5 ms·

> It can take just one glitch during a live performance for a musician to completely lose faith in their whole setup I was an early adopter of digital vinyl (i

by aidos 10y ago

> It can take just one glitch during a live performance for a musician to completely lose faith in their whole setup I was an early adopter of digital vinyl (if you haven't seen it before, the records have a screechy signal that software can use to determine the position of the needle on the record, which it then maps to an audio file). A friend of mine purchased the most popular unit at the time but it was really unreliable. It crashed once while a club full of people were dancing and that was the end of it for me. I switched to a unit by a small company (Serato) that had just been released (2004) and never looked back. The unit itself still works perfectly, there was a bug back in about 2008 that they tracked down and patched for me. Apparently the original brand has now caught up technology-wise and they're a big player, but I will never, ever, ever buy their kit. Reliability issues with audio gear can completely destroy your trust.

Unklejoe 10y ago
I saw a DJ using one of those digital encoded records a few weeks ago. Pretty cool concept, although I'm not sure what the actual difference is between that and using something like Serato which has the smaller wheels you can turn (if I remember correctly), other than being more prone to physical damage. I guess one advantage is that it looks like they're playing the actual records. It had me fooled for a minute.
- aidos 10y ago
  Haha, to be fair - they are playing actual records :) At the time neither the tech nor acceptance were there for the modern tools. While increasingly there were CDJs around, they didn't feel the same for people who did any scratching. Also, turntables were everywhere you went, so you could take everything you needed in your bag (laptop, 2 x records, little conversion box) and you could just plug into an existing setup, anywhere, without issue. Digital vinyl bridged the gap as people started moving over. Also, at the time the software only worked with records and cds. Now you have a huge selection of controllers to choose from. I'm actually about to sell all my stuff to buy a "controller" (something like https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=reloop+terminal+mix+8&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=reloop+terminal+mix+8&tbm=...) so that I have something convenient and always ready to go.
- exDM69 10y ago
  It feels pretty much like playing with vinyl. You can do the same thing with digital rotary controllers but you just don't get the same touch with it. You can also do some scratch tricks with them, which doesn't work that great with digital tools (perhaps it's better now). It's a matter of preference and getting used to. If you've never tried beatmixing vinyl, it's hard to explain... try it if you get a chance, it's super fun! (would be more fun if I didn't suck so bad at it). For a low-budget hacker solution, you can just obtain the time coded vinyls, use any reasonable USB audio interface with a RIAA preamp and use xwax (open source) or Mixxx (a GUI frontend to xwax, etc) that runs fine on Linux.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  I spin records using exactly this system. You use the digital vinyl because it feels identical to real vinyl. Those dinky little jog wheels on DJ controllers are for the pretenders, they lack the precision and weight to be much use for scratching, and are considerably more finicky for beatmatching; Serato is/was a digital vinyl system first. Those that learned to spin on turntables tend to swear by them; there is a certain tactile aspect that is ahrd to get elsewhere. (Serato has since pivoted to controllers, since CDJs seem to have taken over the club scene)
zbuf 10y ago
I'm glad someone mentioned this. There is interesting history around DVS because the first mainstream product "Final Scratch" used a modified Debian Linux OS (I believe the prototypes were on BeOS). This was in around 2000. I publish an open source DVS called http://xwax.org/ http://xwax.org/. I had the same goals as you describe; it had to be 100% stable before it did anything else. Hopefully it serves as a reasonable example of some of the advice in the article.

by aidos 10y ago

Unklejoe 10y ago

I saw a DJ using one of those digital encoded records a few weeks ago. Pretty cool concept, although I'm not sure what the actual difference is between that and using something like Serato which has the smaller wheels you can turn (if I remember correctly), other than being more prone to physical damage. I guess one advantage is that it looks like they're playing the actual records. It had me fooled for a minute.

aidos 10y ago
Haha, to be fair - they are playing actual records :) At the time neither the tech nor acceptance were there for the modern tools. While increasingly there were CDJs around, they didn't feel the same for people who did any scratching. Also, turntables were everywhere you went, so you could take everything you needed in your bag (laptop, 2 x records, little conversion box) and you could just plug into an existing setup, anywhere, without issue. Digital vinyl bridged the gap as people started moving over. Also, at the time the software only worked with records and cds. Now you have a huge selection of controllers to choose from. I'm actually about to sell all my stuff to buy a "controller" (something like https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=reloop+terminal+mix+8&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=reloop+terminal+mix+8&tbm=...) so that I have something convenient and always ready to go.
exDM69 10y ago
It feels pretty much like playing with vinyl. You can do the same thing with digital rotary controllers but you just don't get the same touch with it. You can also do some scratch tricks with them, which doesn't work that great with digital tools (perhaps it's better now). It's a matter of preference and getting used to. If you've never tried beatmixing vinyl, it's hard to explain... try it if you get a chance, it's super fun! (would be more fun if I didn't suck so bad at it). For a low-budget hacker solution, you can just obtain the time coded vinyls, use any reasonable USB audio interface with a RIAA preamp and use xwax (open source) or Mixxx (a GUI frontend to xwax, etc) that runs fine on Linux.
tomc1985 10y ago
I spin records using exactly this system. You use the digital vinyl because it feels identical to real vinyl. Those dinky little jog wheels on DJ controllers are for the pretenders, they lack the precision and weight to be much use for scratching, and are considerably more finicky for beatmatching; Serato is/was a digital vinyl system first. Those that learned to spin on turntables tend to swear by them; there is a certain tactile aspect that is ahrd to get elsewhere. (Serato has since pivoted to controllers, since CDJs seem to have taken over the club scene)

zbuf 10y ago

I'm glad someone mentioned this. There is interesting history around DVS because the first mainstream product "Final Scratch" used a modified Debian Linux OS (I believe the prototypes were on BeOS). This was in around 2000. I publish an open source DVS called http://xwax.org/ http://xwax.org/. I had the same goals as you describe; it had to be 100% stable before it did anything else. Hopefully it serves as a reasonable example of some of the advice in the article.