[WillieB69]

Hey all.

I'm new to the DJing world and getting my first setup together.

After a lot of internet research, I've been seriously considering the Stanton SCS.4DJ for my rig's centerpiece. I like the fact that I don't have to pack a separate controller and laptop everywhere.It appears there were a few bugs during it's inception but those have been dealt with through firmware updates. Through all of the reviews and whatnots I've read, I haven't really seen very much about who is using this thing as their main rig or playing out live with it. I'd like to hear what people's experiences have been using it in a live situation. Has it been reliable? How does it compare with other gear you've used in the past?


I've seen a lot of reviews complaining about how slow the unit is to analyse songs but it seems to me like you'd want to do this ahead of time anyway. Why wait until you get ot a gig to analyse your music? Especially with the QuickGrid option to analyse everything before you ever load it into the SCS.4DJ. Doesn't make sense to me why this is such an issue.

Mainly, I'm just curious how everyone feels about it as a live performance tool.

[BaZe]

Hi Willie, to be honest I've never used it at a gig, I'm more a home dj (soundcloud)

Have my SCS for about 10 months now, never had so called big issues with it, just some small things at the begin..

Now with all the patches out there, i must say.. I LIKE THIS SH*T !!!

Never had any other gear in the past though, so can't help you with that one

Grtz.

[Ishfaq]

I used it live all last summer (with the V2 firmware) and it was great. Was playing a lot of festivals, was dead easy to just turn up, plug it in and start playing. No messing about figuring out different mixers you never used before, CDJ's you're not familiar with etc. Once you get comfy playing it at home you have the exact same thing playing out so you can really relax and enjoy yourself. So long as you sort your stuff out beforehand (do all your tagging and analysing etc) you're laughing. I highly recommend it.

[WillieB69]

Thanks for the replies so far. Ishfaq- Good to know it's been a success for you. The more I hear about it, the better I like it.

[Ishfaq]

I started out DJing with vinyl, then switched to a laptop with a controller cos vinyls bad for your back! But I had a few laptop crashes and stuff mid gig so that turned me off that idea. So then I tried with CD decks, but if you're playing somewhere where they already have some set up, you can't really get them to move them to add your own (especially at festivals where you really just have to jump on and off cos there's a load of different DJ's playing). So I'd often get stuck using different CD decks/mixers that I wasn't used to and it'd really throw me. So I was always dreaming of something like the SCS.4DJ - so like I said I'd recommend giving it a shot, I'm well happy with mine. Now I can just get drunk and play haha.

[StanleyPain]

I have never used it live for a crowd (well, maybe a crowd of, like, 10 people), but I can honestly say the console is best digital mixer I have ever used and I have used what feels like a ton of mixers, hardware, computer programs etc. It is the most stable thing I ever used and performs like a champ. Pre-analyzing your music is good, yes, but actually the on-the-fly song analyzing isn't that bad especially now that the system is updated to not only be faster but also prioritize the tracks you have cued or are playing. Occasionally the beat grid goes way off sync which is a glitch that seems to be hard to swat, but to be honest even if you have minimal experience beat mixing songs, the controls on this thing are so spot on that even a newcomer should be able to beatmix by ear without much trouble. really my only advice to someone getting this rig for live gigs or professional use would be the following:
1. Get a small USB keyboard and use it for navigating your songs, you'll find it much easier than just using the nav. wheel and, obviously, it makes text searching way easier.
2. You'll definitely want to use really well amplified speakers or a pre-amp, the unit itself is not very powerful in that regard. You've probably already got that covered.
3. The unit seems to load and function a bit faster if you're recording your performance to a separate USB drive than the one your library is on. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems that way to me.

[Voitano]

1 year of playing live, almost every weekend in the club...

[WillieB69]

StanleyPain, on 29 January 2013 - 02:30 PM, said:

1. Get a small USB keyboard and use it for navigating your songs, you'll find it much easier than just using the nav. wheel and, obviously, it makes text searching way easier.
2. You'll definitely want to use really well amplified speakers or a pre-amp, the unit itself is not very powerful in that regard. You've probably already got that covered.
3. The unit seems to load and function a bit faster if you're recording your performance to a separate USB drive than the one your library is on. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems that way to me.

Thanks for the tips! I've heard the USB keyboard mentioned before and thought it might be handy to have. I'm going to be running it through powered ELX speakers from Electro-Voice. (Two 112's and two 118s) The separate USB drive is a good idea as well. I don't like USBs trying to do multiple functions anyway.

[WillieB69]

Voitano, on 29 January 2013 - 03:28 PM, said:

1 year of playing live, almost every weekend in the club...

That is awesome to hear.
It's starting to sound like I've made the right choice for my first DJ rig!

[Darth]

Playing clubs with the SCS4 since October 2011, 6-12 nights a month.

[WillieB69]

Darth, on 29 January 2013 - 11:39 PM, said:

Playing clubs with the SCS4 since October 2011, 6-12 nights a month.

Man... I'm gonna be happy with 2 or 3 gigs a month, 4 tops!
If the SCS.4DJ is handling your schedule, it shouldn't have any problem with mine!

[Darth]

WillieB69, on 30 January 2013 - 12:46 AM, said:

Man... I'm gonna be happy with 2 or 3 gigs a month, 4 tops!
If the SCS.4DJ is handling your schedule, it shouldn't have any problem with mine!

Yeah I've used it so much I really need to send it for warranty repair, some of the knobs
have come loose and the xfader is not working atm. BUT now I have it connected both 'decks'
to an external mixer and 2x Kaoss Quad effects units. Which is rather nice.

[WillieB69]

Darth, on 30 January 2013 - 01:41 AM, said:

Yeah I've used it so much I really need to send it for warranty repair, some of the knobs
have come loose and the xfader is not working atm. BUT now I have it connected both 'decks'
to an external mixer and 2x Kaoss Quad effects units. Which is rather nice.

I"m still debating whether to add an external mixer or not since I'm using powered speakers. If I do use one it will only be there to serve as a connection for a backup in case something fails. If I were you, I'd see about having the warranty repairs done before the warranty expires!

[Ishfaq]

WillieB69, on 30 January 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

I"m still debating whether to add an external mixer or not since I'm using powered speakers. If I do use one it will only be there to serve as a connection for a backup in case something fails.

It's a good idea - only bad thing about the SCS.4DJ is that it takes a while to boot up and be ready to play. I had a power cut during a gig, but luckily I always have a backup of a playlist loaded in my iPhone and have it connected to the external mixer along with the unit, so I was able to throw a tune on real quick while I was waiting.

[Voitano]

Darth, on 29 January 2013 - 11:39 PM, said:

Playing clubs with the SCS4 since October 2011, 6-12 nights a month.

OMG , it´s almost a suicide

[WillieB69]

Ishfaq, on 30 January 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

It's a good idea - only bad thing about the SCS.4DJ is that it takes a while to boot up and be ready to play. I had a power cut during a gig, but luckily I always have a backup of a playlist loaded in my iPhone and have it connected to the external mixer along with the unit, so I was able to throw a tune on real quick while I was waiting.

So do you feed the right and left outputs on the SCS.4DJ to a separate channel on the mixer?

[Ishfaq]

WillieB69, on 30 January 2013 - 05:02 PM, said:

So do you feed the right and left outputs on the SCS.4DJ to a separate channel on the mixer?

Most places I play already have a mixer set up, so I put the SCS.4DJ into one channel, and the phone into another, so if anything goes wrong I can switch quickly to the phone while I sort it out.

[StanleyPain]

Yeah, the boot time is a little wonky. It seems to depend on the size of your library (I have about 6-7 gigs of songs in mine and it takes roughly about 5-6 minutes to be playable) but another thing to keep in mind is to make sure you're routinely cleaning out the USB drive that records your performances. Those massive WAV files really slow the unit down when you're booting it. It reads them as if they were songs in your library so not only does it try to quickgrid them, but it also has to read their profiles when you turn it on and just a few hours of recorded performances could mean another 3-4 minute of boot time. I use a USB flash drive for my library, but I'm curious if a solid state external drive would speed this up.

[WillieB69]

StanleyPain, on 30 January 2013 - 08:30 PM, said:

I use a USB flash drive for my library, but I'm curious if a solid state external drive would speed this up.

I haven't seen a USB drive yet that can match speed with an actual harddrive.

Having said that, I will likely be using one USB for music storage and another to record performances.

[Ishfaq]

Remember you can turn off analysing on the unit itself. I only analyse stuff on my Mac, so turned it off on the unit so I don't suffer any additional wait on startup.