Time for Upgrades Help me with your Inputs

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-- Time for Upgrades Help me with your Inputs

Posted by Djstigma on Dec-02-2003 05:17:

Time for Upgrades Help me with your Inputs

Ok here's the deal I'm looking to upgrade my Dj'ing equipment.
1. Mixer's
Allen&Health Xone:32 or Xone:62 which one is the best bang for your bucks?

Pioneer DJM500 or DJM600

So out of the four mixers which ones would you chose?

2. Then the needles...Ortofon Concorde Night Club E or Scratch or (something better but not to damn expensive)

3. About Final Scratch I have a laptop that is P3 700MHZ with 512Ram and 40G HD am I able to run final scratch without a problem? Also the laptop will be dedicated for Final scratch.

And for anyone that is from Canada, where can you surggest I buy all of this from for a good deal?

P.s I mainly play Trance,Progressive and somtime Tribal

Thank-you in advance for your help.

Posted by Inertia on Dec-02-2003 23:51:

3) well, if it's going to be dedicated for FS and FS only...
you could put linux on it, and 700MHz of Penguin Power will
perform quite well...

Posted by DC Generator on Dec-03-2003 07:17:

Don't know much about Fianl Scratch and all, but get the Ortofon Concorde Night Club E needles. My bro uses them. I played his tables once and was blown away. The music sounds SOOOO good.

Posted by DJTJ on Dec-03-2003 12:38:

With regards to the mixer, you should definitely go for the Allen & Heath if you can afford it. The sound quality and build quality of the Pioneers are suspect to say the least for a mixer of that price. If you put an A&H next to a Pioneer and do a comparison on the sound quality, you will see what I mean.

The A&H mixers use better quality components, saving money by not including a box of effects and BPM counters, like the Pioneers do. If you want effects and a BPM counter, you should use external boxes through the effects loop, which will give you better quality effects (the ones on the Pioneers are shite) and better sound.

Also, the A&H circuit boards are mounted vertically. This means that if anything gets spilled on them (beer for instance) then the liquid will just run straight off and cause little or no damage. Pioneer circuit boards are mounted horizontally, and so any liquid will pool and is more likely to cause damage.

Its up to you whether you want the Xone:32 or Xone:62 - they are very similar mixers in terms of sound quality, in that they use the same components. The 62 has a few more bits to it, for example it has 6 channels rather than 3, Penny & Giles crossfader, VCF filters etc. It's obviously more expensive though.

Onto the needles....
I would go with the Nightclub E's. They have a better sound quality than the Scratch needles, meaning if you wanted to record a mix to put on CD it would sound a lot better etc. They are also fine for scratching, but I personally wouldn't scratch with such an expensive set of needles. I don't know how often you scratch, but have you considered getting a decent set of needles for straight mixing (i.e. the Ortofons) and buying a cheap set of Stantons for practising your scratching? It would be no more than $40 for a set, maybe less if you look around.

As for the laptop, 700MHz with 512MB is plenty for FS, you should have no problems there.

Hope this helps.

Posted by las3rjock on Dec-03-2003 17:47:

quote:
Originally posted by DJTJ
Pioneer circuit boards are mounted horizontally, and so any liquid will pool and is more likely to cause damage.

Heh heh...just ask BT about that one

As a general rule, cups containing liquids should be nowhere near electronics.

Posted by T:REBEL on Dec-03-2003 20:16:

Re: Time for Upgrades Help me with your Inputs

quote:
Originally posted by Djstigma
Ok here's the deal I'm looking to upgrade my Dj'ing equipment.
1. Mixer's
Allen&Health Xone:32 or Xone:62 which one is the best bang for your bucks?

Pioneer DJM500 or DJM600

So out of the four mixers which ones would you chose?

2. Then the needles...Ortofon Concorde Night Club E or Scratch or (something better but not to damn expensive)

3. About Final Scratch I have a laptop that is P3 700MHZ with 512Ram and 40G HD am I able to run final scratch without a problem? Also the laptop will be dedicated for Final scratch.

And for anyone that is from Canada, where can you surggest I buy all of this from for a good deal?

P.s I mainly play Trance,Progressive and somtime Tribal

Thank-you in advance for your help.

1.) Go with Heath & Allen Xone 62.

2.) Screw the "E" versions of the Ortofons. Those are only for studio production and recording a set. They'll eat your records like worse than the M44-7s. Stick with the "S" versions.

3.) No comment.

4.) http://www.pssl.com

Posted by SgtFoo on Dec-04-2003 01:45:

IF YOU HAVE THE CASH..... GET THE ALLEN&HEATH XONE:62!!!

Right now I got a Behringer VMX300, and I already know my next mixer will be a A&H Xone:62 or Xone:92 (depending on my money situation and channel needs)