Tag: test

Drift DJ alpha testing and mixing

I finally found sometime after working with the Drift Zero team, to install the latest alpha build. Things have been hectic for a while but one night I got some time to play.

It was great, although I didn’t really know all the buttons, so I was just working it out by pressing and playing. Its only today I seen the video explaining it all (although I should have spent more time on the discord group)

Drift DJ quick shot

Anyway with me feeling around, I was able to create a few mixes but found a problem where some of my tunes were cooked/garbled but I had no idea why. This is obviously the bug and should be fixed pretty soon.

Honestly the device is excellent and I’m looking forward to more time with it, especially now I know what the buttons should do and I can use the recorder. I have a flight to Berlin for Republica 2026 and a series of long trains to Amsterdam for PublicSpaces, so plenty of time to really play.

Being optimistic, I also entered a session into EMFCamp 2026 to potentially DJ live using the Zero or Pacemaker Device as a backup. Considered a DJ hackday at EMFCamp but decided maybe next time.

How to DJ with the Pacemaker device and a real mixer

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/36014782610/in/datetaken-public/

I love mixing with my Pacemaker but I have to admit there are some limitations like the crossfader and effects are a little tricky to do at the same time. So when I bought another pacemaker off ebay cheap and upgraded the battery and HDD to a SSD, I also upgraded that Pacemaker firmware, to include other features like beat-aware loops. That firmware can’t record mixes in the same way unfortunately.

So I’ve always thought maybe I could use the pacemaker with a mixer and record the mix over analogue means. Si gave me one of his old mixers a while ago, so for ages I thought about it but done little about it.

Till now!

Here’s the mix I messed with around earlier.

Ok its not great but I was tweaking the setup while I was recording.

Mixing with the pacemaker device

So how did I do it…

The pacemaker has two outputs, so I pushed deck A to the main output and deck B to the headphone output. This means the pacemaker crossfader can never be used or touched while mixing. You only use the deck selection to choose the track you want to adjust or play with.

Mixing with the pacemaker device

Deck A the main output is cabled to the Channel 1 on my mixer, while Deck B the headphone deck is output to Channel 3 on the mixer. (Channel 2 is mainly for the microphone and other things on the mixer)

Mixing with the pacemaker device

I had to adjust the volume and gain on each channel and the pacemaker its self but generally I got it right with some tweaking. I hooked up the output of the mixer to my amp and speakers, while the monitor went out to my laptop with a splitter as its a combined mic/headphone jack.

Mixing with the pacemaker device

I recorded everything with Audacity and checked the levels on the laptop.

The results are not bad… It does feel really weird to be using the Pacemaker device and not using the crossfader on the device. In actual fact I messed up a few times earlier on, by using the devices crossfader. I also decided I needed some kind of stand for the device and used a box to mount it half way through the test set.

It was odd but worked, more experimentation is needed…