
• A Sampler/Effects Unit

Now, its actually possible to have all of the above in a single box, and in fact, many solutions exist for sub £250, but to be honest, its just not going to give me the flexibility and expandability that I desire. What I want is complete fluidity in the solution so that I can expand upon for many years, giving me not only multi-channel mixing, but the real-time remix capability that I desire

So where next?

Well, I already have a decent mixer (DJM600), a powerful PC (Multi-Xeon Monster) and Ableton, so the most important piece and crux of the system is what I need to acquire first. This would be the multi-channel sound card! I have had a look around and found many options, but this one seems to be the best by a mile:

Motu Ultralite MK3

This unit has all the features I could need, from 192Khz sample rates, through to 6 channels of input and 10 channels of output to give me as many feeds as I could possibly deal with! The spec list goes on forever on this thing, which is why it can command a £500+ price tag. But if I am going to invest, this is the way forward.

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Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a thousand reasons for the upgrade, but did you know about this one? There is actually a very serious and technical reason that you should upgrade. I’ll try and explain it to you in lay terms….

The current “2G” iphones operate on the GPRS/EDGE Networks (I won’t get into the technical stuff, use wikipedia for that). Now you will think that actually that’s a good thing, better data usage is good news surely? Well it would be if their was not one simple problem with the 2G network. That is that you cannot use voice and data to the same endpoint (i.e. iphone) at the same time!!! Yes, that’s right. You cannot surf and chat simultaneously! Now, this has never really been a problem before a device like the iphone, as most of use would use the data facilities on our nokia or sony so infrequently that we never noticed a problem, however the iphone, being a data hungry beast, is a regular user of data, without your permission!

What this all equates to is simple. If you iphone decides it needs a data connection, say to update its email or something else useful, and at the same time, someone tries to call you, guess what, they don’t get through! This kind of defeats the object of the iphone qualifying for the use of the word “phone” IMO!

So whats the answer? simple, upgrade to a 3G phone! this makes use of the new third generation network (HSPA/UTMS), which of course, being data centric, allows simultaneous use of voice and data from a single device.

What more of an excuse do you need to go and get that upgrade?

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a) mitigate many, many boxes of 12″ vinyl
b) get easier access to the latest music
c) play tracks of my own creation without having to have them cut to 12″, and finally
d) retain the look and feel of my 1210’s with all their analogue loveliness!

These requirements put me in the digital DJ space, with the key players being Traktor and Serato. As you will have seen in previous posts, I had 100% decided to go with Traktor, simply because it had the ability to run 4 live sources through it, that as well as the fact that the Audio 8 interface is pretty solid, and very versatile. The thing is, an Audio 8 interface is great if your moving from gig to gig, but these days, I work for a living, so the chances of me playing out are slim, so why spend £500 on TraktorScratch V3 when I can get one of these instead

The Korg Zero4 is simply amazing. It has a multitude of effects, versatility and that all important ability to plug straight into the PC and run Traktor. Now, I already have a Pioneer DJM600, which is an impressive mixer and still considered one of the best on the market today, but, this mixer just exudes quality and functionality. For starters its a Korg product, so your in the realms of world class engineering, but then its got so many features it is unreal.

Take a look at this, this is the per channel effect section of the mixer:

Then, to complement that you have the same set of effects on the master channel! so theoretically you could apply LFO LPF to Channel A, LFO HPF to Channel B and a Phaser to the master out, all during the same mix. That would sound pretty impressive. Here are the main channel effects:

Now, I really want to find out exactly what the effect “Decimator” sounds like!

To top all that off, you get a fully featured BPM locked Sampler:

So all in all, you get an awful lot of toys for your money. Incidentally, the Korg is retailing at £750, only £250 more than the TraktorScratch V3 Package. You will of course need to get a set of control records at £15 each, and a copy of Traktor V3.2, but despite that, I think its an investment worth taking. So much so, that it is one I am seriously contemplating.

The only downside of course, if I ever end up in a situation where someone says, hey, come play a set fro us, its gonna be difficult to turn up with a whole mixer rather than a simple box to interface!

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If you can find some of these, buy them,  they really are worth it. I had to get mine off ebay in the US, but despite coming with 110v power supplies and the hastle it took to find a suitable UK one to replace them, it was worth every penny.

This is what you get for your money:

“The Electrix EQ Killer ($299) is a Kill Box that lets DJs and producers EQ an element without investing in expensive equipment. Built like a tank, the unit comes encased in a rugged aluminium housing that will absorb a lot of abuse. With the included joiner plate, you can connect two Electrix Mods devices in a 19-inch rack. The EQ Killer can also rest on a flat surface. The front panel is tilted upward, making the controls easier to read.

Kill the Band The front panel is divided into three sections: Low, Mid, and High. Each section has a Momentary switch, a Band Kill switch, and level control knobs. The level knobs dial up the amount of gain or attenuation for their respective frequency bands, offering up to 6 dB of gain per band. Unity gain is achieved when the level knob is set at 12 o’clock. Between the Low, Mid, and High level knobs are the Low X-Over and High X-Over sweep controls. The Low X-Over sets the point where the Low band ends and the Mid band starts. The High X-Over adjusts where the Mid band ends and the High band starts.

The back panel has three input/output sections. Inputs 1 and 2 have standard RCA stereo connectors. There’s also a switch to select between line level and turntable input levels, and grounding posts for turntables. The third section’s Send/Return loop lets you apply external effects to the killed band. At the front of the unit’s bottom right-hand corner is an input selection switch for toggling between turntables or line-level devices. The button will act as a bypass switch if there’s only one device connected to EQ Killer”.

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This is the final choice and the result of much deliberation and research.

It would seem that for the most part its a two horse race, Serato vs Traktor. I’ll give you the highlights to make it simple. Serato is very very stable, easy to use and generally a rock solid solution to mixing MP3’s. Traktor has less reputation for stability but so many more features and possabilities when it comes to taking your music to the next level. This is best domonstrated bythe release of traktor 3.2 and its ability to mix 4 sources in the same interface! this means you could have 2 x decks + two other input sources all up at once mixing through a 4 channel mixer, when used with the Audio 8 interface. It was this feature that won it for me.

With this I can utilise Ableton Live like it was another deck, and have a 4th source as something like a standalone sequencer, drum machine or other random piece of electronic excellence. Now all I have to do is save my pennies and actually buy one!

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Here are some of the ones I have seen and a couple I have used:

Stanton Final Scratch
Not available these days unless its second hand, I had a Mk1 version, USB connectivity and the Software was only stable on a MAC, even then, a little tempremental!

Serato SCRATCH
Recentley borrowed one of these of a mate, and I have to say I was impressed, easy to use, stable, even on Vista! and quick response from the USB hardware.

Native Instruments AUDIO8 DJ
I am itchin to get hold of one of these, it looks pretty impressive and ticks all the boxes in terms of functionality, Firewire interface so it should be spot on for scratchin, and based on the latest version of Tractor FS, so again, proven technology.

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