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Hercules USB DJ Console Reviewed
SpinnerBait writes "Professional DJs and House-Party Beat Masters alike, will certainly be
interested in a new product that the folks at Hercules Audio are bringing to
market shortly. Although you may remember Hercules for being one of the
first in PC Graphics, HotHardware has a review and showcase up that takes a look at the new Hercules
USB DJ Console. This little deck comes with dual mixing pads, for
blending and scratching of your favorite MP3s etc. It also takes over as your main
PC sound system, with full Dolby 5.1 capabilities, when plugged into any PC via
USB."
Yet another Linux zealot troll. Nothing to see here. Move along, people.
Nothing surpasses the true sound of analog vinyl ! Get the best of both worlds with final scrach http://www.finalscratch.com
This package includes digitally encoded vinyl that sends the signal to your laptop running Linux/Mac OS, and synchronizes your mp3 with the vinyl. It then sends it back into the mixer for mixing.
Coolest toy I have played with in awhile, and it still keeps my sound clean and bad ass playing thru any pair of technic 1200's
The Soundfont capability of the Live! cards is also an incredible feature on a budget. I have over 1000 patches available from my cheap USB midi controller ($150) in real time, right now, just push the button. That's 600 megs of audio samples and I still have room for 15,000 patches in my current setup.
The midi device is limited in polyphony, which is why I have more than one card. I route patches with high numbers of voices to the card with KX project drivers and the limitation is just a memory.
You can link multiple Live! cards via the digital IO pins that are present on nearly every model. This synchronizes the clocks and you eliminate the problem of time-drift when running a sequence.
Now, no need to remind me that none of this would make the grade at a professional level. I know there are bigger and better things out there. For the price, though, the amateur/home/hobby musician cannot do better than a couple of SB Live cards. My total investment has been $150 for a basic midi controller plus the cost of Cakewalk ($299 or Kazaa discount.) Everything else (Megafont, KX drivers, SB drivers, donated soundcards, public domain samples and soundfonts) has been completely free.
So don't rip on the Soundblasters. They are not profesional, but dollar for dollar, you really can't do any better.
and it's unneccessarily difficult
Vinyl is much, much easier to work with that CDs or any other type of digital format. On a record, you can see the changes in the track by the variations in the groove pattern. This makes it easier to find your cue point and know when the breakdowns and other changes are coming up. It also makes beatmatching and cueing easier as you can manipulate the actual movement of the record and not just a 'play' button and some stationary jog wheel (though there are CD players that try to emulate the rotation of a record.)
The only digital media that seems to come close to vinyl is Staton's Final Scratch which I have yet to try.
Here's a basic history of rap as I, a 30 year-old white guy, know it:
Modern rap goes back to NYC in the late 70's. "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang dates back to then. Also, around the same time, DJ Kool Herc was the first guy known to use two turntables to cut seamlessly back and forth between songs.
Things picked up in the early to mid 80's, when we saw NYC-based acts like L.L. Cool J, Public Enemy, and Run-DMC. The Beastie Boys became the first white rappers to hit it big. Rap crossed over to young, white America (the MTV generation) mostly thanks to Run-DMC collaborating with Aerosmith on the remake of "Walk This Way" in 1986. Most pre-1988 rap was innocent (and mostly clean) braggadocio of the "I'm cooler than you [and here's why]" variety.
In the late 80's and early 90's, gangsta rap got big with acts like Ice-T, Eazy-E and N.W.A., and later Snoop Doggy Dogg, who were actually gang members/criminals, whose violent lyrics raised the ire of older whitebread America. It was around this time that the whole east coast rapper vs. west coast rapper war broke out. At the same time, Vanilla Ice gave white rappers a bad name.
Around 1994 I felt that most new rap that was coming out was shit, so it is at this point that my history gets sketchy. In the late 90's there was essentially a cavalcade of mush-mouthed, lowlife bastards like Notorious B.I.G., DMX, Ja Rule, 50-Cent, Busta Rhymes, etc, whose already-incoherent words were further drowned out by overly-thunderous bass. Oh, and Tupac, who became quite prolific and released more albums after he was dead than he did while alive. Videos became nothing but pissing contests to see who could squeeze the most whorish-looking women and the most garish Cadillac Escalades into a few minutes of video. The music became secondary because every fucking rapper on the planet was too busy trying to do movies. It was also around this time that we got the highly-annoying Eminem. Oh, and let's not forget shitty rap-rock acts like Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, etc. Yuck.
My iPod has about 400 rap/hip-hop songs on it, and very damn few of them are dated after 1995-- but I still listen to and enjoy almost everything that came before.
Perhaps I should have been a little more specific: the real DJs who wish to spin stuff from a computer will use Final Scratch.
Also, FYI Final Scratch does support lossless formats. In fact the newest version uses NI Traktor as its front end.
A certain amount of kudos is due to Stanton here, because the intel version is Linux, and there is no Windows version. Version 1.1 adds OS X support too.
Finally if you check the web site you'll see that there are two different records available for it - one optimized for scratching and the other for mixing. But I will admit I'm by no means an expert DJ.
I agree with you however, that Final Scratch will not replace genuine pressed records. But for the DJ who also creates music, Final Scratch is an invaluable tool to bring that cool groove you put together to a gig the same evening.
I'm a DJ, club promoter and I also rep several DJs. Three of them are basically vinyl only; four use a mixture of vinyl and CDs. None of them use just CDs.
In my club business I hire DJs all the time. So far I've come across two DJs that are CD only out of about two dozen.
Maybe in mobil DJ work people don't care about sound quality. In nightclub work it counts a lot. There is one local DJ here in San Francisco that wants to work for me, but I won't hire him because most of his music (all on CD) are from mp3 downloads and much of it sounds like crap.
From the post I'm guessing you do events like weddings and such, I think there's a big difference between event DJ's and club/rave djs
they are completely different and need different hardware, regular djs never need to beatmatch or change pitch,
whereas club djs have to have complete control of the sound, that's why final scratch is amazing, and this hardware will be passed off as lame.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
The only thing that sounds "stupid" is the suggestion that Mac OS X has a problem with 5.1 surround sound! Since 10.1, the underlying "Core Audio" architecture has had no problem with far more channels than that.
Um.... don't worry too much anyway Gregoyle, I don't really think this product is aimed at people who want "to be taken seriously in the DJ world". Could you imagine, really, getting up in front of over 200 people with that silly looking thing? Don't worry. You can always run Traktor on a Mac, and if you really want to do some cool shit, grab Final Scratch.
That said, if you have a good mic (as good as you can with an 1/8" input) and turn off the +20 dB mic preamp, you should be getting reasonable sounding takes. The next improvement you could make would be to use a separate mixing board or preamp that allows you to condition the sound before sending it to the soundcard. Boosting the lows, etc., will usually help a cheap mic sound better before it hits the soundcard.
I actually direct-line my electric guitar sometimes with a 1/4-1/8" mono adapter and get some great sounds. Granted you have to at least some reverb and preferably an amp simulator before it sounds like a "live" electric guitar, but it certainly is not impossible to get good sounding recording with a Soundblaster.
And I do mean "good", not "professional".
KX Project has alternate drivers for the SB Live! that focus on recording audio and using multiple soundcards simultaneously. More info on this site than I can digest.
Hammer Sound is no longer updated, but has a moderate collection of free soundfonts so your midi stuff will sound like Dr. Dre instead of some AOL user's homepage.
Audio Forums is, to the best of my experience, the place to go when you want answers from people who know for sure. This is definitely the place to ask for tips on getting the best quality recording out of your SB Live.