Well, It’s been a bit, and for a good reason. The studio project was a bit of a loss. What seemed like immediately after I was ready to go live with the new schedule in the new studio, it was plagued with issues. Add a fair few personal problems for flavor, and a perfect storm of issues derails a cool project and any sort of streaming.
Studio Issues
Here’s an abbreviated list of studio/streaming issues I ended up having to work around over the past year and change:
| Issue | Remediation |
|---|---|
| Intermittent or Slow Internet Connectivity | Brought in a whole separate ISP. |
| Stream PC rebooting in the middle of stream due to a GPU/encoding issue | Graphics card replacement |
| Stream PC intermittently shuts down | Power supply replacement |
| Traktor failure | Sold my Traktor gear, got a new Mixon controller (more on this later) |
| Laptop failure | New laptop (was overdue) |
| Water leak in the studio | Carpet replacement among other construction. |
So that’s the list of studio problems and what I did to fix them, but that’s unfortunately not the end of the story.
Now, I’m losing access to the studio by the end of the year. I’ve mentioned previously that the studio was a spare room in my parents’ basement. They have decided to sell their home, and that means I lose the studio.
The “Plan” Moving Forward
I’ve spent the past few weeks evaluating whether or not I can continue with this after so many setbacks. I’ve looked for rental space (to no avail). I’m actively considering that the time has come to stop renting and buy a house of my own to have more space for my hobbies, DJing included.
For now, I’ve decided to give streaming from my apartment another try, while I work on a more permanent solution. I think I can make something work in my office among all the other stuff.
I’m usually a “glass half full” person, so I guess this means I can churn out more content given I don’t need to travel to the studio, and my main computer is far more capable than the current streaming PC at the studio.
I wish I had a few more updates, but this whole thing is just in the planning phases and was kind of sprung on me pretty recently. I have a few key pieces for the new setup on the way, and I’m gonna grab the last of the camera gear this weekend to start framing the new scene.
Once I figure out what the main camera shot frames out to be, I’ll bring in lighting and start doing set design. This is going to be a very compact setup, so I doubt I’ll need too much on that end, but I want to make sure the set is lit properly.
On that “Mixon” comment from earlier…
Here’s a fun side story. I’ve waxed poetic about my disdain for Native Instruments software for many years. I love their hardware, but the software continually disappoints. I have routinely had my Traktor library get corrupted or lost in some irreparable fashion countless times since 2011, to the point of creating an insane backup structure along with multiple “day before show” mental breakdowns over losing years of cue points, loops, etc…
Well, it did it to me for the last time about 10 months ago. I decided to sell the gear, and buy a new controller and use something else. I trialed Serato and Djay Pro AI. I ended up with Djay Pro.
Right around the time I made that switch, the Mixon 8 Pro came along, with support for the Neural Mix features in Djay Pro. I picked one up after checking out the hardware features, and it’s a great controller.
I’ll do a more in-depth discussion about it once I figure out what the new setup looks like.
In Conclusion
So, that’s the “plan” and a little extra piece of technical information. It’s not much, but that’s the story. I want to have this all up and running by the end of August, and I’m considering making a Twitch debut – for real this time. No VODs, replays only on Mixcloud and here on the site.
That’s all I have for now, until the next time.