If you would like to DJ with our humble sound system we often use a Cortex DMX-30o mixing board. It has two RCA inputs (for what ever music source you want) but more interestingly than that, it has an iPod cradle and a USB host port. It is super cool, and lets you use the board for all sorts of fun mixing of your digital music. It will even let you mix one song into the next song off the same iPod or other digital device. We also have two USB CD drives the board controls, though we are bringing less and less as we convert all our music to digital. If you want to use our Cortex board, for MP3 mixing, you music will sound better if you follow the Best Importing Practices. It is suggest that you build a Cortex database for easy browsing (though that is also not required). If you want to use your iPod, you do have to turn Target Disk Mode on. Best MP3 Importing Practices
If you are (or can) encode the songs yourself off of CD please follow this procedure. Although these are not required, and our board can play regular old MP3's, it will sound significantly better if you:
- Set your music to encode as MP3 at 320 kbps. This is the highest setting and a custom level in iTunes - 320 kbps files do take up a bit of space, but on a good system, you really can hear it
- DO NOT check that box that says Filter Frequencies Below 10Hz - Although your crappy sound system or headphones might not be able to play that low of a sound, that low end base really makes it rumble on a good DJ system
- DO NOT use Veritable Bit Rate (VBR) - Although this will make the file smaller, it is also MUCH harder to decode. Although our system can play it, Cortex does not guarantee it sill not hiccup. This has only ever meant one or two blips a night, but really, do we want any?
If you plug a USB drive (thumb drive or HD) into the USB port on our Cortex Board, it will be able to play it, but our Cortex Board will only be able to browse using the file hierarchy. This is not ideal, and you will not be able browse by Artist, Song, Album, Genre or use the USB keyboard for searching (that's a pretty cool feature, eh?). To enable all of these features, you first need to: - Download the Cortex-Pro Database Manager (for PC or MAC), which can be downloaded from www.cortex-pro.com. Also, you are welcome to download and read the manual, though it was rather long and complicated for a short and straight forward procedure.
- Once you have the Cortex-Pro Database Manager installed on your computer, you will need to plug your drive or iPod into the your computer. If you do not know how to do this, read all about it in the Cortex documentation. After you have your iPod or drive attached, open the Cortex Database Manage, browse to your drive or iPod, and create a database. This can take a long time the first time you run it, days for us with our 120 gig iPod! You will have to update the data base anytime you add music to your system. If you don't, our Cortex board will not see any new music since the last time you update the database
- Once you have the database created, you will also (most likely) want to create waveforms for all your songs. This lets our vary basic graphic equalizer display your wave form as it is playing, very helpful for queuing and mixing. I have found that the Create All Waveform button does not work (at least not on my machine), but if I select them, and click the Selectable Waveform button, it does work
Best of luck, and thank you for DJing with us! PyroCelt |
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