Comments on: Tip: Sync Traktor Music Collections, Max Patches, More with SugarSync

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:53:06 +0000

@Paul: Sure, of course – and I don’t necessarily disagree. I’ve dumped a number of “cloud” and “software as service” things for this reason and wound up taking the supposedly hard route because the easy way doesn’t always turn out to be any easier. But I also know people are finding SugarSync and DropBox (and JungleDisk) in particular may work well for them. It’d be silly to dismiss a robust, powerful solution because it’s not buzzword-compliant… but it’s be equally strange to dismiss these things if they are working for people. It’s okay to make a choice, if that choice is educated.

By: Paul Davis

Paul Davis — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:40:04 +0000

@peter: i wasn’t really trying to mock anyone’s choice, more just sad that as usual, we have an entire technological niche designed to appeal to people by telling them that they don’t need to learn anything … “we make it easier”. i was just on the phone today to one of your advertisers and we were both lamenting how much stuff and how many services are sold to people who (mistakenly) believe that they are better off not having to learn new stuff, only to discover a few months later than the “easy to use” solution can’t do what they actually want. they end up learning new stuff anyway, but only after having spent time and money on the “simple solution”. audio interfaces, control surfaces, blends of the two, and now backup/clone systems and “cloud storage”.. its the same old story.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:48:54 +0000

Well, jeez, Paul, yeah, it does make more sense to people. DropSync I know is really popular in the Linux community – with some users who definitely know how to use rsync. It’s a reasonable choice to make. I love rsync, but my guess is people probably don’t know how to go about setting up the arrangement you describe. Plus, you might wind up pricing out about the same – some people are getting by on the free plan or going with a plan that costs $5-10, same as (or perhaps less than) the web service.

This does seem to call for an rsync tutorial; I’ll see what I can do. But that’d be more useful than just mocking someone else’s choice.

By: Paul Davis

Paul Davis — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:06:29 +0000

“cloud storage” … chortle .. all you need is a web hosting agreement that includes shell access, and rsync will work for you too. cheap, reliable, simple, powerful. let me guess, you musicians don’t bother with web hosting arrangements because you think that letting myspace, dropbox, soundcloud etc. take care of stuff for you makes more sense, right? :)

By: Chilly

Chilly — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:28:17 +0000

Peter…you’re right. I think I jumped the gun based on the first sentence.

Still, good stuff!

By: Kyran

Kyran — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:30:39 +0000

I use dropbox to sync my stuff over. It has windows mac and linux support. It comes with 2.25 gb free cloud storage.

It’s special in that it only sync’s files in the dropbox folder. This is a pro because you know what is synced and what is not. The downside is that I cannot easily sync my zebra preset folder for example.
It does follow symbolic links though, which gets around this problem on mac and linux.

It also allows you to share a folder between dropbox users, which makes it a very good collaborative tool (especially because it only sync’s the difference between two versions, oh yeah you get versioning history too). So just drop your ableton project folder in your dropbox, share it with your mate and you have ableton share :)

There’s also a public folder in your dropbox to quickly share files with anyone. And it has a webinterface to access your files anywhere you need.

There’s a payware version which gives you 50 or even 100 gb cloud storage, if you want to sync your traktor collection :)

Check it out here:
https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTQ2NDk0ODk

For me it’s really the perfect sync solution.

By: Josef Pr?ša

Josef Pr?ša — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:27:04 +0000

Hi, thanks for publishing. Yeah, I was thinking about the rsync too, I’ve build NAS few days ago, which supports rsync (viva la freeNAS), it can be definetly faster to sync on home network but if you are outside it will be tricky with my shitty ADSL :-) SugarSync is pretty cheap and its super easy to setup, so why not :-) And I think that setup with rsync must looks very scary and too much geeky for ordinary people.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:20:03 +0000

Yes, but that’s the point, isn’t it? Any Traktor will work. Any software will work that has – as it should – portable settings.

By: chilly

chilly — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:17:38 +0000

That’s cool…except that’s not Traktor Pro in the pic.