I know they are a standalone devices yet I use SC4 Live as desktop one due to stems from serato.
Could EngineDJ be a thing?
No. The whole point of Engine is to be laptopless.
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Yes engine is truly just a selling point for people who want to stream and DJ from their home without a laptop. They are not providing easy solutions for working djs.
I think you have to see EngineDJ Desktop as supportive to the workflow. At this moment preparation and execution of mixing is segregated. We might see more integration between the two phases in future, seems like an obvious thing to do, but nothing announced to date.
If you’re thinking that Denon DJ’s that don’t use computer are not “real DJs” or non working home DJs then you’re in the wrong ecosystem.
IMHO you’re basing what a DJ can do or “work” if they use a computer which is a uninformed and juvenile. And respectfully I’m pretty sure I can out “work” you and your laptop with just my single SC5000 and a mixer.
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I own 6000s myself and yes I can do a lot of work around very time consuming planning. Just saying that the ease of work flow is not what these players and engine DJ was considering when they developed their system. It was made considering the home DJ.
Wrong, engine dj desktop is not made for a home dj. This is exactly for a working dj, to ditch the laptop and carry less. Since 2017 I don’t have to carry my laptop with me (previously I was using traktor mostly). Since denon released first SC5000’s - I don’t use a computer, because engine dj provides all I need and even more.
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Same here, and many other DJ colleagues around me. Also no need to carry a computer for lighting control since the soundswitch is built in.
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You don’t need a laptop to go out and play but trying to plan, set cue points, organize and line up your mixes on engine desktop is a nightmare.
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Never say never.
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Like Serato or Rekordbox no, but currently many people don’t know that it is possible to download music directly from the program using an Ethernet LAN cable.
Works over WiFi as well.
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This is how I work at home. I use an SD card loaded onto one of my decks with the current state of my “traveling” media as it’s faster but if I want to search my larger library for tunes it’s available on my laptop when the engine program is open. I have all my devices wired to my network but I imagine it works over wifi too. I just have to switch sources. Note that there’s a bit of a lag time with the Engine program from the laptop as it has to load the track to either of my SC5000’s over the network.
Engine DJ is a preparation software including stems creation for your device and not a live DJ software like Serato. People not trusting a live software that can crash prefer laptop less devices. Stems creation needs much calculation power that an Engine DJ device does not have. To stream live playback you will need a streaming mixer for streaming and podcasting like Mackie DLZ Creator XS. Benefit is you do not use a computer. If you don’t want to buy additional devices Serato Pro is a good alternative for live streaming. Hope that helps.
I’ve always found the argument that standalone units are preferable to laptops because laptops can crash to be quite fallacious.
In reality, you’re just as likely to crash your mixing software on a laptop as you are to crash a standalone unit.
At the bar where I DJ, the owner installed an SC Live 4 on my recommendation (which is theoretically more than enough for a bar). Well, the last time I played on it, the SC Live completely crashed right after loading a track, and none of the unit’s functions responded; only the audio continued to play. The SC Live is on the latest version, 4.3.4.
The only solution was to turn the SC Live off and on again, and I can tell you that the 30 to 40 seconds it takes for the unit to restart is quite long in the middle of a gig. Obviously, this only happened once.
I’ve been using a laptop with VDJ for years and I’ve never had a single crash because I’ve always made sure to use specs that exceed the recommended requirements. And if VDJ ever did crash, it would take me less than 10 seconds to shut it down and restart it.
Besides, modern standalone devices are essentially controllers with a computer integrated in a way, with a CPU, GPU, RAM, memory controllers, etc.
The only difference is that the embedded chipset is much less powerful.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with working DJs using Engine for all types of DJing - except people’s own prejudices and what they perceive to be a lack of safety blanket and their own willingness, or in some cases, reluctance to change