THE CRATE
The crate is an innovative tool for the digital DJ based upon one of the oldest tricks of the trade...
For decades the vinyl DJ has used his record crate as a scratchpad for organizing a set. Records to be
played - or to be considered for play - are pulled out, turned and propped above the rest. When no longer
needed, the record is dropped back out of sight. Between mixes the DJ can spend time flicking through the
collection to find more records to pull out, or to locate requests.
The crate feature of the DDS can be viewed much like a conventional record
crate. In other words, the crate contains the tracks that you would like to play
in your session. You do not necessarily need to have tracks loaded in your
crate - you can always directly load them to either deck - however, the crate
offers a good way to keep all the music that you would like to use in your
session organized and easily accessible.
You might have many thousands of tracks using several different devices as
your music sources. Having to browse each library every time you want to
select the next track can be time-consuming and confusing. Instead, you can
send the tracks to your crate and then easily access them while you perform.
The crate also helps to prevent situations where you might reach for a track
that you have already played. When a track is replaced on deck it is thrown
out unless you specifically choose to pull it back into the crate.
WORKING WITH THE CRATE
In "The Library" we considered several different methods to load tracks into the crate, whether by
searching, browsing, from playlists or direct from folders on disk. Now we will discover how to work with
that crate.
Press the Crate button to open the crate work area.
The crate comprises a list of tracks and a menu as follows:
to A
Send the track to deck A
to B
Send the track to deck B
swap A
Swaps highlighted track with track on deck A
swap B
Swaps highlighted track with track on deck B
pull A
Pull the track on deck A back into the crate
pull B
Pull the track on deck B back into the crate
Shuffle
Shuffles the tracks in the crate
Info
Get detailed info about the track
Remove
Remove the track from the crate
Clear
Remove all tracks from the crate
A track can be sent to, swapped or pulled from an inactive deck only. If a track is playing on the deck you
must pause it before sending, swapping or pulling.
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