Does anybody on here DJ?

[The Douche]

Specifically off of a computer? And like, not necessarily mixes, but you know, just play music for events/the bar/whatever?

[bcbm]

i used to. why whats up?

[The Douche]

I'm thinking about getting into it, but I wanna do so as cheaply as possible and am trying to figure out the minimum set up I would need. Like, what kind of sound quality am I gonna get running straight from my laptop to the speakers/how much do I need a mixing board or whatever and how nice does it have to be?

[ed miliband]

actually working on the same thing atm, and have exactly the same questions. most of our music is illegal and sounds alright through normal speakers, but i don't wanna risk that shit on a proper sound system...

we're trying to get a vinyl collection going and have some friends with decks, so i reckon we'll just work with that. in the mean time tho...

[MarxSchmarx]

It all comes down to content. If your selection of songs is strong, even your built in speakers or a pair of 5 USD speakers will produce acceptable results. Investing in hardware just has such strong diminishing marginal returns.

Having said that, if you think that the setup I described is inadequate to express what your music feels, then here is my advice.

It also depends on your OS. This is one area I would try to stay away from Linux, because the sound system is still a real mess.

Get audacity and learn to use it include stripping live streaming and build up a library of sounds you like. It can still be a bit buggy but it gets the job done for mixing. It will be your workhorse.

Look into a digital audio workstation (rosegarden is free tho ive never used it), there are a few other freeware-ish programs out there to learn to use but I've had mixed results with a lot of them. As for hooking up speakers, there's no way to do it cheaply because it all depends on the quality of your peripherals. As a generality, you'd want a subwoofer and you want to minimize the analog tuning involved. There are also wireless speakers out there as well
http://reviews.cnet.com/speakers-speaker-systems/creative-inspire-s2-wireless/4505-6467_7-33969770.html
depending on your mobility needs, but again, these aren't exactly cheap.

[ed miliband]

we got ourselves a live set at some art launch thing in exactly a week, so any advice would be pretty handy now....

the above post is good, thanks.

[bcbm]

I'm thinking about getting into it, but I wanna do so as cheaply as possible and am trying to figure out the minimum set up I would need. Like, what kind of sound quality am I gonna get running straight from my laptop to the speakers/how much do I need a mixing board or whatever and how nice does it have to be?

well when i did it i did it with a friend so we usually had a mixer but running our laptops through that sounded fine generally. its good to practice with some sort of speaker set up so you know what sounds youll get. id reccomend virtual dj as a good piece of starting software, it has different modes with more stuff to fool with once you get the hang of it and has nifty stuff to help you equalize and beat match if you dont have a soundcard that lets you listen to two different audio from the computer. and its easy to torrent

and you can get an ok mixer for that sort of thing pretty dang cheap

[bcbm]

actually working on the same thing atm, and have exactly the same questions. most of our music is illegal and sounds alright through normal speakers, but i don't wanna risk that shit on a proper sound system...

we're trying to get a vinyl collection going and have some friends with decks, so i reckon we'll just work with that. in the mean time tho...

most music will probably sound fine. do a test if you can like i said above and check the um kbps. going vinyl is a good idea though and you can get usb turntables that will rip vinyl to your laptop

[StalinFanboy]

a comrade i live with has been fucking around with VirtualDJ. hes made some pretty tight mixes. and the program is free.

[ed miliband]

we did are first set earlier, ended up playing for 2.5 hours after we were initially told it would be an hour; used a macbook pro, virtualdj and our jacked mp3s with no issues at all, and got loads of compliments after. feels amazing.

set included shit by diana ross, scarface, lil b, aaliyah, captain beefheart, and so on.

[ed miliband]

also dropped this, which was incredible:

http://soundcloud.com/soundway-records/disco-dancer

[Sam_b]

I do, occasionally. I mostly spin 50s/60s female vocalists such as Dusty, Petula Clark, Vikki Carr etc but I've also done C86-stylee indie schmindie stuff.