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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.
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
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.
You'll do anything to get some karma-points, won't you?
This product is real. I've seen it with my own eyes, played with it with my own hands. It's real, and very,
very cool.
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.
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.
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).