hey,

Whats the common feeling about using computers and programs such as VDJ and serato in conjunction with cdjs??

Do people prefer to do this over just using straight cdjs??

Is it worth sacraficing the effects??

I've gone to software (SSL specifically) and don't plan on looking back anytime soon.

I'm old school enough to have hauled vinyl to gigs as well as CD's, and nothing beats my backpack and one CD binder that I take to gigs now as opposed to backpack and 200-pound CD case AND several CD binders.

I "prefer" the vinyl option over CDJ's, but that's because I'm old school. Although ask Pulse, he's been around for a broadcast from a club of mine where I had a minor DJ freakout when one of my cartridges came COMPLETELY OFF the headshell in the middle of a gig, prompting a lot of swearing (nicely enough, SSL has an "internal" mode, so while I was fixing my needle the music never stopped). That MIGHT have been avoided with CDJ's as controllers, but if the CDJ ever has laser problems (or your disc is dirty, or whatever) you're in the same boat.

Is it worth sacrificing? I think so, because you can do everything in SSL that you can on a CDJ (unless you mean the onboard effects of the CDJ200, for example, in which case it's not a big deal because the mixer (DJM600 or 800) does a much better job of that anyway, IMHO).

I still bring a binder of CD's with me, as mentioned, but I spent the time and created a kind of "essential DJ collection" for myself that pretty much has the best of every year on one or two CD's (with 2 copies of each CD). If my laptop or hard drive or whatever was to completely die and all I had was CD's, I'd still be able to play the same gig I could with SSL.

-r-