What Are Your Initial Thoughts About Esperance??

[Joe A]

To me honestly its not worth the upgrade.  Ide rather use 1.85 then esperance. I really like the older one better. It seems that everytime I scan in music to esperance.. its makes my audio playing skip.

[scott hanna]

I have 1.85 version and have not upgraded to Esperance yet.  You mean to tell me that it will cost me extra money to upgrade from 2 licenses to Espearance @ $200 ea license?

some yes.  I have 2 licenses that got free upgrades, and 3 pro that do not.

[JAylmer]

Agree with you Joe, the upgrade did very little for me and introduced the tiny control buttons, but I'll continue to use Esperence.
However I think we need to hold back a bit on our appraisal until Esperence 2.0 is released and compare that with 1.85
Its going to be any day now, right?

[Mike Sinclair]

I just bought a new laptop (Asus Ultrabook) the newest one with the FABULOUS display, 256gb ssd etc... anyway, I had to change the resolution DOWN from 1920 X 1080 to 1600 X 900 because on the higher res. display, the ots decks were so small, you couldn't ready anything. I like a lot of things about the new Ots, but honestly, the tiny buttons and the display in general isn't on my list of "likes".

[Dj Buik]

Maybe Ots is developping on big 23 inch or more screens.
On these big screens everything is a little bigger.

Mobile DJs running from laptops only have 15 or 17 inch (full hd) screens, this is way to small for the current esperance layout.

[Bryan Durio]

I seem to remember from somewhere that the tiny buttons are their size because they're pushing using Esperance with a controller.

Flame away.

[shdixon]

I'm not going to switch to ESP.

Swishing and scratching and stuttering and beat matching is not what my clients appreciate. They want a smooth flowing, event that moves and keeps their guests engaged and entertained.

The old ots allows me to be a better party DJ/Coordinator/Entertainer. For a 5 hour reception you only play about 3 hours of dance music. That's only 50-60 songs. I need to focus on the guests, the dancers and the party not a controller or another program just to play a CD.

I have always said that OTS is just a hammer. When a new hammer comes out that does a better job for me than OTSDJ I will switch. So far, that has not happened.

Plus, I'm too old to change...

[Dj Buik]

Plus, I'm too old to change...

This brings up an sensitive question. Is OtsAv mainly used by 'old' DJ's?
I'm 52 and certainly not a dance/trance Dj like Tiesto. I do mostly weddings and parties with people between 16 to >60 years.

Maybe Jeff can see in the user database what the average age is of the users of this forum?

Just a question that came up, well it is a little of topic.....

[milky]

Nice thinking, DJ Buik. I'm almost 64, and have been using Ots since I was about your age. Back then, I used to do weddings, engagements etc, but more and more, "parents parties". Ots was great for that. I never needed, nor learnt about beatmixing/matching etc, because my clientele didn't want to know.
Similarly, I also work in radio, and evolved from the REAL twin turntable era. Ots was a breath of fresh air compared to slip-cueing vinyl whilst chatting calmly on open mic. Twelve years later, I still use Ots in my home entertainment system, and love it, but I would not use it in any of the terrestrial radio stations I own and/or manage. I'm sure I could still manage a parent party or two, but would not want to try and stack up against the latest DJ tricks.

[DJArt (Baby Boomer DJ)]

  Too set in my "old" ways to try and become a "turn tablest"...let the "younger" DJ be innovative,  nothing wrong with showcasing their talents.

I'm older by several years than Milky and I agree that OTS does what I need it to do since I do mostly weddings and an occasional Sweet 16.  Seriously, I don't need a bunch of "bells and whistles" to make me seem more knowledgeable; my music frame of reference does just fine.  There is a knack to knowing what songs fit together from various years/decades.

However, I will eventually learn to use Ots Studio for creating my own personal "blend" of songs even though it is primarily for "beatmixing" in the Club arena, in my humble opinion.

Just wish that I had started DJ-ing earlier in life.  

[Jumpin' Jeff]

I have no clue how to garner age info from the database.
I'm nearly 48, and all I can say is Adam Ots, as project director, is not that old. I think he's late 30s, maybe early 40s.

[Mike Sinclair]

I seem to remember from somewhere that the tiny buttons are their size because they're pushing using Esperance with a controller.

This may be true, but look at Traktor (not to bring other software into the discussion) but it is very easy to look at and supports controllers like the HC4500 without making the deck buttons tiny. I tried using Traktor in fact because they did a lot of things right, but Ots has done the more important things (for me) right, so here I remain.

[nextgen1]

I hear you Mike, This upgrade I would not have taken even if it had been for free. I'm sure its great and I'm sure that I had not even begun to look at all it could do. When they did away with Catagories and shrank things. It was not something I really wanted to deal with. I never minded the old look. But I'm not a fan of having to relearn something I knew how to use already. My full time job and our DJ Business is keeping me very busy. I'm not looking to add more to it.

[Jumpin' Jeff]

They did not do away with the categories. They are still there. Just not as visible as before.

[Glen J. Millar]

I am 56 and also like Stan, not into doing beat mixing etc at my events that I do. My clients want, like Stan said, a evening that flows well and keeps the dance floor active.

OtsAV is MY tool and although I have tested the other software on a regular basis, none of them do what my OtsAV 1.85 does...allow me to be a entertainer from "behind" the DJ booth (I actually seldom set up so that I am behind the DJ set up as I prefer people to be able to come up and talk to me), as well as entertain from the actual dance floor.