Rekordbox and USB, SD Card, Mass Storage devices

   

When you are using rekordbox in conjuction with the CDJs you need some sort of media to transport your files, this is the device you use to export your track to from Rekordbox. Using rekordbox gives you 3 options in the way you use it.

USB Stick

This is the most common used media at this moment and probably one of the most reliable one. USB sticks are very widely available and can be purchased on a lot of places, even most supermarkets seem to have them... but not all of them are good.

Stay away from cheap marketing sticks, those are selected because of their price and not for their quality !

Most cheap sticks have crappy transfer rate that might be most noticable when exporting your collection to the stick. The CDJ has enough with USB 2.0 speed, but I would strongly recommand USB3.0 ones.

You might not need it now, but there will be a situation in the future where you need to export a playlist to your device quickly, then you're happy if you have a 3.0 speed stick.

Use USB sticks with the following specifications :

* Max size : 32 GB (larger might work, but not garuanteed)
* USB3.0 (USB2.0 will work, but is slow )
* Needs FAT32 formatting
* My Tip : Corsair Survivor USB3.0 32 GB

+ Solid casing, metal shaft
+ Water proof if closed
+ Reasonably prices
- Device is sticking out the player

SD Cards

A proper medium to transport your tracks, they are small to carry around and can be faster than USB sticks. Used if people are afraid that croweds might rip the USB stick out of the player while using, eventhough I only heard this story once from first hand. There are lots of rumours, but I hardly spoke to a DJ that has his own stick lost this way.

If you use Sd cards you might also want to invest in a decent transport casing to protect the cards during transport. Putting them in your wallet or pockets is not recommanded, SD cards are fragile devices so you need to take care of them.

Use SD cards with following specifications :

* Max size : 32 GB (larger might work, but not garuanteed)
* Needs FAT32 formatting
* Requires SDHC (SDXC is NOT supported, it might work but not garantued

+ Small, easy to carry around
- Small, easy to forget when leaving the DJ Booth
- Fragile, protect from mechanical forces

Good cards : Sandisk Extreme, Sandisk Extreme Pro and Lexar Pro

USB Drive

As a last resort you can use a USB drive as device to export your tracks to and bring that along to the club, but keep in mind that a regular drive has a spinning platter inside. The head of the drive is hoovering just above the disks (that are spinning at 5400 or 7200RPM), so make sure you've got a drive that is capable of handling resonance and shocks if you decide to use this type of media.

A SSD (Solid State Drive) has no moving parts inside and works simular to a USB stick. This type of drive is a bit more expensive than regular drives (with spinning platters inside) but has (hardly) no risc of failure in club environments.

I would NOT recommand the usage of a traditional drive:

ONLY USE SSD DRIVES when other media are to small for you.

+ Bring along a massive (unlimited) amount of tracks
+ One drive/media is all you need for several different type of bookings
- SSD is expensive
- If drive has external power supply, hooking it up in a club might be a bit harder

FAT32 Formatted

Either way, if you use SD or USB media to transport your playlists, they need to be formatted in FAT32 (soon a topic about this will show up). A mac computer can do this easily by using the Disk Management tool that comes with OSX.

PC users might find it not possible to choose FAT32 as option when using the build in format function from Windows. There is various software available that can do this so this needs to be installed (Computech Swissknife or HP format tool).

Either way, FAT32 has some limitation that you should take in account :

* Only 1 poartition should be created on the device
* Max 10.000 entries per device, that files and folders.
* Max file size 4GB per file.
* Max length of filename + path = 255 characters

Computer Rekordbox Link

Hook up your computer with a LAN cable to the ProDJ link that also connects the CDJs and DJM together. In Rekordbox you need to activate the link and then you just drag tracks from your collection to the designated deck. Tracks will then be streamed from the harddrive in your computer directly to the CDJ. The CDJ will buffer a few seconds but it does not store the complete track.

+ Easy to browse and search tracks
+ Bring along a huge collection (your entire one)
- Risk that something might happen to your computer (losing or breaking it)
- Computer is a large and hefty device to bring along