12 or so years of setup evolution...

[Big Panda]

How do you get along with the "Engine" software? Always been interested in the 2900s, didn't realise they could be bought for such a good price now! Thinking about selling my cdj 350s (everyone seems to hate these, but I genuinely think they are great little players, much better than my rmp3-alphas) but I'm tentative about leaving Rekordbox as I really like it.

[Irrational Fear]

I think Engine is fantastic. It was big thing for me too as I'd used Rekordbox with my previous CDJ900s and loved it (when it worked).

Engine functions in exactly the same way- the layout is a little different (but all the major stuff is in the same place) but everything I did on RB I can do on Engine. There are even certain aspects of the layout I prefer in Engine such as having further criteria boxes above the main library box- where you can click any of the items (genre, artist name, bpm, year etc) and it automatically filters the library display by those critera- and they are stacking too so you could select a genre, then an artist, then a bpm and it would show just the tracks that fit those 3 criteria.

I'm sure you could probably do something similar in RB but I never got it working in 'live mode' enough to discover this (see below).

In terms of preparation you can do everything I could do in RB such as setting cue points & loops etc, it also shows you the big detailed waveform as in RB.

The main way I use Engine though is linked to my 2900s (via network cable) to use as a live music library to save exporting stuff to usb drives. In this respect it is excellent and it will run on the most basic of laptops (I used it initially on a small 10" netbook) with no problems at all.

It's quite a solid performance option as when you load a track it loads it to the player and so the hardware is doing the work not the laptop like with traditional DJ software. The laptop just gives you a big browsing screen and access to all of your music. It's worth pointing out too that when using it in this fashion you can use the 2900s transport controls to browse and select files from the laptop meaning you don't need to touch the computer at all.

Obviously this was also possible with Rekordbox and my CDJ900s but I was only able to get it working on a handful of occasions and two of those times it crashed on me mid gig (luckily those were only mate's house parties as I didn't trust it for other gigs) That is probably the biggest thing for me with Engine though, reliability- Engine just 'works'- every time without issue, where sadly RB didn't (for me).

For what it's worth I know lots of people who have no issues at all with Rekordbox so it's clearly a hardware issue with users rather than the software but I simply couldn't get it running stable on either of my 2 laptops or my high powered gaming desktop to be able to use it for live performance which is my biggest use of the two programs as I don't do much track prep.

So yes overall I think it's a great program. I still use Rekordbox now and again (and maintain a library) for creating the odd playlist for when I play on CDJs, and for me swapping between the two programs is just like using the same program in different skins.

[Irrational Fear]

There's a pretty good quick vid here that covers the 2900 but also gives a couple of screenshots of the Engine software on both computer and iPad: