Digital DJ Turntable

Daniel Gomez-Ibanez writes "I made a digital turntable - it stores digital audio and plays it back like a record player. This lets you scratch the audio from a CD. I like it because there's no 'computer' involved- a four year old can figure it out. There's a description here." Daniel also has a more descriptive web page on the inspiration and design of this beast.

Comments

Re:Scratching isn't simply sped up audio

[panaceaa]

I have some turntables and I definitely agree that vinyl is a whole lot sexier than cds. But CD djs are definitely taking over the low-end of clubs. At an average dance club, most patrons don't know or care that the music is on CDs. It's unfortunate.

Vinyl will continue to be the medium of choice, though, because most house and trance songs just aren't available on CD. And you can see the musical progression on a record, so you can easily line up phrases (32-measures) and see where breaks are without the need to completely know a song 64 measures ahead.

What it comes down to is the quality of mixes you can create on each medium. You can create a much better experience, as a dj, if you can see the grooves and know where the climaxes and breaks are with relation to the needle. Until you can do that with CDs (with some visualization firmware), and until decent tracks are released on CD, vinyl will remain.

That said, going to good clubs you still see greats like Tiesto and van Dyk using CDs for about 15-25% of the tracks they play.