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cdj 2000 newbie question - loading music

Got a pair of cdj 2000s and have a very basic question (hold the laughter).

So, I know you can use a USB stick or SD card.

And I know you can plug a USB cable from the back of it to your computer...

My question is about the latter. Let's say I do that. I then click link on the cdj and I see USB Midi. It appears to be connected.

But what is the next step from there? Do I need Sareto or something similar to actually get music loaded unto the cdj?

My hope was that I'd not have to use Serato, etc., nor a USB stick, but to simply load songs from my hard drive to it - take the cdjs out and about - and just load what was on them.

How do I do this? If I can do this what is the hard drive space of the cdj 2000?

Thanks.

rekordbox. Came with your CDJ's

yea i installed that.

I don't understand how you access the tunes you put in there from your cdj. How do you do that? How do you get them from the rekordbox app unto the cdj?

You read the f*cking manual.....

quote:

Originally posted by Jarvmeister You read the f*cking manual.....

Nah... plugging stuff in, pressing buttons and hoping for the best is much more fun

Actually did look through the manual, it helped.

Basically I'm understanding this to give three options:
use cds

use rekordbox to manage tunes and cues (if you want), etc. then put that stuff on a USB and use that

or, use something like seranto or traktor

That's what I understand of the options at this point. My initial thought was that you loaded the actual songs unto the cdj, like it had a hard drive or something like that. I don't think that is how it works though. Can someone confirm or deny this?

I'm not familiar with the 2000, but I don't recall it having an internal hard drive. I think your music has to be on some type of external platform. External hard drive, jump drive, and then play it from that source.

I will take a random stab here. I use TT's and a DVS (so have no idea what i am talking about), but from what I have read on the new CDJ's, I would say that you need to load your music onto the jump drive. Then plug that (jump drive) into the CDJ.
Your computer will recognize the CDJ, but to manipulate the music on your laptop you would need a DVS (again, pure speculation).
So load your music onto jump drives and plug those into the CDJ, not your CDJ into the computer.

You: This will be my first car, whaddya got to sell me?

Dealer: How about a nice, practical, 4 door sedan?

You: That sounds just grea...hey now, what's this over here?

Dealer: It's a Jaguar XE, just released to the market and only recommended for the experienced driver.

You: *eyes light up*

quote:

Originally posted by PivotTechno You: This will be my first car, whaddya got to sell me? Dealer: How about a nice, practical, 4 door sedan? You: That sounds just grea...hey now, what's this over here? Dealer: It's a Jaguar XE, just released to the market and only recommended for the experienced driver. You: *eyes light up*

After we've got this little issue licked we'll be moving onto 'how to mix'.

Funny.

Just first set of cd players is all, been using technics for quite a while. Had some very basic questions about it is all...

OK, fair enough. Maybe we're being a bit mean.

Seriously though, the information will be in the manual. Don't just skip through it, read it and follow the instructions. If you fail at any point then contact Pio support on thier Pro DJ Forums, because there are still not many people on here that actually have these decks at the moment.

The CDJ2000s do NOT have a hard drive inside of them. This is what I've been doing to get music from my computer onto the CDJ and skip using a jump drive, external hard drive, or CDs.

- Buy an ethernet hub (100 MBPs)
- Plus one ethernet cable from position 1 in the back of the hub into the ethernet jack in your computer (assuming you're using wifi to connect to the internet and the ethernet jack on your computer is unoccupied)
- Plug one ethernet cable from Player 1 into position 2 of the hub
- Plug one ethernet cable from Player 2 into position 3 of the hub
- Turn on CDJs and computer
- Open rekordbox
- On bottom left-hand side of rekordbox you should see a "Link" button. Press this.
- You should now see two CDJ icons on the bottom of rekordbox. Drag a song from rekordbox onto each CDJ icon and that selected sony will auto-start playing on CDJ.

Hope that helps mate?

-Keith

OK, so I'm trying not to be mean, or rude or facetious.

.........you really spent over $3000 on CDJ's and don't know that there is no hard drive in there?

Christ dude, you need to do a bit of research first and failing that RTFM.

Keithos has given you the answer but really all of this is in the manual and very well written.

DJ RANN, no problem man. I don't take it as being mean. I did get them without knowing if they did or did not have a hard drive. I knew though there were other options to play the music and I just needed to learn a bit more about it.

keithos27, nice to hear from you mate. I don't know if you recall or not but we interacted on this forum years ago. It's been a while since I've been on here but I remember seeing your name. I think you may have actually been the one to sell me the Caught me Running by Jamiy and Kenny D vinyl.

I got the CDJ to play the tune like you outlined there, simple enough really. Where I was missing it was I was using a USB stick and was using the Link to connect both of them, instead of going into the hub.

Another newbie question here though...with your approach here keith would this mean you'd need to take a laptop to the gig? In other words, since there is no hard drive. I'm assuming that if you don't bring a laptop and either do what you describe, or serato, etc...you have to use either the USB or SD or CDs approach.

Is that correct?

Hey dude, cool. Sorry my memory is not serving me well here but hopefully you're enjoying that record?

With the approach mentioned above yes you would need the laptop to bring along with you as you are basically using it's hard drive as your music storage source. I think a good way around this is probably to start keeping all of your music on a large external hard drive (that you can access both with your laptop or with your CDJs). This way if you want to travel without your laptop you can just bring the external hard drive with you to the gig and plug that in directly to the CDJ. I've never done that yet (I just bought my CDJs on Wednesday) but there is a USB port in the back of the unit (next to the ethernet port) so you can just plug it in there. Make sure to properly disconnect the USB device when you are finished with it, though, by hitting the Stop USB button.

How are you liking the CDJs thus far?

quote:

Originally posted by d3020 DJ RANN, no problem man. I don't take it as being mean. I did get them without knowing if they did or did not have a hard drive. I knew though there were other options to play the music and I just needed to learn a bit more about it.

Wow. I mean good on you for being that bold, but as someone who has owned (and sold) a lot of kit in the past, as well as working in audio & broadcast retail for many years, I STRONGLY suggest doing more research before laying out several thousand dollars equipment such as CDJ's, especially when it's you first foray in to it. I say this in an effort to help you - you would not beleive the amount of people both on here and elsewhere that have spent way beyond their needs only to sell it again at a loss.

It seems from what Keithos is saying, the best way is to have a USB drive. It kind of defeats the point to have to use a laptop just to use CDJ's, and with the drive, you can use it on a any computer or CDJ's.

So am I right in thinking that you would just have to keep updating the rekordbox on whatever computer you were using it on whenever you plugged your music drive in?

Yea, re: the USB approach. That's what I have been doing. At this point I have my music on an internal drive, imported a folder into rekordbox, and then plugged the USB drive into the computer. In rekordbox I would make playlist - for no other reason at this point then organization.

Then once the playlist were made I would drag those unto the USB and then take that and plug that into the CDJ. That workflow seems to work ok, I think, except for...I don't know if I'm doing something wrong with updating the USB from rekordbox. But there are times when I say, add a song to the USB and then plug the USB back into the CDJ. It won't recognize the new song, not sure why. Seems to after a couple of tries but a little odd.

Another oddity is that on some songs the waveform does not show up. I thought it might have to do with having rekordbox analyze that track, but I've done that and still on some it doesn't show up.

So at this point the USB approach is what seems to be working ok for me. I feel like even if the gig is say 4 hours long you should be able to get that amount of tracks on an inexpensive USB drive pretty easily.

keithos27, curious...do you prefer the external hard drive approach over what I described here with the USB? Can you still use the "link" feature with that external drive like you would with the USB? I guess you probably would since that would still be available and you'd be using the USB out for the external drive, just curious. The USB could fit in your pocket, perhaps one plus.

I'm enjoying them so far. The loop feature is pretty cool. I'm not if I prefer to setup the looping in rekordbox or on the CDJ. I think both have there place, but the rekordbox quantize is helpful, because I usually don't get the loop exactly right when I go from say 4 to 2 measures.

If there is one feature I'm not clear on still it's the deleting and memory of the cues. Is that for the hot cues? The cue button in general is interesting to me because you have to press pause before you can set it. I wonder why you would use that if you have the hot cues, know what I mean...

Lots to talk about with them, but enjoying them for sure. Quite a change though from vinyl...I've been searching beatport now for tunes (probably a different subject, huh) but curious on your thoughts...

can the cdj2000 connect directly to a laptop and play tunes? if that possible, i guess you wouldn't need traktor

Yes, you can.

You can do this by what keithos27 described above, or you can do this using the USB approach (SD card is similar) that I described above.

You bring up an interesting point though. With the screen size being bigger, these usb and sd options, and the options on the screen of the CDJ. I'm not sure what the advantages are of using apps like serato or traktor are.

Maybe there are some things those apps offer that make them a viable option with the 2000s. I just don't know of them yet. Maybe someone with experience with them and the 2000s can say...

can u connect 900's to a laptop and play tunes straight from it. I tried it on m macbook pro and it didn't work

quote:

Originally posted by d3020 Yes, you can. You can do this by what keithos27 described above, or you can do this using the USB approach (SD card is similar) that I described above. You bring up an interesting point though. With the screen size being bigger, these usb and sd options, and the options on the screen of the CDJ. I'm not sure what the advantages are of using apps like serato or traktor are. Maybe there are some things those apps offer that make them a viable option with the 2000s. I just don't know of them yet. Maybe someone with experience with them and the 2000s can say...

the ability of the 2000's to communicate with traktor and serato etc is more of a functional thing than anything.
The person playing after a dj who uses cd's/usb can just hook the cdj2000 straight up to his laptop (traktor/serato) system and control the software without the need to use timecode or change multiple cables around. Their 'Rekordbox' is Traktor/serato. It's where they've organised a lot of their collection. Yes it's over kill having the laptop connected as in reality there's no need for the massive screen now that you have the 2000's. But unless pioneer and traktor collaborate even more to bring more info from the laptop screen onto the 2000's display. Dj's will still want to use their laptop screens to see their waveforms etc.

Just my 2c on that.

n3lly, thanks for that reply. I agree that it seems like over kill at this point.

Curious though, you mention collaboration between pioneer and traktor for things like waveforms, etc.

Do you know that the 2000s have a display of the waveform for each track? I would imagine that some people still just want their laptop, but with respect to the waveform. The 2000s display of it seems to be fine, unless traktor and seratos is better. I don't know if it is or how it is.

I understand that not everyone will have these 2000s, but it'll be interesting to see I think how this affects, if at all, DJs using (or not) their laptops still.

quote:

Originally posted by d3020 Do you know that the 2000s have a display of the waveform for each track?

No i know mate, but i meant the waveform for the track you're playing on your traktor system isn't displayed on the 2000. That's what i meant by collaboration. It would be cool if that info could be sent on to the 2000's. In which case you really wouldn't really need your laptop's screen.

and it's easier to see a waveform on a 15" laptop display than on the CDJs 6.1"

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