But it’s not like ‘something else’. You still have to use a turntable, you still use vinyl even though the music comes from elsewhere. Unless you can afford to get all your favourite tunes on vinyl, something like this certainly doesn’t seem “stupid” from a design standpoint. In fact, I believe DVS has allowed many DJs (who otherwise wouldn’t have) to experience vinyl. I see DVS setups everywhere (at least in the genres of music that I follow) and I think this popularity speaks for itself. If you ask me, it’s quite an achievement from a design standpoint. In short, I don’t think there’s anything silly about it, after all, everything new is well-forgotten old.
And I think you’re a bit caught up in thinking that people are taking some kind of ‘side’ in this, it’s just a discussion. No one is defending or attacking anything
Dude you do understand that when DVS first came out it gave artist the ability to play music from their laptops instead of having to carry multiple crates to a gig. This was brilliant and revolutionary. It’s what has paved the way for what DJing is today (laptop DJing and controllers).
Also, there are certain scratches and techniques that you simply can not perform unless it’s on actual vinyl and stylus…no matter what new tools come out – the V7’s and NS7 came close, but not still not really it.
If there were a current solution that was a mechanical match to turntables, I’d agree. YOU seem to be missing the point. One thing that I do as a hip hop DJ on certain nights, is rely on scratching. I can say with certainty, that most scratch DJ’s don’t feel there is any solution that gives the control that a turntable and wax give you. If there were, battle DJ’s would be using controllers or CDJ’s. If that were the case, I’d say I agree with you, but it’s not illogical or stupid from a design standpoint at all. I no longer have to carry around several crates of records to play an entire night. I no longer have to worry about damaging limited release 12" records. Also, DVS has diminished the need to have precise tone arm calibration with relative mode… it doesn’t matter if the needle jumps. All of that, and I still can use the best tool available for scratching.
i think as well that TC is here to stay as some sort of small niche. like sobi mentions above, there are users such as scratch djs for which no solutions superior to TC exist.
at the same time, i see it becoming more marginalized. only like 3-4 years ago, i remember that in certain venues, TC vinyl was the only way of playing digital. it was just that TC vinyl was not quite as frowned upon as TC CDs or controllers. but acceptance for CDJs is increasing, as is acceptance of controller DJing. plus, for more and more DJ CD players, you don’t need TC anymore.
so again, i see TC becoming more marginalized. i wouldn’t be terribly surprised if at least one of the big vendors drops support for it in 5 years or so. and i think traktor is most likely to be the first to ditch TC control.
I can’t see that happening; plenty of scratch DJs use TSP. Actually I can’t see the point to anyone ditching it - it’s already implemented in most software, and there’s not a whole lot to improve about it; it’s not like it costs them a lot to maintain it in the code base. They might farm out sales of timecode vinyl to other companies if it suits them to quit making it (or go the VDJ/Ms Pinky route and allow any other company’s time code vinyl to work) but that’s certainly not NI’s style.
First off, just to be clear, I don’t want to argue or fight or anything. It’s just a discussion so no hard feelings.
DVS that uses a real turntables, and thinking that will be around for while is what I’m talking about.
A manufacturer could easily make a device that has a 12 inch platter, a motor, and an internal optical tracking mechanism that is as good as a time coded fake record. It would be cheaper, easier to use, more consistent and wouldn’t require as much hardware.
That’s what I am saying is stupid. Why the hell even still use a needle and an arm? A cheap gaming mouse has an optical tracking system that is more than adequate to track the movements of scratching or playing.
But any major maker like Native Instruments would get a ton of blowback if they did that. Heck, people still bitch about the “sync” button. Imagine if a company made scratching and vinyl cheap and easy. They would lose cred with all those old school DJs. You guys would all be on here crying “Oh great, now every kid thinks he can scratch”
Don’t forget!! The discussion was about whether DVS will be around in a while. And I’m saying eventually people will realize it’s OK to not have a turntable with an arm and needle touching a fake record. You can get the exact same performance cheaper and easier if people would accept it.
I disagree that anything would be cheaper, You must have never used turntables otherwise you would know that to get good performance you need a big strong (heavy) direct drive motor… the weight and the movement means you need to encase it in a solid case so plastic is out of the question, metal is the only answer adding to the cost and the weight. If you are investing a lot of money you are hardly going to use sub par plastic controls from an S2/4 that will bring the overall feel of the unit down so now you are adding premium components at more cost.
In the end you have an expensive and heavy unit (cost more to ship) like the SC-37/3900, SCS1.D, NS7. There is no way you could make it much cheaper than these other existing options.
For people who already own tech’s which are a precision instrument and much more natural than any controller, DVS allows them to evolve their setup and still use their favourite format for playing their tunes. It’s good to have the limit of a needle that can jump as it forces you to improve your technique (it doesn’t jump very often unless you suck).
I see where you’re coming from crakbot, but here is another thing to consider : turntables for djs, as they exist today, are a very solid, very resilient and mostly “technologically” “there” piece of equipment. That means that aside from some tlc and some spare parts, the technics that are in the clubs today will still be there in 10/15 hell maybe even 20 years.
And because the turntable has pretty much evolved to the point where you can only add so much to it, it means that clubs won’t invest the same money like they do on a cdj. Because the cdj has more tech inside, is more prone to failure and is in fact (and that is the biggest difference) more prone to technological obsolescence.
That obsolescence is the main problem with cdjs; in how many years do you see the cd drive going the way of the dodo ? And then flash drives ?
And the vinyl ?
Well a piece of vinyl is an experience in and of itself, it’s an object of pasion, it “feels” like it has a soul, even if it’s maybe some kind of a placebo effect or something. But it has been a decade that people declared the vinyl DEAD, personally i can see that it’s disappearing, but only from the view of the “public”. Because if you want a piece of vinyl, there are ways and places where you can find it.
I mean to say that there will always be a group of irreductible people that will not let it die, at least no before the cd goes boooyaa.
Having a new solution, like the one you theorize isn’t impossible nor vain. But that new piece of technology will have to face both cdjs and turntables, and also require wide adoption. Because i’d love to have that solution, but then you show up at a club and the cdj has a regular non moving platter, will you be bringing the pair of new shiny to the clubs weeks after weeks ? If by some magic marketing it becomes the norm in club instal, then great, more power to all of us, untill then,
Vinyl’s death has been greatly exaggerated. Even from the view of the public; here’s a chart of vinyl record sales since 1993. 2012 figures aren’t in yet but projections are for at least a 17% increase over 2011, which was already a huge increase from the year before that, and so it goes. Most of the new buyers probably aren’t DJs but that’s not the issue here:
People always try to apply logic/reason to turntables/vinyl but yet here we are still using them and I myself still buy vinyl. I’d like to believe that “A manufacturer could easily make a device that has a 12 inch platter, a motor, and an internal optical tracking mechanism that is as good as a time coded fake record.” but the truth is that there isn’t anything like that. A turntable is not just a motor with an internal mechanism… I think it has a very intricate relationship with vinyl, a unique medium in my opinion. Without the vinyl itself, a turntable would indeed be ‘silly’. Despite all the seemingly logical arguments against vinyl/turntables, they’re still here.
Going back to the original question, timecode will exist for a very long time and its existence depends on the existence of vinyl records I think. And why should vinyl die out? Many generations have been brought up with it and there will always be a busy underground scene which accounts for a lot of the vinyl out there.
Well they’ve tried with the NS7 and V7. I still don’t think you get it that for some scratches and techniques you NEED a vinyl record and an arm. You simply CAN NOT do it on the V7’s. So it is not stupid.
Another to consider for those who said Timecode will get ditched soon, you are forgetting the sales that soundcards generate. There is more money in hardware than software.
technics need way more servicing than cdjs. ask any rental service or club owner.** the tech “inside” a cdj is all solid state which is far less likely to fail than the moving mechanical and electromechanical parts in a technics.
on the broader issue, i think it is misguided to shift the discussion towards the technological advantages of technics vs the rest. imo, all that matters is what equipment djs demand to have in the booth. and my impression is fewer djs use vinyl, timecode or not. yes, maybe the scratch djs stick to it. but in other areas (such as dubstep or house djs), it seems to me the late '00 vinyl boom is coming to an end.
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** in clubs where the owner is unfamiliar with the concept of maintenance the technics are usually way more f**ked up than the cdjs.
[QUOTE]technics need way more servicing than cdjs. ask any rental service or club owner.** the tech “inside” a cdj is all solid state which is far less likely to fail than the moving mechanical and electromechanical parts in a technics.
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Gotta disagree with you there, there’s far more moving parts in a CDJ than a 1210 that can go wrong and having been in Technics Rental for 10 years they needed far less maintenance than almost every other piece of kit we put out. Throw in a new pitch control and cables every 2+ years and occasionally someone would screw up the tonearm bearings. The cost factor of repair cheap compared to CDJ’s and the resale of a 5yr old ex-rental deck was not much less than buying one wholesale.
27 buttons vs 3 (or 4)
Pitch Slider - Both
CD drive vs Technics Platter Motor
Internal Electronics minimal vs advanced
LCD display on CDJ
Rotary pots and encoders on CDJ.
Rotating Touch sensitive platter on CDJ
And yes the technics are usually more fucked due to them being way older than the CDJ’s and in most cases these days the redundant things djs’ throw midi controllers on.
Anyhows, back OT ..
Will DVS die out? not for a very long time, the current crop of Scratch DJ’s are still using it so not until they retire - say 20/30 years
Its kinda funny that people complain about the cost of technics and DVS when an entire setup can cost less than a single CDJ2k… hmmmmm, now that I say it out loud.
It’s going up, sure, but once upon a time one big seller could move as many units as are now sold in a year. Don’t get me wrong though, I am obsessed with vinyl and was buying it at the depths of that graph ('93) and still buy it now. I’m waiting on a delivery any day now.
On the subject of fake turntables, these things would be sizeable and, as they couldn’t play vinyl, they wouldn’t be touched by anyone with real records to listen to. How could I spin my James Brown 45s on a TT without a tonearm?
I have several friends that were or are a rental service or venue owner, and every single one would giggle themselves wet if they read this. In small talk about gear, the amazement of how rock solid technics were always seemed to come up with every single one of them. So much so, that I know a handful of people who think Panasonic’s business model was flawed for making such a reliable device.
i read with interest what deevey wrote on cdj reliability. admittedly, i had a job in an equipment rental service before cdjs became big. we mostly rented out those dual cd players from monacor, denon, and occasionally pio iirc. and technics 1210s.
but again, it was my experience the cd players rarely needed servicing. and our standard monacor dual cd players weren’t exaxtly top-of-the line.
technics, on the other hand, constantly had small issues. continually, stylus replacements were necessary. the tonearm rest (not sure what the proper english term is, this thing on which you can set the tonearm and affix it) broke all the time. the tonearm itself, ground cables, and rcas came back damaged. bearings and the inside were full of dirt and fluids and had to be cleaned. plus the usual regular replacements of target light and pitch. and i’m sure i must have forgotten quite a few other things that broke…
i’m not making this shit up. our technics rental prices were fairly high because there were so many issues.
edit: not that the cd players never broke down. but, the bottom line, is with the technics there was a problem after rental or every other rental.
