Mobile Broadband thought...

[DazzyD]

Well, I've done it. I've finally gone broadband!

I bought a nifty little USB modem from 3 on their pay as you go network. Had a few teething troubles setting it up (but that was down to me being thick and not the units fault!) but now its up and running and looking good.

Now for my theory. Imagine you're at a gig and someone asks for a track which you know you have but have not got with you. Is it plausible to use a second laptop (I use two at gigs anyway) to connect to my home setup with it's Network Attached Storage drives acting as a server and download the track from there?

Or maybe it's a song which is on a CD that I've forgotten. A quick text home to the missus, she rips the track to MP3 and I download over the broadband.

Or, even, someone asks for a new track saying it's hottest thing around at the moment and it's guaranteed to get people dancing (not sure how I'd have missed it, though!) and then connecting to 7Digital or iTunes to download it ready for play.

I know it's easier to say "Sorry, mate, haven't got that one" but I like to please everyone the best I can. It could mean the difference between getting future bookings or not.

So, anyone got any opinions on this?

[Vectis]

Why, when you can buy a terabyte for £100, would you have "stuff at home" that you didn't bring with you?? :confused:

I already have Napster on the road installed in a virtual PC on my lighting laptop (so no chance of corruption) with a 3G modem and have downloaded requests on demand if I felt I might get more than one use out of the song or major brownie points on the feedback form :D

[djgordyp]

Well, I've done it. I've finally gone broadband!



So whats the next move then? sell the cave and buy a caravan:p :p :p

[ppentertainments]

Why, when you can buy a terabyte for £100, would you have "stuff at home" that you didn't bring with you?? :confused:

I already have Napster on the road installed in a virtual PC on my lighting laptop (so no chance of corruption) with a 3G modem and have downloaded requests on demand if I felt I might get more than one use out of the song or major brownie points on the feedback form :D

Agree - when using digital it is easier to take everything with you. I have mobile broadband which I take to download off 7digital. Useful - yes, neccesary - no. I think if you take requests before the night then customers really don't mind if you are missing one or two. A second computer to do this is a must and be careful not to advertise this service as many places still do not get a signal.

[DazzyD]

So whats the next move then? sell the cave and buy a caravan:p :p :p

I had broadband for several years but I had to have the phone taken out last year when I got in to some financial difficulties when our daughter was born prematurely and I lost my job. Because my credit rating took a dive I couldn't get mobile broadband on contract and our streets aren't cabled so I couldn't take advantage of NTL. 3 have just slashed the price of their PAYG mobile broadband USB modem so I thought it was time to get "back up to speed" so to speak. I've been using a mobile phone dial-up modem for the last year which did what I wanted but was a lot slower.


Agree - when using digital it is easier to take everything with you. I have mobile broadband which I take to download off 7digital. Useful - yes, neccesary - no. I think if you take requests before the night then customers really don't mind if you are missing one or two. A second computer to do this is a must and be careful not to advertise this service as many places still do not get a signal.

I know it's more of a luxury than a necessity but I think it looks good if you have the tracks people request. Maybe I just need to sync my network music library with my mobile hard-drives. The problem is that my network drives have some songs on several times over and my mobile drives are streamlined for faster access times.

I do take requests when I take the booking/receive the contracts but there's always some requests on the night. I don't have a major problem with not having requested tracks (I carry just over 15,000 tracks plus CDs to every gig). It was just a thought to improving the service that I offer.

[BeerFunk]

It's a good idea and one whic has been mentioned a few times previously. It is important that you don't DJ from the laptop you are downloading with, which you already mentioned too. I would have to say it is a bit over the top, and there are surely better areas to improve in than that?

[DazzyD]

It's a good idea and one whic has been mentioned a few times previously. It is important that you don't DJ from the laptop you are downloading with, which you already mentioned too. I would have to say it is a bit over the top, and there are surely better areas to improve in than that?

I have a second laptop which is used by my assistant DJ to check booking availability, look for song requests on the mobile systems (we have a full list of tracks in a fully searchable Excel workbook so when someone says "have you got a song by <artist> but I can't remember the title?" he can look it up on the workbook without interfering with what I'm doing on the main laptop. It's also a handy fully-loaded and setup backup system in case anything happens with the main one (never been needed to date but better to be safe than sorry!).

I've been looking at other areas to improve - lighting being top of my list - but I thought this was an idea worth looking in to.

[Excalibur]

I have a second laptop which is used by my assistant DJ to check booking availability, look for song requests on the mobile systems (we have a full list of tracks in a fully searchable Excel workbook so when someone says "have you got a song by <artist> but I can't remember the title?" he can look it up on the workbook without interfering with what I'm doing on the main laptop. It's also a handy fully-loaded and setup backup system in case anything happens with the main one (never been needed to date but better to be safe than sorry!).

I've been looking at other areas to improve - lighting being top of my list - but I thought this was an idea worth looking in to.

Aha, the burning question!! This is why I got my laptop, is Excel good enough for that, rather than a dedicated database program, such as Access? :confused: That would be the last lap in my conversion,as opposed to laminated sheets. :D

[mr rusty]

Is it plausible to use a second laptop (I use two at gigs anyway) to connect to my home setup with it's Network Attached Storage drives acting as a server and download the track from there

yes

You can do this with VNC www.vnc.com. If you set up the server app on your home network, you can then log in externally and get at your network. If you don't have a fixed IP address, you will have to check what IP you have been issued with by your ISP before you go out, and hope it doesn't get changed.

Not sure its worth the hassle tho'. Just get a big external drive and carry all your music with you.

[DazzyD]

Although, as a spreadsheet, Excel is meant for number crunching, it can do this job admirably. What I've done is typed out my track list and included Title, Artist, CD Title and track number. Then, at the top of each column, I've added the AutoFilter function for each column. This has a drop-down menu which helps to sort/filter your collection based on your chosen criteria. You can also use wildcards to help with problems in finding incorrectly named tracks or spelling mistakes.

I've been using this system for the karaoke and recently adapted it for the disco tracks. And no problems so far.

[DazzyD]

yes

You can do this with VNC www.vnc.com. If you set up the server app on your home network, you can then log in externally and get at your network. If you don't have a fixed IP address, you will have to check what IP you have been issued with by your ISP before you go out, and hope it doesn't get changed.

Not sure its worth the hassle tho'. Just get a big external drive and carry all your music with you.

Thanks for that, Mr Rusty. I've bought a new 500GB drive to go out with my original 500GB drive so I'm now packing a TB of storage. My worry about bigger drives, though, is that, the more they fill up, the slower the access times will be. I know that Vista indexes the drives so faster searching but indexing itself takes loads of time so it's not something I'm wanting to do.

Have heard of VNC before - isn't it some some of remote access software to let you take control of a PC from a remote location over the internet? Been busy this afternoon so I'll look in to it on Monday (got a christening tomorrow).

[Vectis]

If you don't have a fixed IP address, you will have to check what IP you have been issued with by your ISP before you go out, and hope it doesn't get changed.


Or google "dynamic DNS" :cool:

[ppentertainments]

Although, as a spreadsheet, Excel is meant for number crunching, it can do this job admirably. What I've done is typed out my track list and included Title, Artist, CD Title and track number. Then, at the top of each column, I've added the AutoFilter function for each column. This has a drop-down menu which helps to sort/filter your collection based on your chosen criteria. You can also use wildcards to help with problems in finding incorrectly named tracks or spelling mistakes.

I've been using this system for the karaoke and recently adapted it for the disco tracks. And no problems so far.

Have a look at mediamonkey. Does all the above for you without the typing. I use mediamonkey on my dj computer and it uses hardly any memory.

[Excalibur]

Although, as a spreadsheet, Excel is meant for number crunching, it can do this job admirably. What I've done is typed out my track list and included Title, Artist, CD Title and track number. Then, at the top of each column, I've added the AutoFilter function for each column. This has a drop-down menu which helps to sort/filter your collection based on your chosen criteria. You can also use wildcards to help with problems in finding incorrectly named tracks or spelling mistakes.

I've been using this system for the karaoke and recently adapted it for the disco tracks. And no problems so far.

Sort of what I thought myself. Thanks

Have a look at mediamonkey. Does all the above for you without the typing. I use mediamonkey on my dj computer and it uses hardly any memory.

Indeed it may, I don't know whether I shall have the music on the lappy as well, is it possible just to use the mm index alone?

[DazzyD]

Have a look at mediamonkey. Does all the above for you without the typing. I use mediamonkey on my dj computer and it uses hardly any memory.

Which version do you use? I see there's a free version and a Gold version.

Just downloaded the free version and it has a lot of similarities with SAM Party DJ (one of the best programs around, IMO). I've had a bit play with it and quite like the crossfade (basic but effective). I might even give this a road test at my gig christening gig this afternoon. I've got two trainee DJs with me and it might be a bit simpler for them to use. Time will tell!!!

[Excalibur]

Which version do you use? I see there's a free version and a Gold version.

Just downloaded the free version and it has a lot of similarities with SAM Party DJ (one of the best programs around, IMO). I've had a bit play with it and quite like the crossfade (basic but effective). I might even give this a road test at my gig christening gig this afternoon. I've got two trainee DJs with me and it might be a bit simpler for them to use. Time will tell!!!

As far as Digital goes, so am I!!!!!:eek: :eek: :( :(

Simple gets my vote, it's just editing the mp3's that's a chore so far.

[PropellerHeadCase]

For the most part Excel is superior in ease of use for this purpose, about the only time that Access is the better choice is when you are planning on using multi-criteria queries for creating short-lists, for example only displaying a particular genre from a particular period.

[ppentertainments]

Which version do you use? I see there's a free version and a Gold version.

Just downloaded the free version and it has a lot of similarities with SAM Party DJ (one of the best programs around, IMO). I've had a bit play with it and quite like the crossfade (basic but effective). I might even give this a road test at my gig christening gig this afternoon. I've got two trainee DJs with me and it might be a bit simpler for them to use. Time will tell!!!

Just using the free version at the moment but intending to upgrade. I use it for ripping and have found it a bit slow but simple. Good for making playlists up ie for during buffet and allowing it to automatically play through the list. Am going for HD Controller soon so not getting to into it but think will take laptop as backup and use media monkey for a quick check on requests.

[DazzyD]

Just using the free version at the moment but intending to upgrade. I use it for ripping and have found it a bit slow but simple. Good for making playlists up ie for during buffet and allowing it to automatically play through the list. Am going for HD Controller soon so not getting to into it but think will take laptop as backup and use media monkey for a quick check on requests.

Like I said, I downloaded the free version from the website this morning, loaded up my song library (this took quite some time) and set off to road test it at a christening gig (this was either very brave or very stupid!)

Everything was going well. I was finding tracks very easily with the search facility. Easy to find groups of songs and whole albums. But disaster struck! A young girl came up and asked for a new song by Scooter. I knew I had it but it was in a desktop folder which I hadn't included when I loaded my library in. So, I clicked on the taskbar and chose "Show desktop". So far so good, I located the folder and dragged the track across. It worked! Great!! But I got a bit ****y too soon. I meant to close the folder window by clicking on the 'X' in the top-right corner. But I clicked the wrong one and it shut down Media Monkey without no word of warning! It took about 1min to reload so I was grateful to my spare laptop!

Anyway, I now understand that there's a function called Party DJ which prevents this from happening so I'll be testing it out more thoroughly at home before using it live again!

[ppentertainments]

Like I said, I downloaded the free version from the website this morning, loaded up my song library (this took quite some time) and set off to road test it at a christening gig (this was either very brave or very stupid!)

Everything was going well. I was finding tracks very easily with the search facility. Easy to find groups of songs and whole albums. But disaster struck! A young girl came up and asked for a new song by Scooter. I knew I had it but it was in a desktop folder which I hadn't included when I loaded my library in. So, I clicked on the taskbar and chose "Show desktop". So far so good, I located the folder and dragged the track across. It worked! Great!! But I got a bit ****y too soon. I meant to close the folder window by clicking on the 'X' in the top-right corner. But I clicked the wrong one and it shut down Media Monkey without no word of warning! It took about 1min to reload so I was grateful to my spare laptop!

Anyway, I now understand that there's a function called Party DJ which prevents this from happening so I'll be testing it out more thoroughly at home before using it live again!


Sorry but had to laugh:p
I had a gig this afternoon and after it had started decided I needed to tidy the power cables up a bit. Unplugged laptop as knew it would be ok for a while on battery and guess what - forgot to plug it back in. Halfway through song laptop turns itself off.:bang: :bang: Always have cd cued up ready which I went to and no-one commented.
Have not looked at media monkey too closely as said before am going hd controller but think may be worth looking at.

By the way it is easier to simply re-scan the track to the library. I have over 20,000 tracks and only takes a couple of minutes.

[DazzyD]

Sorry but had to laugh:p
I had a gig this afternoon and after it had started decided I needed to tidy the power cables up a bit. Unplugged laptop as knew it would be ok for a while on battery and guess what - forgot to plug it back in. Halfway through song laptop turns itself off.:bang: :bang: Always have cd cued up ready which I went to and no-one commented.

I was a bit short of staff over last christmas so decided to train my Dad (he's the money-man in the business) and my brother (who usually acts as my roadie) to do the DJing job. I put them in to a karaoke disco for a local security firms christmas party. Everything was laptop based so as it to make it easier for them. Or so I thought. An hour in to the gig, I got a text (I was working a pub karaoke) saying one of the laptops had gone off and they were panicking cos they didn't know why. And guess what had happened?!? They had plugged it in but hadn't clicked the switch on on the 4way extension! After the battery had run down that was it! Luckily it was the karaoke laptop and they had the disco one working fine so no-one noticed but it could have been a disaster!