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Rockit is
capable of handling up to 6 sound cards
concurrently, giving you the ability to map
each main audio deck to a separate card, the
jukebox to another, the sampler to another,
etc. It has the ability to cue monitor via
the software using two cards, although the
better way, is to map each main deck to a
separate card, and monitor off your mixer.
Another benefit
of this flexibility, is that you can run a
separate system for cocktails, ceremony or
dinner music, and utilize the audio jukebox
to play music via that separate system,
thereby freeing the main decks for other
uses.
Sample Setup #1 -
Simple single output from a computer's
internal sound card:
In this setup,
we simply use the headphone output on the
computer, to connect to a single channel on
your mixer, or even directly into powered
speakers. No cue monitoring is available in
this way, but it will suit the needs of the
basic DJ.
Sample Setup #2 - One
external sound card, along with the
computer's internal sound card:
This setup gives
you the ability to route your main deck
outputs to the external sound card (which
almost always sounds better than the
internal sound card), and use the internal
sound card for cue monitoring.
Sample Setup #3 - Two
external sound cards, to two separate mixer
channels:
This setup will
use two identical external sound cards, with
each main audio deck mapped to a card, then
to a separate mixer channel. In this
configuration, you do the cue monitoring off
the mixer, and not the software. There is
much less latency in the cueing this way.
Sample Setup #4 - One
external multi channel sound card, to two
separate mixer channels:
Like above, only
using a single sound card that has multiple
outputs. As of this writing, there are only
two multi-channel cards that Rockit will
recognize (Rockit does not utilize ASIO
drivers, but these two have Enhanced WDM
drivers, that allow Rockit to see the
multiple outs).
Sample Setup #5 -
Using a dual channel USB enabled mixer:
Some mixers come
with sound cards built into them, allowing
you to run two USB cables to the mixer, and
utilizing two separate channels on that
mixer - one for each main audio deck.
Which
should I use?
Which setup you
use, will be determined by the capabilities
you require... Most users generally start
out with the basic setup (#1), until they
get used to using a computer for DJ work,
then progress to a more specialized setup
above, in order to take advantage of
Rockit's more advanced features, and
additional cue monitoring capabilities.
Recommended
Sound Cards
Generally, we do
not like to recommend hardware, although
from experience we've found a few sound
cards that work well with our software.
These are links to Amazon to the right, through our
affiliate status, which will enable you to
learn more about each of these cards, and
also purchase through them if you like. Most
can also be found at other online DJ/Music
shops.
Notes on a
couple brands that we have had issues with:
Creative Labs -
We've found over the years, that more than
one Creative sound card can NOT usually be
used on one computer. Their drivers tend to
use the same resources in the computer, and
thereby it can only see one of the cards.
Gigaport HD -
They recently released 64 bit drivers for
this particular card (Nov. 2009). We've had
some issues getting those drivers installed
properly, although after a few tries, they
do seem to work on some 64 bit systems, but
not properly on all our test systems. If
they do work on yours, you will see 4
separate outputs in Rockit.
Setting
Rockit's Outputs
You set Rockit's
output mappings in the Master Mixer screen
(V4.2 and above), prior versions use the
Config->Audio Decks screen. In this example,
we have Deck A mapped to the first channel
on the Audio 2 DJ sound card -- Deck B is
mapped to the second channel, although that
is not visible on this screenshot.
Notes:
Please insure you have your sound cards
plugged in before starting Rockit, as it
reads the list from Windows on startup.
Also, if you
remove a sound card while Rockit is running,
you will generally get a DirectSound error.
This error will generally require Rockit to
be restarted, so it can refresh its list of
devices available. |
