DJs Spinning Those Hard Drives

Mipmap writes "Ben Kirkendoll leaves the records at home in favor of his iPods, Apple Computer's disk-based music player, which he simply plugs into an audio system's mixer. He's part of a small but growing number of DJs who have turned to MP3 music files for their accessibility and convenience..."

Comments

Access time and capacity

[yerricde]

Is a hard drive really that much smarter than a cd-r?

It's easier to access multiple portions of a HD at the same time because seeking on HD is much faster than seeking on CD. This is important unless your device has a very large RAM cache to load the next song you're trying to beatmatch to.

A single CD stores 8 hours of 192 kbps Ogg audio. If your set is larger than that (one copy for each Ogg CD player), you have to carry multiple CDs and possibly swap after every song, which brings me to the next part:

Unlike a CD-R, a HD has an airtight seal between scratches and your data.

I could be talking out my

Not important.

[Krapangor]

At the very high sound levels in clubs a human ear cannot distinguish any longer between the high frequency pitchs which would be affected be low quality encoding.
Additionally the standard audience of a club is usually exposed to high sound levels over longer periods therefore having a reduced ability of hearing these high frequencies.
BTW: This also affects the DJs, you can check this by making a spectrum analysis of the standard techno/club stuff on MTV. You'll notice extremely repetitive/monotone patterns in the high frequency bands. This is were the club saying: "I'm addicted to bass" comes from.

This article was not interesting at all...

[steppin_razor_LA]

I hate to be a troll, but I'm a little bummed this article made it to slashdot. I read it last night on Yahoo and was only impressed with it's lack of newsworthyness.

The recent Slashdot article on Digital DJ Turntable was far more interesting.

Lets recap this article. Some people have figured out that you can put a bunch of music on a computer or ipod and play that at events. Wow! You say this technology allows you to put together a list of songs and then play then in a row one after another???

Look at who they interviewed:

But Kirkendoll, who calls himself "The Podiatrist," was hired for his collection of music and penchant for feeling the vibe of a crowd, not his ability to mix or scratch.

In other words, this is the guy who plays music at your wedding.

What the story should be about is about some of the developments in technology that allow *real DJs* to perform instead of vinyl. When I say *real DJs", I mean those that perform at clubs that use beatchmatching, effects, and other techniques to create a fluid music listening experience.

AtomixMP3 has been making some good progress at allowing people to use MP3s like turntables. Unfortunately, it still doesn't have anything that allows DJs to be able to "see" the CD the same way real DJs can apparently visually check out the grooves on the record.

Re:Who doesn't have talent?

[bad-badtz-maru]

"Commercial-grade" sound systems, such as those typically found in dance clubs, generally reproduce the music so poorly that not only can you not hear the difference between vinyl, CD, or MP3 you can barely recognize any track as being anything other than "something with screaming highs and bone-shaking bottom". A club isn't exactly an environment for critical listening and I seriously doubt that anyone at an average club could hear the difference between a CD and a 128 bit MP3.

maru