I tried posting about this in the "Midi Fighter resources etc" section and my thread never seemed to get any attention, so I guess I'll try talking about this here.
Ever since seeing the Numark NS7 and V7 I have been obsessed with them and have been wondering why more companies haven't tried to make USB DJ controllers that actually provide their own momentum. Everything else out there just has a dead, static platter, or in the best of cases, it has a static platter but has a touch sensor on it so that it knows when it's being touched in order to engage the scratching or stop the movement of the MP3 in the software. The VTT101 by DJ Tech (a company not related to DJTT) has this, but in my opinion it still can't come close to a device that actually has perpetual rotation. They made a USB turntable for scratching timecode discs as well... and so does everyone else out there, and every time I go on places like the Traktor forums posting about this kind of stuff, that's what I am told to get rather than continuing to hope and wish for the industry to cater to my personal wants, but I don't have that kind of money nor do I have the kind of desk space to accommodate two 1200s plus a mixer, let alone the NS7 which, while small, is still pretty huge. I just want a small controller that is for one thing and that is scratching in Traktor (and at present, the NS7 and its new spiffy remake do not support NI's software, only Serato).
I also recall messing around with a demo of a unit way way back in 2008 at a Guitar Center that used a laser to read the side of a moving platter, later found out this was the Technics SL-DZ1200.
http://djworx.com/wp-content/uploads.../Photos-01.jpg
This thing was genius and I'm surprised more people didn't try to copy it... I mean, basically what you have is a motorized platter with adjustable speed settings and a what amounts to the laser in an Optical Trackball Mouse reading the dots on the side of the platter.
I really wish that DJ Tech, or DJTT or anyone out there would make a compact controller for scratching that mimicked this kind of ingenuity. I mean, basically all you'd need is a housing the size of a Midi Fighter (or if that's too small, the size of an Akai MPD18), a motor inside of it, a 45 record sized platter with a pattern of grooves on it and a laser sticking up from the housing to read the movement of the platter; what speed it's moving at, whether it's going backwards or forwards, etc etc... You wouldn't even -need- a timecode disc because the grooves on the platter and the laser reading them would be what told the software where in virtual time it was at... hell, the disc wouldn't even necessarily -need- to be 45 sized, it could be CD sized and still work fine, and the smaller the platter, the less motor strength needed to spin it around.
Why isn't someone out there doing this already????
Seriously, why? Copyright / patent issues?
If some hobbyists out there can make something like this out
of an old discarded hard drive and an optical mouse's laser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMg3spZM-Ow#t=47
what's stopping DJTT or someone from making something
like what I've been talking about???
EDIT:
Just now learned of the existence of the Stanton SCS.1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktn1l6Wpy00
Holy crap, and here I thought the NS7 / V7 was the
only controller with motorized platters. If this came
in a 45 size, used USB instead of Firewire and had
its own crossfader, I would be in love...
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