Mitch

Bring back zero to hero 

Welcome from the east coast  

Sounds intriguing!
 

Sounds intriguing!
 

Not sure if there was a thread anywhere but if anyone is up for a challenge I have some ideas. These are more directed at music makers rather than DJ's but everyone is welcome to give it a go. 
The initial preset challenge
This one is about using your creativity using nothing but the initial preset. Inside the plugin you can have control over the envelopes and filters but that's it. You're not allowed to chance the waveform. You can manipulate the sound any way you like using as many plugins as you like. The idea of this is to be as creative as you can by forcing you to use all those extra plugins you got that you may have shoved aside or just not used. It's a good way to understand how they work too. 
One sample challenge
I saw this on YouTube and loved the idea. We all have 1 sample, can be a section of an acapella, a song or some other random audio sample, and we call create a piece of music around that one sample. The idea is to obviously use the sample in as many different ways as you can, challenging your creativity.
If anyone's interested we can organise a deadline and I can come up with some more detailed rules.   

Bounce Audio in Prahran are good.

Bounce Audio in Prahran are good.

It's just the computer with standard peripherals, monitor speakers, and display monitors.  Nothing else within metres of it.  At this point though, like I said it's for all intents and purposes inaudible, so I'm considering the issue fixed. 

Oh Hi there 

Comeback is in the works! Stay tuned for revival details.

The EP used to be up on the bandcamp site with a link to a free download which is when I got it... Just checked back and the link is still there but doesn't work anymore 🙁
I did find the individual track on bandcamp for purchase though https://fatimayamaha.bandcamp.com/track/whats-a-girl-to-do
If you can find this JV edit anywhere as well it's a pretty sick version 
 

I'd avoid the 1/4" -> RCA adapters and ensure you're using TRS cables -> whatever your monitors support (XLR or TRS). This will help. 
This is a decent starting point to run through in order. https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210293145-How-to-Resolve-Ground-Loop-Issues-Humming-and-Buzzing-Sounds-
 
What I'd do next:
-ensure you're using balanced cables and inputs on everything
-try the ground lift xlr adapters
-try DI box.
 
If you have a mate with the adapters and/or DI box to test first that's always a good way to go.
 

Ordered the adapters, will update once I've tested them out. 
 
Thanks for the responses. 

Comeback is in the works! Stay tuned for revival details.

Brilliant article!

This is a quick how-to submitting music to Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming and online music services. 
Uploading music to streaming platforms or online music stores without a record label is quite simple. All you need is some 3rd party involvement, I guess commonly known as distributers. Most of these distribution services offer something slightly different. I'm not going to go through all of them and what they do, that's something you can do the research on but I'll put down links of a few of the commonly used ones.
By submitting your music to these platforms, they take care or all the little business things the labels would have to do (paying royalties, licensing and monetisation, and above all else the distribution). The good thing about going independent is you take total control of your works and you retain 100% of your intellectual property rights, meaning you own everything which I feel is very important. Record labels take the IP rights from you making your music their asset. In exchange, they're supposed to invest in you as an artist but it can go either way. Whatever happens, whether you become famous or not, they still own your works for along as the contract states and if you were to part ways from the label you'll then need to seek permission to perform the music that you wrote. Artists big and small fall into this trap all the time. Kesha and Taylor Swift are prefect examples of artists struggling to claim royalties or performance licensing because of record labels refusing to cooperate. 
Below are 3 commonly used services; 
https://cdbaby.com
CD Baby is a popular service that gets your music just about everywhere and they're a pay-as-you-go service. They have a bunch of stuff they can do for you like mastering and production of physical copies, CD's etc. As far as the royalties go, you get 91% paid to you.
https://distrokid.com
I use distrokid for my submissions. They're subscription based with a limited number of artists you can distribute under, so if you wanted to set up a little label I guess you could do that through distrokid and have up to 5 different artists. It's a super easy process to submit music and the dashboard is nice and clean to navigate so you can keep track of your releases and make changes to them whenever you like. Distrokid pay 100% of the royalties to you. They're currently beta testing submissions to Beatport so if that's going to be your primary source of output I'd suggest looking elsewhere.
https://www.tunecore.com
I think TuneCore is a pay-as-you-go service too and I believe you also collect 100% of the royalties. I haven't done too much research about whether they submit to Beatport so you'll have to have a look. It's not a service I looked too much into, even just scraping the surface of their website didn't tell me too much. 
I know it's all super bland but everyone's needs are going to be different but hopefully the 3 above give you that little bit of a head start. There are many more that offer lots of different things.
If anyone has any further questions I'll be happy to try assist where I can

Comeback is in the works! Stay tuned for revival details.

I'll post a thread on a few different ways you can do it independantly

Killing it brother 🤘

SSD is definitely the way to go these days! Hope it continues to work for you without trouble going forward 👍

I took it to a computer specialist and I had an SSD installed and I still have my old hard drive. Traktor and my music are on the SSD and all my other files are on the old drive. The SSD is really fast and the computer people said that having Traktor on the SSD would probably stop there being any performance issues as the SSD is fast. Also, they cleaned up the laptop and changed the settings for maximum performance. So far I haven't had any problems but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks everyone for the advice.

This is the track you're talking about. Sounds around 145BPM
 
Most 90's techno/trance-ish songs should go OK. Will post a couple of examples later when on my laptop with music.
 
 
 

The EP used to be up on the bandcamp site with a link to a free download which is when I got it... Just checked back and the link is still there but doesn't work anymore 🙁
I did find the individual track on bandcamp for purchase though https://fatimayamaha.bandcamp.com/track/whats-a-girl-to-do
If you can find this JV edit anywhere as well it's a pretty sick version 
 

The EP used to be up on the bandcamp site with a link to a free download which is when I got it... Just checked back and the link is still there but doesn't work anymore 🙁
I did find the individual track on bandcamp for purchase though https://fatimayamaha.bandcamp.com/track/whats-a-girl-to-do
If you can find this JV edit anywhere as well it's a pretty sick version 
 

Righty... it was a bit of an effort but I FINALLY got my labels! 
The inspiration for my labels comes from the times where we use to pull off tape and write what our channels on the mixers are or even patch locations on some synths. It came out close enough but because they're so small some of the detail in the tape goes. I had a feeling that would be the case but if you don't try these things you won't really know how it's gonna go.
Anyways, here's the actual final product


and the F1

Pics aren't artistic but I just wanted to grab a few quickly and update.
Still on the hunt for a tonearm / second hand deck for parts and I've pulled the other turntable open and have that ready for cleaning. Hopefully I get a chance to get the second one all sorted out and working but that'll be all on these for a while.