Possible to do a tag mix over large distances?

[Synergy]

I am trying to do a tag mix with my friend who lives in Alabama over the internet. I have it kind of worked out but is it possible? Take say his wav of 3 tracks, drop it in Ableton in session view, drop another audio track in and play the few min of his mix and record my mix in? In theory this works...

Anyone done this?

[Synergy]

What problems could or would arise from this?

[Dave Daschofsky]

The way you're doing it sounds like it should work just find, kinda like musical chess by mail. The only way you'd run into major issues is if you tried to do it live, just too much latency over the internet to make it work well.

[Sigma]

I've done this a few times. Here's one I made with 15 other DJs that features over 100 tracks: -

http://soundcloud.com/deejaysigma/dv-collab-mix-ii

I would suggest compressing the WAV to FLAC before you upload it or email it as it can shrink the file down by a fair amount. Once the other DJ gets it, they can convert it to WAV, add their bit, then convert it to FLAC and send it back, and so on. FLAC is lossless, so you can convert back and forth as many times as you like without losing any quality and the software is free and available for any OS you're likely to be using.

Oh yeah, and zip the file up before you send it too. It's not going to shrink the file down, but it means that it won't get screwed up cos the data has become corrupt during the upload/download. If that happens, it simply won't unzip and then you can ask the person to send it again. If you upload the file unzipped and the data becomes corrupt, you can end up with glitches in the mix that you may not notice until it's complete. It's unlikely to happen, but it's still best to assume it will and use zip files, then you know you're good.

The other considerations are levels, EQing and overall sound quality. I did a collab mix over the web with someone once who used compression/limiting on the mix as we were working on it, which ruined it. Concentrate on keeping the levels and sound quality consistent throughout and only do mastering once the mix is complete (assuming you need to do it at all). You want it to sound like it was all made by the same DJ in terms of the sound quality.

[Synergy]

Nice, thanks for the information, pretty much spot on with what I was thinking. This should be pretty fun. My buddy and I usually tag and this will make it to where we can and we won't have to be in the same room!

[L2daGee]

You could do a tag team live set from two entirely different places. All you need to do is connect thru ISDN lines. They will work as long as you're not across oceans from each other. ISDN setups are very expensive. It would be best to try to rent a line from a radio station.

[Marc S]

we've done a fair few colab mix's on djf before too, they always present a few problems but its mostly level issues from what ive seen.