CD Scratching (which CD player?)
I’m looking to purchase a CD player that I will only be using for scratching. I’m curious what people who have experience with this think is good. I’ve only every scratched on turntables (played around on some CDJs) but I need CDs for live use and I want to stay away from laptops (just a preference). I don’t mind buying used stuff so I’m really open to opinions.
Any suggestions would be super helpful! Thanks!
This is probably my favorite CD player to scratch on. You’ll feel most at home on it coming from turntables:
My next recommendation would be the Pioneer CDJ line. Especially the mdels after 800, 1000, 850, 900, 2000, and nexus’.
Probably the best scratch-friendly CD player currently on the market would be the Denon sc3900. 9" rotating vinyl-topped platter, on a multi-format media player that encompasses all of the features of high-end players- usb/cd, network linkable, full software control, on-screen waveform, quantized looping/cueing for tracks analysed in Denon’s Engine software etc.
It also supports track browsing via iPad (with Denon’s Engine app) over a wireless network, giving another non-laptop option while retaining the track-browsing benefits of a bigger screen. They are built like tanks and are fantastic in use.
Not particularly cheap through (approx £699/deck here in the UK), but in terms of current models there isn’t anything else offering all of that with a rotating platter (and still half the price of the high-end Pioneer units).
Obviously if you aren’t fussed about having motorized platters then any mid/high end Pioneer/Denon media player will probably do the job, as they all have a ‘vinyl mode’ for the jog wheel- pick the one that has the features you want and go from there.
If you aren’t bothered about any of the extra bells & whistles then as mentioned in the post above check out the SL-DZ1200 (motorized platter) used, or an older CDJ800mk2 (static jog-wheel) etc.