DJ & sound system
Prepare your rekordbox USB key before the big day
The console is reserved, the room is found, the playlist is in your head. There remains the only thing that no one can do for you: prepare the USB key. It's a thirty-minute job to do at home in peace, and that's exactly what separates a ten-minute installation from an hour of panicking in front of guests.
Know before you plan: DJ equipment cannot be shipped. He withdraws and goes in person to Lyon 3 (2 Impasse du Lutin, 69003 Lyon), by appointment. The excess of €200 is paid on site at the drop-off and returned to you on return.
Here is the procedure to follow, in order, for a standalone console of type XDJ-RX3.
A USB stick, not a hard drive or a phone
Take a USB key dedicated to the evening, and nothing else on it. Not the working key, not the one with the family photos. A console reads a tree structure: the fewer extraneous files there are, the faster the loading and the more readable the search on the screen remains.
A standalone console also does not play music from a phone connected via USB, nor an offline streaming service. What you'll be playing that night are files you own, copied to the stick.
Formatting: the most common blocking point
A new key from the factory, or a key formatted under Windows in NTFS, will not necessarily be read. The XDJ-RX3 technical sheet lists the accepted file systems: FAT16, FAT32, exFAT and HFS+. NTFS is not there.
In practice, choose FAT32 or exFAT: these are the two systems that Windows, like macOS, offer formatting, and both appear in the list accepted by the console. If you are hesitant, take FAT32: its size limit per file is well above the weight of a piece of music, it will not concern you.
On the file side, the same technical sheet gives the formats read: MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF and FLAC. A song purchased in ALAC or in an exotic format must be converted beforehand, not on site.
Analyze all songs in rekordbox at home
This is the step we skip and regret. rekordbox analyzes each song to extract the tempo, beat grid and waveform. Without this analysis, the console displays a flat line, the BPM is false or absent, and synchronization is useless.
Start the analysis on your entire selection and let it run: on several hundred titles, it takes time, and this time must be consumed at home. Once the library is analyzed, switch to Export mode in rekordbox, select the key in the tree, and transfer playlists and songs to it. The analysis information leaves with the files.
Benchmarks and playlists that stand up
Place your benchmarks cold, not in the evening. On each song that you actually plan to play, place at least one marker at the first beat of the useful entry, and another at the beginning of the chorus or drop. When the evening comes, you will know how to enter where you need to without listening for ten seconds on headphones.
Then structure your playlists by moment rather than by genre: arrival of guests, meal, opening ball, going up, end of the evening. A “Dinner atmosphere” folder will save you more than a “House 2019” folder when a guest comes to talk to you while the song ends.
A word about libraries. rekordbox now offers two stick library formats, the older Device Library and the newer OneLibrary. The XDJ-RX3 is in the official list of hardware compatible with both, so no worries there. If you then play on older hardware, stick to the classic format.
The emergency key, on the second port
The XDJ-RX3 has two USB-A ports for dongles. Use them both. Copy the same selection onto a second key and leave it plugged in all evening: if the first is corrupted, misrecognized or torn by a cable, you switch to the other in three seconds instead of explaining to a hundred people that the music stops.
This second key is also used to pass the hand. If a friend wants to play for an hour, they plug theirs into the free port while yours continues playing.
The night before: five minutes of checking
Plug the drive back into your computer and check three things. That the number of songs matches what you exported. That your playlists appear clearly, with their names. That the most important files of the evening – the entrance of the bride and groom, the first dance – actually open.
Eject the key properly rather than removing it on the fly: a wild ejection while writing is the number one cause of an unreadable library in place.
Our Pioneer DJ XDJ-RX3 leaves with its firmware up to date and its two USB ports tested, and if you plan to alternate with vinyl, its PHONO inputs directly accommodate a pair of turntables Technics SL-1210 MK2 . The rest, the music, depends only on you — and the half hour you devote to it before leaving.
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