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

Scratching isn't simply sped up audio

[ObviousGuy]

There is a lot of white noise generated during scratching, noise that is not available on a digital CD.

How did you create the scratch effect?

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.

Re:Scratching isn't simply sped up audio

[p0d]

Here's where I can interject an actual comment.

Clubbing is my profession, I shoot for a local nightlife guide...

A lot of top DJs use CDs, since they get a lot of new material that way...some of those tracks you hear are on CD, because the artist cannot afford to get vinyl pressed at the moment..also, consider Tenaglia, who does 15 hour sets on average..can you imagine toting around 15 hrs worth of vinyl?!?

Certain other DJs, notably Erick Morillo and Steve Lawler, use the CD player as a sampler of sorts, carrying all their samples and noise on CDs...crobar South Beach just got equipped with CDJ-1000s, and with their response time and effects banks, they are quite akin to a true sampler from what I can see.

Vinyl has it's merits, certainly. Real clubs demand it. Your average "clubgoer" in Buttfuck, MI is not 'educated' enough to care, but in a big city with a true nightlife, vinyl, as well as a sophisticated CD deck like the 1000, is not only expected, but is demanded...

Re:dithering razor

[HP LoveJet]

Maybe it's just an error-diffusing way to reduce your 24-bit beard to 8 bits of stubble.

How about a real Digital Tuntable?

[RAruler]

Final Scratch

Final Scratch, uses a hybrid of actual turntables and digital audio. You use a pair of special vinyl records, connect the audio out of the turntables into this strange USB device which controls the software that allows you to cue/scratch mp3s...

It was only available for systems running BeOS, but they are branching out with Mac OS/Win32 and Linux versions.. You only need a 'standard' DJ setup, two turntables and a two line mixer.. it's insanely cool.. the only downside is the price, $500USD, but thats relatively cheap to a stack of vinyl, or your Technics 1200's.

Re:How about a real Digital Tuntable?

[spoonboy42]

Actually, Final Scratch is Linux-based. The install CD comes with a bare-bones linux distro and partitioning utils to get you started. Alternately, you can just put the final scratch software on any laptop that already has linux installed. Oh, and you still need a good set of direct-drive tables to use it effectively (1200's or something comparable, i.e. Vestax PDX-2000's, Stanton STR8-100's, etc.).

I should also note that the Pioneer CDJ-1000 has beaten this home-brew to the punch. It has pitch-adjust and a substantial jog-wheel that is actually adequate for scratching. DJ Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist have been using CDJ-1000s in their live shows for some time, now.

The CDJ-1000 has the benefit of almost zero latency and no skipping. On the other hand, you can drop-cue in final scratch, and its "record box" categorization system is very convenient (and 3 ms of latency is not too bad). You can also plug your final scratch system into pretty much any club setup. Lugging around CDJ-1000's is not so easy.

Re:How about a real Digital Tuntable?

[TeknoDragon]

I've started mixing with CDJ's... here is my opinion on the current problems with the CDJ1000

* cd buffering to memory is too slow, making it hard to do extremely quick seeks and scratch off of a randomly selected point you seeked to on the disk. Note you can do this using the hot-queues, but that's because each hot queue holds a small buffer of it's own.
* the rapid seek function is not as smooth as even the CDJ100
* too few queue points, you need a direct song map or multiple queue points so that you can approach a "needle drop" skill on a digital TT

I should note that very few players offer the true control of the CDJ1000. Even tho the platter doesn't spin pressure on the platter halts and resumes play. I haven't touched the Dannon yet, but none of the other Pioneer DTT's do this.

DJ's generally HATE anything but vinyl. DJing is a community of luddites. Final scratch is a step towards what they like, but the sample rate and resolution of mp3's and even CD's are not rich enough to completely match the performance of analog records passed through effects and slowed down. Perhaps with a next generation DTT with DVD-A support.

Of course this begs the question that most audio is produced in the studio at 48khz so what would DVD-A do for you that a better interpolation algorithm wouldn't?

Re:How about a real Digital Tuntable?

[mpe]

DJ's generally HATE anything but vinyl. DJing is a community of luddites.

IMHO calling them that is unfair since the supposedly new and improved technology can't do something the old technology can.

FinalScratch?

[tswinzig]

I remember hearing about a program called FinalScratch that is REAL similar to this, a few years ago. I think it came out first for BeOS. It's the same kind of thing, in that it uses digital audio for the source, but it's actually tied into a real turntable with a "real" vinyl record, and it sounds like it has a lot of cool features for DJ's.

Here's their site.

Scratching ...

[White Shade]

As has been posted before, there's more to the sound of scratching than just speeding up/slowing down the sound ... There are significant changes in volume, and increases in teh amount of noise. And, if you move the record really slow you get a strange sorta softened crunch noise which is very different than the 'normal' sound you get from a slowed down audio stream..

Still, it's a damn good idea, and if nothing else (and it's definitely more than this), it would be a kickass gimmick to have on stage with you!

Technology is a good thing...

Also see MixMeister / GRAM

[r]

While on the topic of digital DJ'ing - if you're looking for software, check out MixMeister. It's one of the most interesting DJ software titles around, with great waveform and BPM manipulations tools (ie. changing speed without changing pitch), and smart automatic beat matching.

I understand the free GDAM has similar abilities, but I haven't used it. Any comments from those who have would be appreciated!

Final Scratch is actually...

[LightJockey]

... based entirely in Linux, because as it says on Stanton's website, Windows is "not a stable enough environment"

I've played with Final Scratch, Ritchie Hawtin had a hand in it, and it is, without a word of a doubt, incredible. But if you really want to go pure digital, check out the Pioneer CDJ-1000, allows you to save wave data off a CD, store it to an SD card, scratch, cue, add effects, everything. Check it out here

Interesting choice of words...

[guttentag]

I like it because there's no 'computer' involved- a four year old can figure it out.

Many four year olds are more computer literate than their parents, but I suspect they'd have trouble figuring out a turntable.

terminatorX

[seanmeister]

kinda reminds me of the very cool terminatorX program.... the author built a turntable for scratching using an old turntable and some mouse guts.

From the site:

[ByteHog]

A digital signal processor seemed to be the answer but the cost of the development kit was $3000. Fortunately, thanks to a generous "donation" from "corporate sponsors" I obtained the development kit and a DSP board.

Does this make anyone else wonder where he got it? :)