My Fantasy Software

I’ve been a DJ fot over 30 yrs, no longer doing the Club Gigs, but still enjoy doing weddings and partys. At present I use a WB mixer and amp combo with Denon Dual cd players and peavy pr 15 speakers.
I’ve been toying with the idea of going digital and have been trying out demos of various software aps. I’ve been keeping an eye on ultramixer and another program that is being developed as well. Both show great promise in my opinion.
What I would like to see in a DJ programare the following:
A) The ablity to print out the playlist from the program with the options of listing the playlist by a choice of either Song Title, or Artist, or Album.
B) Being able to play either MP3 or a CD, very necessary as some weddings do not decide on their main dance until th last second.
C)Some of the programs I have been checking out, including Ultramixer have problems with some sound cards. In the case of Ultramixer, it works perfectly with my desktop computer, but really has issues with my laptop, my laptop is the newer computer.
D) The ability to create and maintain libraries of various genres of music, such as Pop, Country, Rock, etc. Some programs have this feature, some don’t.
E) a built in EQ that actually works!!
F)Sound effects, such as laughter, sirens, applause, etc.
G) Slider style controls, the knob thingys are a pain to try to control with a mouse.
H) Final pricing of under $100.00…!!!

As far as Ultramixer is concerned, I like most of what I have seen so far. The main problem I have with it is the compatability issue with my laptops sound card, Oh yes, and the count down in the beta screen is annoying, would it be possible to just have the beta notice without the count down? Also when you have it ready for final release, what about a special price for those of us who have beenwatching it and may wish to use it commerciall?

Just thought I would specify that the sound compatability issue is with the built in soundcard of the laptop. I do not have the problem with my desk top computer.

Hi TheDjay,

Many thanks for your comprehensive post!

A) Yes, this would be nice. I have added it to our to-do-list!
B) You can do that with UM.
C) Could you specify your sound card issues?
D) In UM, you can assign a genre to a sounfile.
E) UltraMixer comes with a build-in EQ which works in realtime.
F) coming soon
G) Our knobs are especial :wink: because they work like sliders! Just drag with the mouse in y axis…AND…you are able to use the mousewheel for tuning!
H) After the beta stage we will provide several licences, for private base users (free), for pro-users and for commercial users. At the moment you can use UltraMixer in all use cases (commercial and private) for free!

Best regards & Happy Mixing,
Tobi

I get a clicking sound and static noises with playback. This only happens with the laptop. I realize if I wanted to play through my system amp and mixer, I would need to get an external sound card. It is a bit strange though that this does not happen with the desktop.

Hi TheDjay,

there are many issues with non conform soundcards. Espacially, some AC97’like cards don’t run in sepcifications. This is about non-supported buffer sizes and so on. I will do a significant change to the mixing engine over chrismas and I assume it can fix most of the incompatibility issues of these built-in cards. Stay tuned :slight_smile:

Happy Mixing!
Sl@jaR

Great post “TheDjay”. I wanted to add some of my comments here as well, as I’m a Digital Laptop DJ also, performing weddings, Birthday, reunions, etc.

1st- Let me talk about non Ultra issues you mentioned, then I’ll discuss some Ultra issues/ideas. As for song arrangement by genre, artist, title, etc, I’ve found that keeping all my songs (mp3’s) in one central location works best for me-(songs in original folders as I rip them-- beatles, Eagles, etc.). Next, I create mp3 shortcuts (in a separate directory) to songs (example- top 20 country). This way, I’m not duplicating songs and filling up harddrive (ultra’s latest release 2.0.3 plays shortcuts). You can change shortcuts as needed (monthly in my case of top 20 country), and not have to worry about deleting original song. BTW- I’m using two- 300GB harddrives for my music collection, Dell Insperion Laptop, Crown amps, 15" peaveys, and a radioshack mixing board. Ultra’s latest version now allows you to create standalone playlist. You can edit playlist using any word program (I prefer basic notepad.exe), and play this in ultra or Winamp. I’ve created an intense macro in Microsoft Excel, that list all items in any or all directories you choose. This is VERY handy when looking for file duplications as you can sort by artist, title, size, etc.

2nd- Soundcards. I’ve had the exact problem you mentioned with cracking, bussing, etc. when using laptop- but clear when using desktop. I’ve found 2 things out here. 1- I purchased an Indigo PCI soundcard (as not to tie up my USB ports with stand alone USB soundcards.) Indigo can be found here- www.echoaudio.com/Products/CardBus/IndigoDJ/index.php. Also, with ultra’s monitor feature, you need an additional soundcard anyways, so as you can play 1 song, and preview/cue up next song. By having PCI soundcard, I plug this output into my mixing board, and plug headset directly into laptops headset port jack. Ultra has preferences allowing you to set it up this way. On my Laptop, I also noticed the buzzing/cracking noises stop if I unplugged the AC cord and ran the laptop of off battery power only. This was a fix for me without purchasing PCI soundcard, but I needed 2nd soundcard anyways, so as to use the monitor/play features mentioned above.

3rd- Sounds (applause, sirens, etc). I found a great mixer board <$100.00 at radio shack that has all those features built in.

4th- Audio CD’s and WMA files. I agree with you- this is a MUST! Ultra says it plays these files, although at current time, using ultra 2.0.3, I’m unable to get my WMA’s to play (see my post in other forum).

5th- EQ Knobs- WOW-- its taken my since day 1 (November) , and I just figured out how to use those things about 10 minutes ago- due to reading Tobi’s post. However, the mousewheel is not an option for me, as it graduates WAY to slow, but, simply left click on knob> and move mouse north/south (not east/west as I have been doing), this work somewhat better.
Overall- Ultra is best program that suite my needs.

HI Kraze, hi TheDJay,

It’s a great pleasure to read your posts!

  1. It sounds very professionell what you do. And 300 GB are a lot of wood (german saying :slight_smile:)

  2. You can also use a multi channel soundcard like SB Live, RMI, …

  3. I think a software based effect board is much better than a hardware one.

  4. In common, playing WMAs works very well… But we will find th reason for you issues…

  5. There is another hidden feature: press the shift key while using the mousewheel - the knobs value will changes by one…

Thanks for your accolade Kraze.

Best regards,

Lota wood :laughing:

That has some sort of other meaning over here in the great white north.

Crap 300gig that’s a ton of tunes man.

I have to say I just figured out the knob thing on the weekend It was starting to tick me off than figured it out by fluke. I can’t seem to get the loop to work. I’m just clicking away trying to make it happen :laughing:

You folks should post a brief user guide to help explain some of these things for the ones with less wood :laughing:

Bri

Hi Bri,

[quote=“Bri”:2e442]
Lota wood :laughing:
That has some sort of other meaning over here in the great white north.
[/quote:2e442]

That has probably the same meaning over here :wink:

[quote:2e442]
You folks should post a brief user guide to help explain some of these things for the ones with less wood :laughing:
[/quote:2e442]

We’ll probably write some user guides by the time the release version is going to be released.

Happy Mixing!
Sl@jaR

Hi,

i would to test your software but i have a mac ! how many times before a osx version ? i’m really interested by your mix software !

ps: if it’s possible, use the core audio on OSX

thanks to maked the futur of djing :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote=“TheDjay”:221c7]
F)Sound effects, such as laughter, sirens, applause, etc.
[/quote:221c7]

I’d really like to see it too!
My sugestions are:
Make it adaptable to our own samples;
Implement a loop option. I sometimes like to play some samples looping, keeping the sound warm till the next music comes in;
Is it possible to make an edit window. The way I see it is we pick up a song and make a sample with the first 15 seconds and keep it looping until we really want to start the music.

Hope didn’t ask for too much…

I found a software package the other day but wanted to check the compatibility first.

You folks may be interested. This package contained 10,000 effects files in WAV format.

Seeing UM should work with WAV files I will pick it up next week to try it out.

Bri

[quote=“Dj Eos”:3f801]
Hi,

i would to test your software but i have a mac ! how many times before a osx version ? i’m really interested by your mix software !

ps: if it’s possible, use the core audio on OSX

thanks to maked the futur of djing :stuck_out_tongue:
[/quote:3f801]

Hi Eos,

probably spring 2006…

Best regards,

Just thought I’d let you know, I was reading up on laptops and I guess the static noise is quite common on most of them. The way around it is to add a sound card, either a firewire type or a pnp type. So…I guess it is a non issue, not the software, but the laptop itself. Don’t tell anyone I was wrong…ok??? :laughing: :laughing: