Complete Guide To Switching From DJ Controllers to CDJs

Switching From DJ Controllers To CDJs

What are CDJs?

CDJs are industry-standard music players for DJs. Originally they had CD slots (hence “CDJ”), then they gained USB sockets so DJs could play music from USB drives rather than CDs, and then they got network connections so they could not only be connected to each other and to a DJ mixer, but also to computers – even phones and the internet!

Nowadays, the best way to think of CDJs is as very adaptable, universal DJ separates, that when properly set up with a mixer, can be used to play music from USB, without a laptop involved. But they can also be used in many other ways – indeed, including with a laptop and DJ software! So it turns out there are loads of ways CDJs can be used. In this guide we’ll concentrate on the preferred and most popular method, but we’ll cover all the others too.

Read this next: Pioneer DJ CDJ-3000 Media Player Review

So, here are some of the other ways you can use a club’s CDJs:

• Using your laptop as effectively a big “hard drive” – Using a function called “Link”, you can plug in your laptop running Rekordbox, and use the CDJs exactly as if you had plugged in a USB drive, accessing your laptop’s Rekordbox music library in exactly the same way. The two advantages to this are that it is a bigger screen/better keyboard for searching and displaying your music library than the screens on the CDJs, and that it means you don’t have to export to USB every time you want to update your playlist
• Using the CDJs to control your laptop DJ software – Nowadays, a CDJ plus mixer set-up can be used like a massive controller, simply controlling your laptop software. With Rekordbox it is really easy (after all, Rekordbox is Pioneer DJ’s own software), but it also works with Serato, Traktor, Virtual DJ and djay Pro AI. If you really don’t want to “ditch the laptop” or change your workflow too much, but you feel silly insisting on being allowed to bring your DJ controller to club gigs, this could be the way for you
• Accessing your music “in the cloud” – DJing is slowly but surely catching up with the rest of the world with music moving to the cloud, and CDJs now work with cloud music, too. Using a feature called CloudDirectPlay and with a subscription to Pioneer DJ’s Rekordbox Pro software, you can have a music collection in Dropbox, which you can work on from any laptop or mobile device, and which is accessible to you from any networked, online CDJ set-up
• Doing it the “old school” way – While you can no longer take a wallet of CDs with you to play on modern club CDJs, you can still take a USB drive with a load of MP3s or WAVs on it, in folders, that haven’t been pre-analysed at all. You’ll miss out on most of the modern features of CDJs, but for just playing tracks as you may always have done, you don’t need to go further than this. And keep this quiet, but there are veteran big-name DJs who have always done this, and are still doing it this way after all these years

However, if you don’t, you have two choices:

• Add your music to Rekordbox and let it re-analyse everything from scratch – If you have few playlists, a relatively small music collection, don’t really use pre-prepared hot cues and loops, and really just want your music in a good state to use on CDJs, this is the simplest way. Import your music into Rekordbox, then go from there. You’ll have to add any cues and loops you do want and build any playlists from scratch, though
• Convert your existing Serato, Traktor, Virtual DJ etc library to Rekordbox using third-party software – Rekordbox unfortunately doesn’t have conversion built in for this purpose. However, there are third-party solutions. For Mac users, the reasonably priced DJCU (DJ Conversion Utility) will do the trick. For both Mac and Windows users, Lexicon DJ is a powerful platform that does much more than this one task, but can also do this for you. It’s a subscription, but if you don’t want any of that software’s other features, you could always subscribe, make the conversion, then unsubscribe if this is a “one off” switch for you

Once you’ve got your library in Rekordbox, the final task is to export to a USB drive. Any modern big-brand USB drive will do – we like the SanDisk Extreme Pro drives. Format your drive to FAT32, and using the export manager feature (bottom left of the Export page in Rekordbox), choose the playlist or playlists you want to export for your gig, and set it exporting. Once you’re done, eject the drive, pop it in your DJ bag with your headphones (it’s a good idea to take a backup, too), and you’re ready to head for the club.

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To help ease your transition, here are some things to know:

• CDJ DJing means you’ll be using two screens, not one – If you’re used to laptop DJing, this may throw you. However, you can still “see” the waveform from the other player/s on each screen for easy beatmixing (and don’t worry if you are a “sync” DJ – CDJs have had sync buttons for years now), and it’ll take you very little time to get used to accessing your library on the player you want to load a track to next. However, just getting used to two relatively small touchscreens that are by your hands rather than closer to eye level (as a laptop on a stand would be) will take a little while
• Hot cues behave differently on CDJs – On all DJ software, the default or at least an option is what’s called “gated cues” – when you press a hot cue button, the track will play from that cue point only for as long as your hand is on it, assuming the track wasn’t playing in the first place. With CDJs, the track will always play permanently from that point, no matter. For DJs used to using cue points a lot, this may be the biggest thing you’ll need to adapt to, keeping a finger hovering over the play/pause button for an extra tap to stop a track you’ve just triggered via hot cue if that is what you intended
• Additionally, CDJs have an extra, separate cue system that may confuse you – CDJs have something called “Memory cues”, separate from the hot cues we just discussed and that you will be used to from DJ software. You can safely ignore them until you’re ready to explore what they can do for you – they are by no means essential. As you now know, CDJs also have hot cues, so just stick with them (bear in mind that hot cues are laid out above the decks on CDJs, too)
• Like controllers, CDJs have two jogwheel modes, but the “non vinyl” (or “CDJ”) mode behaves a little differently – “Vinyl” mode means the jogwheels can control music as if you were playing vinyl, which is how we tend to use DJ controllers/software. “CDJ” mode turns the whole jogwheel into a “nudge” control, which some DJs prefer. Just know that if you pause a track in CDJ mode, you’ll hear a tiny part (“frame”) repeated over and over again, which is not how DJ software works (DJ software would just be silent). It’s a feature, not a bug, but it will catch you out first time you do it!
• Searching for tracks is harder on CDJs… – Even the faster, improved modern search features with an onscreen Qwerty keyboard on each player are not as easy to use as a laptop and keyboard. It’s doable, but you’ll definitely want to be more organised and have planned playlists in a way you may not be used to doing with DJ software. Plus, of course, chances are you won’t even have all your music with you, as you’ll only have exported what you thought you’d need for the gig to your USB. With CDJs, preparation becomes more important

• …but the Track Filter functions rock – CDJs have a button that will automatically filter your library against a whole host of parameters, based on the currently playing track. This is unsurpassed in any DJ software, and when you understand its power, is fantastic. A single button press can suggest tons of tracks in a similar genre, close by in BPM, in matching musical keys, even with similar instruments in them, if you’ve prepped your library that way. How to use this is all covered in our free training and the CDJ-3000 manual, but do take time to understand this feature, as it’s a killer!
• The key sync is actually useful – Most DJ software key sync sucks, often moving the new track that it “syncs” to so high or low a pitch that it sounds ridiculous. Not so on the CDJ-3000 – its key sync uses the fuzzy keymixing method that we’ve pushed at Digital DJ Tips since we discovered and taught it way back in 2014, and the results sound great. Thought keymixing was hard? CDJ-3000s have a one-button solution, and it works great
• When combined with a mixer such as the Pioneer DJ DJM-900NXS2, CDJ-3000s let you preview tracks in your headphones without loading them to a deck – It is a really nicely implemented feature which few DJs know about or use, but it makes playing more ad hoc sets much faster and more fun
• CDJs are strictly one deck, one channel – DJ software usually lets you control four decks, and most DJ controllers allow you to take advantage of this, using a concept called “layering”, whereby you can switch “layers” to control two channels with one physical controller deck. With CDJs though, if you want to play using four channels, you need four decks. Watch our very own James Hype, or DJs like Carl Cox, to see this in action. Assuming the club you want to play in has multiple decks, this is actually simpler than worrying about switching layers, so should be seen as an advantage (after all, you didn’t have to buy the decks)

And that’s it – these are all the big things, and as long as you’re sensible, and keep your first CDJ sets nice and simple, walking before you try to run, you’ll soon wonder what you were worried about.

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