SoundSwitch, Engine Prime and a Prime 4. Help!...

[DJS]

Has anybody got absolutely any idea about using SoundSwitch?
Literally after getting sucked in by the marketing hype, and my absolute need to get my lighting controlled via dmx, i made the leap and bought the Soundswitch mini USB interface, in the hope that carrying out said task via my Denon Prime 4 would be reasonably straight forward.
How wrong i was.
The impression they (InMusic Brands) give, is that you can plug the lighting to the Prime 4 via this interface and have some form of overall lighting control.
Apparently you cant.
Everything needs setting up via the SoundSwitch software and Engine Prime, which in itself seems made all the more difficult when every help tutorial is done on a Mac and im using Windows.

As a returning mobile DJ, over the last few years i have continued my House music dj'ing pursuits and collected a great deal of music, none of which will really be suited to mobile disco use.
What im getting at, is that from what i can see, all hundreds of gigabytes of my old Mobile Disco music (50's,60's,70's,80's,90's etc.) will have to be INDIVIDUALLY run through SoundSwitch after being analyzed by the Engine Prime software to have its own 'scripted' lighting track created just to have a light show lasting the duration of the event.
Surely not as this seems ludicrous and hugely time consuming, especially as the Prime 4 will happily run Nanoleaf light Panels or Phillips hue from its own interface?!
Can you not just upload the DMX fixture data to the Prime 4, and let it run a few Autoloops?

Am i getting the wrong idea with this setup, or is it really this long winded and i would be far better off ditching it and getting a standalone controller like the Chauvet Obey 70 or similar?

Thanks in advance

S.

[Imagine]

Morning Scott

I'm a P4 and Soundswitch user (as is Benny), but I'm also on a well earned holiday this week, dipping my toes in an icy Montgomery canal and well into my 5th pint of Old Sock Rotter (see Peter/Excalibur for details...it's good stuff when it stays inside until there's a row of roadside railings in Brum )

SS can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be. I personally have half a dozen "static scenes" set up for first dances, and then tend to run the rest of the show on the autoloops because it works and to date, nobody has complained. You can if you really want to, program "scenes" for each and every track on your hard drive if you're that way inclined. Being a wedding DJ personally, the lighting is secondary to the music played and so long as it's flashing sort of right to the beat of the music....nobody in the world cares.

I'm 250n miles away from my disco machinery at the moment, so I'll do this from memory.

First and foremost, the Mac and PC versions of the SS software are pretty much identical. Trust me, the devs in New Zealand aren't going to make two completely different looking versions....it's a lot of effort (take it from me as an ex software developer).

So, to get you started (and bear in mind I'm not near my disco Macbook at the moment). Look for a button on the SoundSwitch desktop software which says "DMX" (it's about 2/3 of the way along the top of the screen). It's this screen where you tell it what fixtures you're running and what DMX address they're on. I might be jumping the gun here and assuming you know what DMX addresses are and if so...shout and I'll take things back a step or three.

Once you've plumbed these in, the autoloops at the very least will do stuff to the beat of the music. You can go more complicated such as setting the fixtures as primary, secondary and tertiary...they all do different things. MOST of mine are set to Primary Wash. You'll only learn through testing though.

Once that's all done, you need to sync it to the P4. This unfortunately is done via the woefully inadequate EngineDJ software (it syncs the SS files as well as the music files and can take several hours from experience, especially with a large library.

Hopefully that's been useful. I may have gone too far too quickly and if that's the case, please shout. My replies will be slow this week due to being on holibobs and being mostly inibriated but I'll do my best to help

[Benny Smyth]

Soundswitch have their own YouTube channel with tutorials that will help a lot, and Engine DJ's own channel does fill in a gap or two. It's kinda like Ikea furniture in that when you start off, the instructions make absolutely no sense but once you get your rhythm, everything starts to fall into place.

You are correct that it will take a lot of time, but it you are autoscripting every track in your library, then you don't really have to do anything. Tell SS to do it's thing, go to bed and wake up the next day with the task complete. Sync to P4 via Engine DJ, and Bob's your mother's brother.

[DJS]

Thanks both for the replies and help!
I haven't had much chance to progress further with this since posting due to having a distinct lack of free time, but i'm prepared to give it another shot. especially since i've noticed SS taking money from my account every month...

[Excalibur]

Thanks both for the replies and help!
I haven't had much chance to progress further with this since posting due to having a distinct lack of free time, but i'm prepared to give it another shot. especially since i've noticed SS taking money from my account every month...

It was when I was apprised of this vital piece of information that I decided I could keep pushing faders to control my lights.