still seeking advice

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Hi All,
I really want to start off on the right foot. I'm willing to invest in the proper equiptment so that I put out the best sound possible. I went to a pc show yesterday, and, here are the specs on what I'm having built for the hoster program.
P43.0
1 G Ram
2 120 hard drives
2 52x cdrw
sbpl7.1
15" flat screen monitor

Is there a better sound card that I should get?
Am I better off with a power amp, or, power speakers?

My brother in law is a dj/kj, and he is using the old, barberic method of cd's. He's really putting a lot of effort into getting me up and running, but, he doesn't think that I will have enough outputs from the pc in order to link to the mic mixer. I'm also planning to use PCDJ for the music side of things. Any help that any of you could give me would really be appreciated.

[CochrellGary]

Party On,

Here is some food for thought. One of the most time consuming jobs when setting up at a gig is stringing cables and wires, at least for me it is. The PC you are having built sounds like a desk top model. Why not use a laptop computer? With a desktop computer you are going to have the CPU, keyboard, monitor, and mouse, all requiring a hook up. Do you really want to cart around these seperate components?

Powered speakers are heavy and require an additional power cord. Will power be conveniently available or will you have to string an extension cable? The speakers will probably sit on a speaker stand. How high can you lift a powered speaker by yourself?

The audio output from a computer, be it laptop or desktop, will be sufficient to drive a mixer.

The software you use for DJ music is really up to you, there is no one program that is better than any other. For everyone that responds to your post you will get a different answer. I like OtsDJ.

Just my 2 cents
Gary

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Hi Gary,

I very much appreciate your opinions, and, they are valid. When you have a few minutes, would you be kind enough to tell me step by step how you run your show? do you use a lap top? does it have enough hard drive room? can you have back up on it? I know this is a lot of information that I'm asking for, but, I really need the best advice possible......Thank for your help......

[kedmison]

I agree on the laptop. Powered speakers are heavy yes, however they do make crank stands. If you don't get the speakers up above the people in front you blast those siiting close and won't get the sound to those in the back. And if your amp goes out with passive speakers, your dead in the water. A powered speaker could go out and you still play on.

Kelly

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Thanks, Kelly. What kind of powered speakers do you reccommend? Are you male, or, female? the only reason I ask (I hope i don't sound sexist) is because I am curious if a woman is cranking up power speakers without a problem.

[DJYale]

A few options on the computer front would be to have the system built in to a rackmount case instead of a standard case.

As for laptop storage, you can always purchase an external drive enclosure and put whatever size you want in it for storage.

Using as an example, Pioneer 001 totals 18 songs for 68mb sampled at 128bps.

Using the above you can figure:

• 100 discs = roughly 6.8Gb drive space
• 500 discs = roughly 34Gb (9000 songs)
• 1000 discs = roughly 68Gb (18000 songs)

So, roughly 30000 songs to a 120Gb drive.

Again, these are just rough estimates, especially since not all discs have the same number of songs and such.



What I'm getting to is this. You can purchase an external enclosure for around $40 (taken at the time of writting from a well known online source), Put in say a 120gb drive for starters for around $90, then later on if you need to increase storage, just pop out the 120Gb and pop in say a 200.





And they also make enclosures that allows up to 4 drives in one USB enclosure which can be rack mounted.

[Part On!]

Thanks, these responses are all a great help......

[kedmison]

No, I'm male. 49 years that way. But as I get older I'm always looking for a way to make the job easier. Less strain on the back! I use mackie srm450 speakers with a 1501 sub. Mackie CFX-12 mixer. Shure 87A beta wirless mics. Dell 17" flat monitor for singer. MTU"S Prostar Laptop with Hoster. 8,000 songs, no duplicates. Been using Hoster now for about 2 years. 3 gigs a week. Hoster hasn't failed yet. (knock on wood)

Kelly

[Jamie Strait]

My wife and I have been doing karaoke shows for about 10 years, I haven't run a show in about 5 years. I handle equipment, research and problem solving.

Computer wise you are starting off with more than you need today, but will give yourself an advantage for future upgrades(time when you need to). CPU, RAM, sound card all more than needed. Our computer P4 3.06, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB and 2 250 GB hard drives, 1 Plextor CD-R, Sound Blaster Live 5.1, 17" flat panel LED monitor.

7.1 dolby is the newest standard, I like Creative Labs sound cards the best. The quality is the best that you can get for the money.

For the past 5 years we have uses a Mackie 808s power mixer, which gives 600 watts per channel(2). Mackie C300 speakers (non-powered) 2 or 4 depending on the size of the place. We use a monitor for the singer in places that are larger to make it easier for the singer to hear. This is easily done by running the monitor on the second channel which also gives a seperate EQ to adjust for mic feedback.

I'm not sure what mic mixer you are planning to use but you only need one output from the computer to your mixer.

We are using RockIt 2000 Pro for the DJ part of the shows. It is more than adequate for DJing and only cost $40 US.

Good Luck