At the weekend I DJ'd a wedding reception using Fusion and thought I'd write up a quick post on the experience.

I played background music for about 5 hours, then more danceable music for the evening, all using Fusion. Between the background music and the dancing they did the speeches, and this was only time I actually stopped the music all day/night. I took the opportunity to start a new playlist but the same session of the application stayed open all day. I was using a Numark DJIO soundcard, Behringer BCF2000, and Contour ShuttlePro 2 controller.

Running simultaneously on my laptop were MMF, Freestyler DMX (lighting control software), FireFox, EditPlus (a text editor), and Notepad, plus all the normal stuff that runs in the background. It's generally a very stable machine.

Overall everything went well but I do have a few observations:

* Memory usage. As has been discussed before, Fusion.exe kept using up more and more memory, which was freed when the app was minimised. I kept doing this all day in case it could have caused a problem or crash.

* At one point it looked as though MMF was going to crash. I minimised it, briefly used another app in the background, and then switched back to MMF. The window partly restored but only certain controls were visible with the majority of the screen just blank white. Audio output continued but it wouldn't respond for maybe 30 seconds (all other applications were working perfectly). Eventually it sprang back to life and carried on. I've seen the exact same thing happen during a previous gig.

* I heard one audio glitch all day, which sounded like a quick skip but I can't be sure what caused it. I wasn't doing anything on the laptop at the time and it wasn't during a transition, although I can't remember which song it was now.

* The BCF2000 stopped responding after a few hours. It was neither controlling MMF nor responding to the VBMT markers in the timeline. I didn't attempt to fix it because when I've previously tried to alter the MIDI settings on the fly I've seen the entire application hang, and I didn't want to risk that.

* I noticed what I think is a bug in the way track previewing works from the library. I'll post about it in the bugs topic.

* The ShuttlePro 2 works really well with Fusion. Highly recommended.

* The ability to mix ahead of time was incredibly useful, as ever, and allowed me to take a break every now and then. This is the killer feature of Fusion for me.

* The sound quality varied from acceptable to dreadful. During one song near the end of the night the resampling of the beatslicer was painfully noticeable during a long sustained vocal - it shouldn't have a tremelo effect but did! The track is a 128kbps CBR MP3, and sounds fine in other applications. It's all subjective, of course, but to my (admittedly picky) ears it sounded terrible.

Sorry if the above sounds negative. Overall Fusion behaved very well, but perhaps it just feels a bit "young" in terms of product development as a live tool.

Cheers,
Steve

Bradleys,
I surely find your decision to rely on 1 (software)application to play music for professional purposes rather courageous. In my career as a professional DJ (more then 10 years now) I learned 1 thing... Always look after backup solutions when performing a Gig.

For example, I mostly play CD's during my performances, and I used to Use a Denon 2600f, 6 years back, the best CD player you could buy back then. Even that machine could go beserk when you used all possibilities of the machine very intense. (ceu points + sampler) The only solution was to reset the CD player (off/on). And then it worked fine again. Now this only happened 1 max 2 times a year, but I always had a third CD player in my neighbourhood in case this happened.

Conclusion: I don't think its a bad idea to foresee, another device that can play music long enough in case you have to restart your computer in case of a system crash.

On the other hand, thanks for sharing your experience with us. I think your story contains valuable info for users and for the developers. I believe a professional dj looks after reliability first, then after features. Not the other way around...


Cheers... Eurnie.

Hi Eurnie,

Thanks for your comments. I didn't say I don't have a backup music source. In fact I have 3 suitable applications on my primary laptop, and always keep a second laptop booted and ready to go at a moment's notice. I sometimes also carry an MP3 player, although I must admit I've been a bit lazy about that recently - probably because I've never needed to use it.

I didn't mention the above in my original post because:

a) I was posting about Mixmeister only
b) I didn't need to use any of the backup solutions, which is good!

Cheers,
Steve

Just to follow up on this, I did another gig with Fusion last night and it performed flawlessly.

I won't make a habit of reporting back after every gig, but wanted to mention how well it worked in a live setting.

quote:

bradleys
Senior Beatmixer
Posted Aug 31, 2007 11:15 Hide Post
Just to follow up on this, I did another gig with Fusion last night and it performed flawlessly.

I won't make a habit of reporting back after every gig, but wanted to mention how well it worked in a live setting.

Great!

Ps: I was just sharing my thought on a contigency plan... But I can see you thought it out well

I am glad to hear about live usage of Fusion because I recently got Fusion and I am thinking of starting to use Fusion Live as my main source. Thank you for your input on using it live.