Slashdot Mirror
Control Digital Audio With Turntables
Anonymous Coward writes "Harmony Central has a NAMM article about FinalScratch which is a digital audio controller technology for Linux/BeOS, so DJ's can play digital audio and keep the tactile control of the turntable. Some interesting technology there, and a further push for digital audio." Another one for CowboyNeal's birthday
list.
the trend for music going to completely digital is defenitly a good thing. i like the fact that even "i" can download one of these things, mess around with it (even though i have no clue what im doing)
but is the music produced still the same as done by "hand"?
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows - Bart Simpson
from a year ago
Being a member of generation D, condescending elders often ask me if I even know what a vinyl record is. I tell them "sure. It's a giant CD that uses a needle instead of a laser and melts if you leave it in the sun."
There is a 'Receive info form', for Windows users, and another form for Linux and FreeBSD users. The funny part is that the HTML title of that form is 'Receive info about the system (Linux/NetBSD Form)' . FreeBSD? NetBSD? I'm confused.
{{.sig}}
I have to take issue with one thing in the harmony central article ... it says the records contain a time code. What do you do when you break these special records? ...
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I believe Richie Hawtin has been using Final scratch for the last year or so. Furthermore, his latest CD "DE9: Closer to the Edit" is supposed to be largely mixed with it.
hummer
It's really a nice idea, stratch some digital information to communicate how your scratching, and then let the computer scratch whatever audio. However, I think it's going to be vaporware for sometime as I think they're having problems with the hardware.
Oh, well.
Anyone know if you can run Solaris binaries on Linux? Thereby running IE for Solaris and HP/UX on Linux?
This is going to come across as a troll to some people, but does anyone know anyone who is using any flavor of *nix or BeOS for professional music work? I am not slamming this particular product or the idea of doing this, but every professional music person I know is on a Mac and starts foaming at the suggestion that other platforms even exist.
It strikes me as odd to make the product for Linux and BeOS first, and then port to Mac, as the article says. Does anyone know of a huge underground of Linux using pro DJ's I have have somehow missed?
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
All this effort so alleged "artists" can make that nasty scratching noise with a computer? Shit, why bother?
It's like there's some media conspiracy to promote rapping/DJ's as some sort of artists - like the way the Chris Rock show keeps (kept?) raving about "grandmaster flash" - what a load of crap.
I'm not often moved to remember Ayn Rand's writings, but this brings to mind the talk Ellsworth Toohey gives near the end of The Fountainhead about how to destroy the arts by continuously promoting the mediocre or worse. (Yes I'm kissing my karma goodbye - oh well.)
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
www.Lunarpower.org
Trance/Hard Trance/Deep Trance
this is probably the coolest idea i've ever seen for mixing in mp3s... cueing mp3s is almost impossible if you're used to cueing up with the fine-tuning that vinyl allows you. I really hope to see this technology take off. Lord knows there are a bunch of hard-to-find records out there that are only made in a limited supply batch. Hats off to FinalScratch. Anyone know of any other devices such as this? please post if ou do...
Monkey sense
You're scratching records but you won't be scratching mine
Don't give me chish-chash in rinky dink time
Just vive le rock, vive le rock
- Vive Le Rock, by Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni
In previous digital DJ solutions, there has been a problem where you don't get a visual indication of where breakdowns occur in songs. When you spin with vinyl, if you look closely at a track the grooves look different during a breakdown, giving you a visual indication of how much time you have to finish/start a mix. One reason for Final Scratch's success is being able to see on your laptop screen where the breakdowns are, just as if you had the vinyl in front of you.
It's been in development for a few years. I first heard about it while experimenting with beOS a few years back...at the time it was a free project, and they had schematics on how to construct various bits of it...appartently it worked so well for them that they decided to market it, and rightly so. Right now both Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva are using the system on tour...
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
It strikes me as odd to make the product for Linux and BeOS first,
I don't find it odd, that's exactly what I would do if I wanted to publicize a product on Slashdot. The probability the submission gets accepted by Slashdot goes from 0.05 to 0.8 just by mentioning some geek OSes in the writeup.
it appears that Stanton Inc. is releasing Final Scratch. their site has some good info directly from Richie about using it.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
According to various BeOS news sites this particular product will not be available to the BeOS platform. "The final version of FINALSCRATCH will actually be released on Linux, as BeOS does not support new computers as we understand it." //Begroovy.com
On a little side note I would like to say that this is not true; with patches all modern x86 platform (with the exception of specific hardware of course) will work with BeOS. A german group of BeOS users has set out to release the patches along with BeOS 5.0 (pe or pro, not known). The project can be found at www.yellowtab.com.
Rasmus Ekman
rasmus.ekman(a)telia.n0spammers.com
The Radar24 mixing console runs BeOS.
Tascam's SX-1 mixing console runs BeOS.
Level Control Systems has been using BeOS to control their system for a long time
(it was used for the Nagano winter olympics opening ceremoney, various Broadwar shows and the Hollywood Bowl, for example).
terminatorX can do this kind of thing:
terminatorX is a realtime audio synthesizer that allows you to "scratch" on digitally sampled audio data (*.wav, *.au, *.mp3, etc.) the way hiphop-DJs scratch on vinyl records. It features multiple turntables, realtime effects (buit-in as well as LADSPA plugin effects), a sequencer and an easy-to-use gtk+ GUI.
There's a tutorial which explains how to take advantage of the support for a second mouse attached to the serial port which can be plugged into a dead turntable and controls the software, allowing users to make scratches with a real turntable for that hiphop look'n'feel. Check it out, it's a great project.
but i know richie hawtin, who is an old name in tecno (a.k.a plastikman) was taking it to some gigs, so it is apparently legit.
/.ing will knock the server to hell
as a dj i have mixed feelings on this, it sounds realy cool but,
a - all of the CD dj's may switch to using these to look more credible, which will just dump MORE bed techno and trance music on the scene
and
b- startup labels might prefer to just send around digital tracks to people, instead of running a limited press of 300 or so white labels
and getting them distributed.
so in the long run talented producers will get fucked, overshadowed by the kids with no talent dumping bad tracks all over the place.
but hey, half the kids who go to parties in NY dont like good techno anyway,
tehy are into dj's like pleasure head, who spin bad trance, and just fade one track over the other but know how to market themselves and how to perform,
not only do they play the same tracks everynight, ive heard them play a track 2 times or more in one set. But i guess they cater to all the kids who got into the scene after the media played it up as such a great place to get and take e pills
anyway if u want some to listen to some good sets check out kindkidz.com, the site is decrepid and dying but there are some good sets still around and a radioshow every thursday and sunday night, although i expect even this second hand
(if anyone likes what they hear, not SEE, and wants to donate some minimal serverspace and bandwidth mail me here)
I think I heard about the BeOS version in 95 or so.
You download the software, you get the hardware out of your mom's attic :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is actually pretty old. I remember it being out for Be OS years ago. It was able to function, as I remember, becaus of Be OS's low audio latency.
Unfortunatly, even with the new 'leaked' release, Be OS doesn't run on many current systems, which keeps something cool like this out of many people's hands.
I remember hearing a while back, that Mac OS had a very low audio latency aswell. I wondered if something such as this could be written for Mac OS X. Who knows, if enough people ask, maybe these people will do it.
That would be truely cool
What's the point of moderating?!
There was discussion of final scratch back in mid-December when a user submitted a story about the DM2 and it's possible use fun/cheap music toy. This discussion in Ask Slashdot lead to other products being borught up as well, and some inciteful comments. Check out the Story.
Just to set the stage I do dj. Been doing it for years. I also work in the computer field. There are definitely benefits to using digital media instead of vinyl.
d ex.htm and turn them into vinyl.
Vinyl is large, bulky, it must be cared for for it to last. Qualities that are hardly endearing to people today. Digital media is alot tougher (though I do have cd's that now skip). I also like the ability to change the tempo (beats per minute) of the music while mixing a cd without affecting the pitch of the music that is playing.
It is this pitch that you are playing with when you scratch. A record is just stereo sound, and analog waveform represented in vinyl. In the groove you have 2 axis. Up/down & Left/Right as seen from the stylus. The speed of the record controls the pitch. When you scratch you speed the pitch beyond normal ranges to get that sound. On a record you have a continuos smooth groove that the needle tracks on. Is there latency in the software that controls this. On a record it is just electro mechanical motion of the stylus that puts out the signal. I do not think that the signal that would come out of a "scratched" mp3 would be there, like that of a record. If this does introduce latency into the feed from the "device" to the actual output of the speaker is it really worth it? If you want to scratch your mp3's go to http://www.vestax.co.uk/flash/2002/vrx2000/vrx-in
Mac vs. Linux, and oh BeOS too.
Well I would have to say more of the well; well known DJ's use Mac's (in fact anyone signed to Warp or Astralwerks). But remember the common folk can't afford a TiBook.
I should also mention an issue of URB where Richie rant's on about how great the Open Source (GNU/GPL) movement is and how he thinks the underground rave scene is quite similar to it . . .
No idea what issue, but it was last year and he was on the cover so I'm sure a quick search will tell you.
Here's what I think and know:
:-(
#1 - The time code is not really time code. It's a tone and based on the change in this tone it tells how you're moving the record, it doesn't have like SMPTE time code or something like that on it.
#2 - Yes, the technology has been around a while, but not as a product you could buy, there's a big difference between something existing and something being put into wide spread application.
#3 - The reason why this is a big deal is because it's the first vinyl replacement that offers virtually all the qualities of vinyl, while still offering the advantages of using a vinyl replacement (you don't have to carry all your records, you can cue faster, you don't need to actually find music on vinyl (or even BUY it actually) etc.)
#4 - I've thought about submitting this about a billion other times but I never got around to it
#5 - to anybody who's anti-dj or whatever, don't dismiss something before you understand it.
#6 - most serious DJs are geeks (i.e. Myself) Linux is a fine choice.
#7 - Yes, a lot of musicians choose Macs, that's why they're making it for macs too.
#8 - I'm sure if you break/lose the record that Stanton will allow you to buy another one.
#9 - The ONLY trouble I've heard of people having with this when scratching is that if you're going SUPER slow (like <5RPM) that it has trouble tracking the song. NO troubles reported for mixing
The End.
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
I for one DO, but, this is definitely not the way to go about it. Vinyl (and SonicFoundry Acid...) forever.
I have to admit that this sounds like a good attempt though. The timecoded dummy records allow for new tricks that haven't been possible with simpler emulations.
But you have to remember that the complete vinyl experience consists of all the little stuff like
browsing your records physically in the box, checking out the covers etc.
flipping records with your bare hands instead of grabbing the mouse and fiddling with GUI displays
having that little extra snap, crackle & pop in the sound
letting people actually see what you are playing, since the record's always visible on the turntable
etc.
All these little things are what really contribute to the overall feeling that you get with turntables, it's not just the scratching interface. And you know, sometimes it's actually the slight inconvenience or difficulty of doing something that makes it feel cool. When you change it and make it easier, you also change the overall feeling and your emulation is not successful.
So, I believe that if you go digital, it's possible to come up with much better interfaces for DJ'ing than simple turntable emulation. If a GUI is going to be your primary interface (for finding the tracks you want to play etc), you should leverage the GUI and find the most natural interfaces there.
After all, scratching and pitch mixing are just 'hacks' applied to the original turntable device, which was designed for much simpler use. The possibilities of a computer with a GUI are endless and should not be limited to just these traditional ideas.
Somehow I fail to see how a round rotatable disc is capable of controlling information. Does it scratch the CD if you try to make an unathorized copy?
this product is not vaporware. it is out.
... and unlike playing dubs (which wear out after about 5 plays and sound like shit) he was able to scratch with them ... which normally could not happen. (if you dont know what a dubplate is, it is a cut piece of acetate which plays maybe 5 times in a club and probably about 15 times total before the needles wear the grooves out and the record sounds like hiss.
i saw dj craze (3 time world dmc champion) spin for 1.5 hours last week using it. he played maybe 3 regular plates, he played the majority of his set using final scratch.
his setup consisted of the final scratch vaio laptop, a vestax pmc05, and the final scratch hardware.
links to pictures:
http://www.junglescene.com/img/photo7557.jpg
http://www.junglescene.com/img/photo7552.jpg
note, it did not sound like he was playing mp3s. most likely he was playing the raw wav's with finalscratch. mp3s might sound good at home on your speakers, but in a packed club they sound terrible. craze spun a lot of tunes which are on dubplate at the moment
all in all it was a great set. dj craze wrecks the dancefloor.
his set is archived at www.vibeflow.com, under the "respect" (the club) archive. check it out.
i've got a G4 350, does all the sound manipulation i need.. well... i have pushed it in Reason when i was running 25 synths at the same time,... that made a bit of skipping, heheh..
----
www.djneoform.com
MABASPLOOM!
www.atomixmp3.com... Looks strange, but it really does the stuff.
I'd swear to god that Fisher Price marketed a toy that had a small turntable disk in it for this sort of thing.
-
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I got on the info list when I first heard about this (at least 7 months ago, before DEMF).
John Acquiviva and Hawtin have been using the system for well over a year. Acquiviva used it at last year's DEMF and it was flawless.
The first release to the public was pretty high-ticket ($3000) for 3 Final Scratch records, the interface box, the software, and a Sony Vaio laptop. Initially, they had reported that the suggested retail would be somewhere around $600, but my guess is that they made the initial release include the laptop to keep the price out of the range of amateurs; people like Cowboy Neal, et al.
Every review of the system I've read basically says that its great, and it responds exactly like vinyl. But keep in mind that you need a pair of 1200's also if you really want to use this.
Its going to remain an item for pro and semi pro dj for a while; but this _will_ change the way dj'ing is done. Just give it time.
I tell you what there boy! a year are so ago i bought a Tascam CD-302. It's a duel deck DJ CD Player with Scratchem' Pads and crap. It's outrageously over priced at c. $1000, but damn it's fun. The scratching function is nothing like scratching a real vinyl, but with a lot of practice it sounds decent.
I took some vinyls and recorded them into my COMPUTAR and DRAGGED AND DROPPED THOSE WAV FILES ONTO MY CD-BERNER ICON and produced an audio CD. During playback you get all the deliscious pops and snaps and hiss, and you aren't damaging your vinyls.
HEAR THIS NOW! I recommend that if you beat mix or stuff like that, then go ahead and record your vinyls to CD and playback through a CD-302 or the like.. your vinyls will last longer and you don't have to worry about replacing needles and stuff. Plus you have access to looping and pitch shifting functions.
However if you intend to do any REAL scratching, stick to vinyl. You can get scratch like effects from digital players, but it will be a long time before they have REAL scratching. PEACE OUT MUTHA.
Its not hard to make this system yourself, if you are inclined to do so... using PD (pure data) the software would be very easy to write.
1) press a record with an audio-based timecode that readable at any playback speed. (prolly AM)
2) write some software to decode the audio signal
3) hook up your program to a synth, sampler program or whatever you want-- added bonus, its an infinitely flexible instrument.
I believe Craze is sponsored by Stanton but that does not detract from his performance at all. Craze spins drum'n'bass, a genre that is probably more entrenched in dubplate culture than any other form of dance/electronic music out there. A year or two ago, Craze came out of NOWHERE (as far as the d'n'b scene was concerned)and blindsided most of UK with his amazing performance. Most DJ's will throw in a scratch or two, beatjuggle occasionally, and perhaps drop only two bars... but the speed and constant variance that Craze pushes blows all else away. If his show can be done with these tools, there is NO reason to doubt these. Vinyl purists there will always be (I myself prefer it), but this is WAY beyond the league of "newbie-CD-decks" in terms of respectability.
:) DJ Hype has merely his label's plates and his forays into nu-breaks to compete with this, and that's not much IMO.
Offtopic, big up Craze for bringing stateside drum'n'bass to a whole new level
You know, it's funny.
Watching capitalists in action has definitely soured me on unbridled capitalism - the way big business conducts itself is disgusting to me, and I fear it more than big government (especially since big business subverts the government - witness DMCA and UCITA, just for starters). And Rand's strident condemnation of charity and welfare grates somewhat too.
But I still think she's a hell of a writer and I still reread Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead every few years. Her vision of man as heroic and life as a wonderful thing to be made the most of are very appealing - even if reality often falls short.
You are certainly entitled to your opinions on this, but I disagree.
On the other hand, "rap music" is a contradiction in terms. (Ooops, I guess that giant sucking sound is my karma heading south.)
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
So here's why club DJs prefer vinyl. It actually has nothing to do with sound quality. Until recently, vinyl turntables offered the following three advantages:
1. Groove contrast
2. Needle dropping
3. Scratch cueing
Groove contrast is where you can visually locate a dance song's "breakdown" just by looking at the grooves. Very useful, and was impossible with CD or tape.
Needle dropping provides the DJ with quick random access to any part of the song. Until recently, no CD or tape player offered this feature.
Scratch cueing is where the DJ scratches the first beat of a musical phrase in time with the song that's currently playing (the outgoing song), then lets the record play when the outgoing song reaches the first beat of a phrase. Ta-daaa, the songs are in phase/sync. Until recently, no CD or tape player offered this.
Those three features are vital to club DJing ("beat mixing"). So there really was no choice, DJs had to use vinyl.
Recent pro DJ CD players like Pioneer's CDJ-1000 do a great job of emulating those features in software (in fact, Pioneer calls the CDJ-1000's scratch technology "vinyl emulation").
FinalScratch takes this a step further, though. The DJ can continue to use the tried-and-true vinyl turntables they've gotten used to over the years. That's a huge plus.
So is FinalScratch a perfect replacement? Well, I don't think so. You can't look at the record itself to see the groove contrast, you must look at the computer screen. And mechanical failures during a performance tend to be easier to fix than having software freak out on you -- I'd argue that there's less that can go wrong, but that point's debateable.
But FinalScratch is great technology, and it is going to change the way club DJs perform.
- Shawn Dodd
DJ's that travel to gigs on planes. If you check your records, there is always a possibilty that they may not make it to the city when you do. I'm not sure about the exact dimensions of these turntables, but it looks like you could carry them on the plane with you (along with the laptop) and have a plan B if the rest of your gear didn't make it to the city with you.
I was at NAMM last week and I just want to let you all know that there are quite a few companies releasing turntable methods of digital music manipulation. Two others Serato (http://www.serato.com) and Sound Graph (http://www.soundgraph.com) are using timecode vinyl similar to stanton's. The main difference between all of them will be hardware and price. Stanton's setup requires a piece of hardware with two audio inputs (from mixer), two outputs (to mixer) and usb. Serato's setup is completely software, you only need a sound card with two audio inputs. not sure how the output works though. It will be considerably cheaper though (around $200 is what I recall). Also of note, stanton and sound graph appear to be windows only, while serato was running on a mac. Numark (http://www.numark.com) is using a roller on the turntable that just keeps track of speed with position correction so you will not lose your cue point by jogging back and forth. The roller will connect to their axis 8 cd player and should cost no more than $20. No skipping, but no laptop interface either (for the time being).
Final Scratch is a stand-alone product. You do not need to use it in conjunction with any other software. Nor is it designed to be used with other programs. And seeing as DJ's will probably use their Final Scratch laptop exclusively for DJ-ing they won't care what OS it runs.
ANd this gets a patent?
Its damn obvious and deserves ZERO patents.
Playing coded records with timecodes or square waves.. jeez
Actually...
... (wait for it) ... latency.
It matters alot which OS the system uses. There are three important factors in scratching: latency, latency, and
Older Macs may have been good at this because they weren't preemtively scheduled, so the scratching app could grab control and never let go. Not the best way to make friends, but it does keep latency down.
On the "real" OS side (no, a non preemptively scheduled, non protected OS is not a real OS, which apple understood, and which is why they spent so much time and effort to finally get one) BeOS was the only OS with any decent latency. Understandable; it was designed from the ground up to do this sort of thing w/o breaking a sweat. NB: QNX is realtime, which doesn't guarantee low latency, but rather "merely" guarantees that bounds exist, not that the bounds are low.
You gotta figure, when you're mixing 180 bpm songs, that's ~300ms per beat, so a 150ms latency is the difference between perfect and couldn't-be-worse. Also, you need to take the whole input chain into account -- not just one context switch, but rather: sampling input => timecode conversion => cueing of mp3 track => decode => output. Each one of these will involve several context switches if you are unlucky. Each context switch adds unknown potential latency. It can pretty quickly add up to +/- 150 ms. Worst of all, you don't know how much (can't read the clock -- that's a syscall == latency).
So in summarium: BeOS is a natural. Older macs may be ok, by virtue of being too stupid to be in the way. Neither Mac OS X and Linux stand the proverbial snowball's chance of pulling this off.
Of course, now you throw low latency patches into the mix... round and round it goes, where it will stop nobody knows.
Alternately, a kernel module may be able to do something decent, but that basically a hack to acheive the level of sophistication of old Macs.
This is a nice toy but having to haul a desktop or laptop around with you to gigs is a pain, not to mention how unreliable using a computer for live gigs _can_ be. I personally would rather just put my songs on CD and use American DJ's Digi-Pro. It's the same concept but the digipro is actually a dual cd player unit (fully functional) + interface + singal noise vinyl.
The digi pro makes more sense since it can play regular cds also. You get vinyl mixing + cd mixing + the ability to scratch on both. This unit may be more expensive but it fills in more holes than a pc to vinyl unit can.
...
http://mentalfloss.ca/beta/aural/dj
----
http://mentalfloss.ca - Free music that doesn't suck
Except that BeOS' latency measures in 250 microsoconds and QNX's latency measures in 1-2 microseconds, guaranteed. Just on latency measure alone, QNX has an edge by a factor of more than 100 to 1.
Also this is a professional turnkey product, with known hardware and software requirements. Final Scratch comes with a 500 MHz laptop and 2 turntables. Since there are only 2 turntables --- there is no need to play 10-15 mp3's simultaneously as in numerous BeOS demostrations ---- that makes QNX a much better OS option than BeOS because you can calculate the minimum hardware requirements much more easily with RTOS'es. If they used QNX, they could have easily figured it out that may be a slower CPU can do this job, guaranteed by a hard realtime operating system.
This isn't about scratching, it's about beat matching. The article talks about how it's not very good for scratching and cutting.
It's for tempo/pitch control.
actually, there's an article at apple's site which claims that latency in os x is down to 1ms, from 10ms in the classic mac os.
and i can't find it right now, but i also read another article somewhere that showed that os x had virtually no latency when doing dedicated audio, so i think os x probably stands a snowball's chance here.
london is drowning and i live by river
When Final Scratch was selling it themselves, if I remember correctly, the price was somewhere around $3,000. Now that Stanton has purchased the technology, they plan to offer it to the public largescale - for $500! This is incredible news. The $3,000 made it neat but unrealistic (for me), but I'm definately buying this now. Go Stanton! (btw, the original www.finalscratch.com site is apparently gone now. Couldn't get google's cached copy to work past the splash page either.)
The Terminator Mouse Turntable's sensor measures movement of the damn platter.
Any fool knows that you don't scratch by moving the platter, it's way to heavy! The record rests on a "slipmat". Which is the reason that you can stop it by just using your finger-tip (and possibly the reason that you 11 years old fucked up the motor of your own 100$ turntable when trying to scratch on it).
I believe that the only way to create the feeling of a REAL turntable would be measure the rotation of a record resting on a slipmat. Wether it would sound right or not (which I STRONGLY doubt) I don't know.
There are more reasons than purly historical for that people who know how to scratch (like ISP) use tables like vestax pdxa2s instead of stuff like this.
Another note, you obviously need a crossfader, transformers and all the other ports to get ANY real feal. But, picking a pmc07pro (the standard dj battle mixer) or some other nice mixer apart and modding it should be pretty easy.
In any case, I doubt that you'll get the sound right and I'll keep my analog equipment for the time beeing.
it might be wise to try and avoid making such detailed comments when you actually don't know what you're talking about. Audio latency on linux can be easily reduced to about 2.6ms at 48kHz on most current audio interfaces. At 96kHz, it can go down to 1.3ms. Yes, you need to be running the low latency patch for this to work well, and the application is question has to be written by someone who understands real time programming (true for any OS, including BeOS). You say "where it will stop, nobody knows" - I'm here to tell you that it stops there, and that in addition, i don't understand your response to this patch. Its widely understood to be necessary for Linux, has existed in various forms for more than 2 years, and is a reasonable candidate for mainstream inclusion at some point. with some cards, its possible to go significantly below these figures. The low latency patch seems to make numbers down to around 0.75ms feasible. Context switches take a tiny amount of time compared to the numbers we're talking about here. There is a constant component, which on a PII 450, which is by now an ancient CPU, is about 20usecs, and a variable component that depends on how much of the cache contents associated with the task has been invalidated since it last ran. This can cause a significant increase in the effective context switch time, but its quite manageable. nobody in their right minds would be using different threads for the i/o chain you describe. "can't read the clock - thats a syscall - latency". it takes about 60usec to call gettimeofday on a PII 450. if thats too slow, you can use the rdtscl instruction (intel only), which takes about 12 cycles. If you're interested in audio on linux, i suggest you join either the linux-audio-development or the linux-audio-users mailing lists. There's a lot of expertise there that you could learn from, and perhaps some things you could contribute. Paul Davis
Linux Audio Systems
Our rough unscientific study showed almost nobody uses computers to perform. Of those that do, Mac is a first choice and we take that very seriously. As for the vast majority of performers that don't use computers on stage: Why not start them off right? Most performers fear computers will mess up their act. You only have Micro$oft to blame for that. That it works is important, that it doesn't let you down is most important and it must sound 'real' on a big system. No M$ soundsystem can even produce CD quality audio.
Bill Squire
Electrical Engineer
N2IT Development BV
Amsterdam, NL
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/31/151522 8&mode=flat
I stand duly corrected.
My own rough unscientific study shows that you don't know what you're talking about. Musicians that make music on their computers (there's a whole lot of them nowadays) take their computers with them on stage when they perform. Macs, mostly, because most of the musicians you'll have heard of will have started doing their thing back in the day when there wasn't any reasonable audio app. for PCs. Not anymore. So now there's an increasing amount of PC-musicians starting to get good and playing live as well. Trust me, I've seen them do it. No glitches, crashes, nothing, and yes, it was CD quality. Get with the times.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Pioneer sells equipment for DJs that can do real-time "scratching" with CDs. The "turntables" are pressure-sensitive, so you can even slow the track down by gently pressing on them. My roommate has a pair of these and they're really fun.
See Pioneer's page for the CDJ-1000 for marketing.
Anyone that knows, a bigger advicate to the technology is John Acquaviva who has been in to the company from the start. I saw him on New Years eave and i don't think that he even brought any normal vinyl with him.. everything came off his finalscratch machine. So go check out his site www.jacq.com and slashdot his server.
-b
I suspect plenty of people thought of putting timecode on vinyl (or at the very least, relative-distance-from-start-of-groove-code, which is functionally equivalent) to scratch digital media, and independently derived methods to do so "from first principles." Because I sure did, and I'm not even that smart or industrious.
So if they develop those ideas into products, and sell them for a lot less than the exorbitant $500 you're charging for FinalScratch, then they deserve to wipe up the court with your greedy asses.
BTW - I saw Craze a few months ago, and you're right, he is incredible. Juggling dnb and hip hop all night. The kids were going nuts.
I independently developed a similar system about the same time as final scratch showed up. In a system like this, the OS latency (assuming BeOS or Linux with amorton's LL patches) is nothing compared with the resolution of the input device.
Final scratch, since it uses a 44.1Khz sound card as input, and has to support speeding up of the record between 2x and 4x therefore has a maximum resolution of 22Khz or 11Khz, depending on their upper end detectable speed. My system used a rotary encoder with a small gear ratio compared to the record size. With a encoder rate of 1024 ticks/rev I easily achieved over 40Khz.
Of course, business reality (small market, primarly uninterested in technology) prevented commercial exploition of the system. I applaud the final scratch inventors for pressing on. Scratching CDs and MP3s on turntables is compelling. Its unfortunate that it is not tenable from a business perspective.