Technology Guides

While many of you looking here on Technology Guides might be used to the usual and typical posts of how to improve the efficiency and performance of your computer, I thought I’d write a post about what digital DJ sets consist of and what all the different components do.

My name is BMO and I’m doing a guest post from Early Mixologists. I am part of a group of DJ’s who have recently been spending quite a while building up our own DJ sets.  If you’re anything like me, you probably have the stereotypical perception of what a DJ set consists of (i.e. turntables, mixer, amplifier, and speakers).  While this is not really incorrect; today there are a wide variety of options for DJ equipment.  In this post I’m going to be talking about all the DJ setups that revolve around the use of a laptop or desktop.

Before I begin talking about the setups I want to explain that in all of these setups the mixer is used as a medium from which DJs will transition from a song on one deck to the song playing on the opposite deck to create a continuous flow of music.  In almost all cases the mixer is from which the main music output is sent to an amplifier or powered speaker.  You can use an amplifier to send amplified signals of music to non-amplified speakers, or you can send non-amplified music signals directly to powered speakers and altogether skip on using an amplifier, but for information on this it is recommended you do some research on the internet.

The Turntable Setup:

2 turntables

1 Mixer

1 USB soundcard

1 Laptop/ Desktop

*headphones recommended.

Turntables are the original DJ music players.  From Grand Wizard Theodore to Grandmaster Flash, turntables are the preferred choice for hip-hop DJs.  They offer a very nice feel since all the buttons and music tables are very large and easy to control.  Using a laptop has even made turntable Djing portable since now music can all be stored on one, instead of having to bring crates upon crates of vinyl just to dig through them to get at the song you want to play.

The turntables can be connected to a USB soundcard such as the Native Instruments Audio 8 DJ, combined with special time coded vinyl and RCA jacks it is possible to manipulate music on your computer as if it was being played directly on your turntable as a vinyl.  Programs that are recommendable for this are: Serato Scratch Live (this is the one that started it all), and Traktor Scratch Pro (My personal favourite).  Just to note, all the equipment needed for this such as the time coded vinyl, soundcard, and cables come packaged together with both of the programs mentioned above.

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Everyone has dealt with this problem sometime or another and I know I have dealt with it more than once. The question is, how do you deal with it? I’ve also been on both sides where a citizen has taken their anger out on me, a helpless servant to the town. There are two general ways you can deal with the situation as a consumer: get really angry which is the natural option or you can try and negotiate a compromise of some sort. I’ve tried both and found that the latter is the best option.

Getting Angry

Many people, including me, like to take this approach because it’s the most natural thing to do. You receive poor customer service and by taking that anger out on someone in the company you feel that you are getting something accomplished. In my experience what happens is the customer service rep shuts down and is taught to try and mediate it by calming you down and if that doesn’t work they’ll hang up. Therefore nothing is accomplished on both sides; you don’t benefit and the company just logs another angry caller.  Occasionally, something will come out of it but it’s too rare to be noticeable.

My experience came back in 2009 when I had problems with my Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptop and so I went to their online help as it is much quicker. They gave me advice, I was supposedly happy and then after rebooting my computer wouldn’t start up. Since I couldn’t log onto the internet I couldn’t receive more help on the issue, I decided to call them up. Turns out they wouldn’t help me because my phone support had expired. I got really angry because they gave me advice and wouldn’t take responsibility for it. I eventually hung up on the representative even after I asked to speak to the manager and nothing got resolved.

Be Calm and Come to a Compromise

This is the approach I highly recommend if you want something out of the poor customer service. The keys to this approach is be calm, explain your side and in the back of your mind realize that sometimes it’s not the fault of the customer service representative. Many good things can come from this and I’ve only had success while using this approach.

My experience came on Canadian Thanksgiving 2009 when I lost my SIM card (don’t ask why ) and so I went and replaced it. I phoned up Fido, registered my new card and cycled down my phone. As soon as I got it up and running I had a different account. Not only that but someone else had my account. Obviously I was ticked off as the representative told me to get a new SIM card on them. When I went to get it at the store they said they weren’t authorized to do it. So I called them back and they changed their story saying I had to get it shipped and wait another week and I couldn’t switch back to my old account but I could use this account all I wanted to. The next day rolls around and I go to make a call, lo and behold, I can’t because my account has been canceled. Now this is where I get really pissed but luckily my brother was there to give me advice. Here I put the second approach into action. I called them up again and they told me to go to the nearest Fido store and register a new SIM card and it would be credited (don’t know why they didn’t suggest this before). Once I was up and running I called them up and followed these steps.

1. Explain your situation and in my case highlight the fact that you’ve lost x number of hours (or days),
2. Be calm and never blame or take your anger out on the representative because it’s not their fault, and;
3. Tell them you deserve better and want something in return for your inconvenience.

In my case I got a $12 add-on for my inconvenience and at the end of the day, just making them realize they screwed up and needed to make things right was all I needed.

Hopefully these tips help you next time you receive poor customer service or get a product that stops working.

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