Another quick post today, as I’ve had many things to do and playing at a party tonight, so I was working in the studio all day… yeah, nothing unusual….! I love this remix, I think it could be the best remix ever! until the next one comes out 😎 … and for those of you coming to the party tonight… consider it a warm up…!!
Last night I logged into Ravers Paradise, created myself and account and had a listen to what was playing. It just happened to be a DJ friend of mine, DJ Shade banging out some excellent Old Skool tunes. I like the site and enjoyed the time I spent there. There are interactive pages and you can listen to the stream as you interact with the tools and forums. Although, some of the site code does need a little bit of work in relation to general tidiness, it doesn’t matter though because it all seems to work.
As it turns out after I was on the site for only a few minutes and chatting to Commodore, one of the site admins, he set me up as a DJ and pointed me towards the info for setting up the stream so I can play a set! Wow! So it looks like very soon I will be banging out a set on Ravers Paradise, can’t wait! So get set, go create your login and get ready for something special….
I have been doing a little bit of live sound work of late and some of this work has required me to record the session off the desk, not problems I have a Zoom H4n and you would think it should be up to the task as it is…. nope….
Turns out that the Zoom H4n line inputs are just that, line level inputs at -10dBm, which means that if you send and Aux out from a professional sound desk it will be way too hot, since the level out of the desk would be +4dBm when the meters read 0dBvu. This is exactly the same problem I recently had with a CDJ and U46dj sound card. So the solution is to drop the output level send to the Zoom… oh but hang on, you need to work out how to actually connect to the line inputs as this is not immediately obvious. The line inputs are connected to the 6.5mm TS connectors, which are centred in the middle of the XLR’s at the bottom of the unit. Unlike most XLR/Phono combo jacks the XLR and 6.5mm plug are not connected to the same pre-amp. The XLR part is set to mic level, -60dBm and is a balanced connector, but the 6.5mm TS socket is line level, -10dBm unbalanced….. errrrrr wot! No +4dBm pro level…..
So once you have figured that out you can plug a couple of 6.5mm TS jacks into them, but in order to get the levels right you will need a couple of attenuators. I just received 4 of these -15dBm attenuators that connect in-line with an XLR cable, and with the addition of a few other bits from my kit I am set to go. If you do the maths you will figure out that a -15dBm attenuator will give 1dBm of headroom in this case. I was a little disappointed to see that I could not easily (ie: on ebay) get these from an Australian supplier, I generally buy small things like this online as I find that real stores rarely carry exactly what you are after and they need to order it in anyway! So, I was forced to order them from the UK, normally I would get this sort of thing from Swamp, but they don’t seem to carry attenuators either…. come on guys!
So now that you have all your plugs connected you will need to set the record level on the Zoom. I found that this bit did make some sense, it seems that when the record level is set to ‘1’ that is in fact unity (0dBvu) for -10dBm input… nice…then every ‘0.1’ drop is -3dBvu… also nice…
So there you have it, how to get this thing going and working nicely with your kit… now go and start recording!
A quick post today because I only slept 4 hours last night and can hardly concentrate…. I walked into the studio today with a good idea for a phat bass line, only to find a broken juno-106… switched it on and could not get any sound out of it! After a quick check I figured out that it is dead, the lights are on but no one is home and no sound output… will keep you posted because it most likely it has to get repaired and looks like SynthRepair, who is my usual repair guy, has disappeared.
As I may have mentioned before, I am currently going through the process of recording all the records I currently have here… hmmm… about 2000 of them! I think I must be about one third of the way through and recording more everyday. During this I have developed a system to get vinyl records clean that works very well, it also reduces static and makes the records sound really good. This is how it goes.
Step 1: Clean the record using AM Record Cleaner Fluid This is the best stuff I have ever used for this job. I tend to use 4 or 5 squirts all around, paying particular attention to the outside and inside run-outs as this is where the dirt tends to collect especially if you are DJ’ing with the vinyl and grubby finger are getting all over it, then rub off the excess with the provided cloth.
Step 2: Play the record through at least once with the counter weight on the turntable turned to up to maximum weight. If the record is very dirty and has noticeable dirt patches on it, as the record plays, you should notice small specks of dirt lift out of the groove and lay on the record surface. Now take your cloth and carefully brush the specks off being careful not to push the dirt back into the groove.
Step 3: Now if your record was very dirty or if really want to make sure things are clean you can use the AM Record Cleaner again. You may also want to do this if the record is a 33rpm album or very old, because the recording on these tend to be quitter and the static will be more obvious.
Step 4: Play your record, record it if you want. Then put it back on the shelf and never play it again….
AM Record Cleaner
So I have a gig this coming Saturday. It’s a friends birthday party and a few other friends and DJ’s that I know are playing at it as well. I was chatting to one of them yesterday evening, DJ Unknown, and I casually mention that ‘I think this venue only has CDJ’s‘, he starts to panic because he has never played from CDJ’s before! I’ve never done a gig in front of a club from CDJ’s before either, we both use DJDecks exclusively from SL1200’s using SSL Vinyl but at least I have a secondhand CDJ800 which I bought for this express purpose…. the day when I did a gig and there are no SL1200’s avaliable, this is that day! So today I spent a few hours practicing on the single CDJ that I have and making sure DJDecks is set up correctly… sweet… no problems, things worked perfectly, in fact I think I was mixing better on the CDJ than I have on the SL1200’s over the last few weeks.
One important thing to note, if you are using a CDJ with a U46DJ interface then the output of the CDJ will be too loud for the U46DJ. So you will need to do one of two things, either buy four attenuater and put them between the CDJ’s and the sound card, -15dB should be good enough, or simply burn a timecode CD that has a maximum level of -15dB, ie: drop the level of the timecode 15dB, you can do with with Wavelab, Audacity or some sort of wave editing software. The reason for this is because the output of the CDJ is at +4dB and the input of the U46DJ is -10dB a difference of 14dB, if you drop the level by 15dB the you will have 1dB of headroom which seems to work perfectly!
Also I’ve be playing around with a new skin. I’ve been using the SPM skin for years but today I tried out the VCSkin… very nice. Much simpler interface and only has information that is important when using vinyl control. Also the font for the file browser is smaller so more info fits on the screen, also nice…..
This is actually a remake of a mix I did in 1995. I found it on an old tape, but when I tried to record and convert it I was not happy with the sound so I did the obvious thing and re-mixed it, after all I still have all the records. The original mix was a lot shorter than this since it was recorded on one side of a 90 minute tape. I have added a few extra tracks on the end and I was careful to make sure that the tracks where from the same era and similar sort of sound. Anyhow take a listen and enjoy, and you can download the mp3 from HERE
Took some time this week to make a new mix up, only thing is it’s all old music. Since I have been going through the exercise of recording all my vinyl’s to mp3 I have discovered that I had a hell of a lot of Trance music from the 90′ in particual 1997…. go figure! Anyway it got me inspired to put a few of them into a mix and here we are. It was my goal this year to make one mix a month, so far I have done two! Time to get cracking and put out ten more in the next two months! Enjoy….
If you want to download the mp3 for yourself you can get it HERE
