D
droid
Guest
Er... ok. The major difference there is that once you burn them to CD theres nothing you can do to the tune, whereas using Serato you could preview a tune and boost the volume minutes before playing it...
Your preferred digital DJ system and why
- Thread starter nomos
- Start date
Er... ok. The major difference there is that once you burn them to CD theres nothing you can do to the tune, whereas using Serato you could preview a tune and boost the volume minutes before playing it...
UFO over easy
online mahjong
you can't really boost the volume on the serato software too much without the tune sounding pretty awful, from my experience you'll still mostly be controlling volume by the mixer gains. either way there's not a huge amount of tunes, mastered or not, which will be so quiet as to render the mixer gains useless, unless you're really ramping them. if a tune is really causing that much of a problem, without mastering you're stuck whether you use serato or CDJs.
also I've been told, (might be wrong) that CDJ1000s actually have a default boost set up to try and compensate for unmastered CD vs. mastered vinyl. can't find any info on this on the web though.
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Grievous Angel
Beast of Burden
Ableton controllers: the evolution x-session is cheap and durable.
But... are you really, really that good at beatmatching? Cos Serato demands that you be able to mix. Ableton is much more forgiving.
Then again you can't spinback ableton. That's a huge downside.
You really need to try a controller with Live; since a) you already have it and b) all live users should be trying to add more performance to their mixes. You really can cut fast and mix with the x-session. I think it has a large measure of the immediacy of vinyl.
But you have to prepare your files, just like you have to learn your records.
Thing is, you'll mainly be getting grime files rather than dubstep 12s in the next couple of years, so you may as well make the switch now...
But... are you really, really that good at beatmatching? Cos Serato demands that you be able to mix. Ableton is much more forgiving.
Then again you can't spinback ableton. That's a huge downside.
You really need to try a controller with Live; since a) you already have it and b) all live users should be trying to add more performance to their mixes. You really can cut fast and mix with the x-session. I think it has a large measure of the immediacy of vinyl.
But you have to prepare your files, just like you have to learn your records.
Thing is, you'll mainly be getting grime files rather than dubstep 12s in the next couple of years, so you may as well make the switch now...
Chef Napalm
Lost in the Supermarket
Although it's never happened to me personally, I'm told by people who know that catastrophic HD failures are a common occurance. I would hope that you don't often get mates' brothers urinating on your vinyl. Actually, apart from the sleeves, I'd be surprise if urine would adversely affect the actual record at all.
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D
droid
Guest
I was thinking that you could just drag it into forge and do a quick boost? I only mentioned that issue as i have a lot of dancehall that came from different sources with wide variations in volume, so I have to normalise everything before burning - as a lot of the time the mixer gains are pushed well up if youre playing after someone else (as Im sure youve experienced).
Ive got 800mk2s and theres no volume boost that I know of.
Spilt beer is the great destroyer of vinyl.
I prefer Serato to pretty much all other Mp3 based mixing software, it is miles better than Final Scratch, and feels more like spinning vinyl than CDJs. My only beef with it is that over big enough systems, the tunes still sound more compressed and quieter than vinyl regardless of whether they are 320 kbps mp3s, FLACs or whatever. I've been told that this is because Serato compresses files as they come into the software, but this hasn't been substantiated yet by anybody.
I remember hearing Plastician play at DMZ a year ago following a Kode 9 set, and there was a definite audible drop in sound quality. Plasticians set just sounded a little flat and dull, and he was using Serato.
UFO over easy
online mahjong
I see what you mean but it's still basically the same I reckon, as it wouldn't be such a good idea to do this while you're playing out. minimise stability risks etc
One of the guys who works at Serato posts here occassionally, perhaps he could clarify? They use compression on the timecode data, but I can't see a reason for the audio to be compressed.
Perhaps the lack of quality is more that tracks from vinyl will have been mastered by a pro on high-end gear; fairly impossible to duplicate that at home. But also there are a ton of variables there. It could simply be that Plastician had flatter EQ in Serato or the mixer it was running through, or the soundcard had poor converters... etc etc.
Hey, that's me
Nah, that's not the case. I doubt any DJ software would do that.
The hardware is a bit quiet.
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noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
:slanted:
Just kidding, sort of. Actually I remember Plastician playing the last set at a DMZ a couple of years ago and his stuff seemed quite a bit louder than the set before. Maybe more crisp and harsh than loud as such. Looked like he was using Serato (Serato Scratch, right dave?) then.
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Dusty
Tone deaf
I have almost 1TB of flac files - and this week my main 1TB external drive packed up with no warning - I obviously have it all backed up, but when it takes 6+ hours to copy that much data onto a new drive it really is a kick in the nuts. Just reminds me how fragile this whole digital lark is. I had been toying with the idea of selling the original CDs, but I think they are going to stay now. Losing your digital collection in one go is a hell of a lot easier than someone destroying your record collection - bar burning your house down.
Dusty
Tone deaf
Perhaps on my stereo, and only then the sub-bass seems a bit tighter on some types of music. I did notice bjorks voice isn't as flat on flac after listening to Vespertine ages ago in both formats as a test (I am anal like that) so the complexity of the human voice is perhaps the easiest thing for our ears to recognise compression in. Can't tell the difference at all on my grado headphones.
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
These would be cancelled out by the clubs set up, just use good master files. In Ableton we always use Wav files and we remaster everything for volume etc - does the trick.
nomos
Administrator
so in the end i settled on the cheapest, most familiar route which was good old ableton coupled with an m-audio x-session pro midi mixer. grand total $100 which i plan to make back by selling off my uc-33 mixer. i still don't like the idea of spending more time with a computer but the mixer makes it so that you don't need to use the trackpad or keyboard much when you're playing.
this review did it for me. it suggests a couple of simple controller assignments that are really useful but that i wouldn't have thought of (e.g. using one pair of left/right buttons to scroll through scenes and the others to toggle between ch. 1 & 2. also, using the cue switches to toggle loop on and off)
cdj's would have been my first choice for their tactility and non-computerness but i wasn't going to spend the money. the data vinyl options felt like too much fuss.
had a go with the x-session last night and liking just about everything except that there doesn't seem to be a way to setup the EQs (using ableton's EQ3) that matches an analogue mixer. i.e. fully left = inf db; 12:00 indent = 0db; fully right = +6ish db. by default 0db ends up at about 3 o'clock. playing with parameter settings in the midi map i came up with some half measures but it's a bit of an adjustment.
also the reviewer says he used two of the faders to control cue levels for each channel but i can't see where to make the assignment.
this review did it for me. it suggests a couple of simple controller assignments that are really useful but that i wouldn't have thought of (e.g. using one pair of left/right buttons to scroll through scenes and the others to toggle between ch. 1 & 2. also, using the cue switches to toggle loop on and off)
cdj's would have been my first choice for their tactility and non-computerness but i wasn't going to spend the money. the data vinyl options felt like too much fuss.
had a go with the x-session last night and liking just about everything except that there doesn't seem to be a way to setup the EQs (using ableton's EQ3) that matches an analogue mixer. i.e. fully left = inf db; 12:00 indent = 0db; fully right = +6ish db. by default 0db ends up at about 3 o'clock. playing with parameter settings in the midi map i came up with some half measures but it's a bit of an adjustment.
also the reviewer says he used two of the faders to control cue levels for each channel but i can't see where to make the assignment.
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urbanite
subnoto
I'd imagine this has a lot more to do with the quality of the DA converters used in the Serato box, it's basically an external audio card running through USB... Most high end external audio interfaces usually run on firewire and are a fair bit more expensive... so I imagine this is where the dull part comes from...
Also another thing I've noticed is the sound is a lot drier because there is no feedback coming back from the turntable, which is nice in a way. No matter how well you isolate your turntables in a club vinyl still tends to hum and resonate on bass heavy tracks, thus sounding a bit warmer in the bottom range especially.
I've been checking out Deckadance recently, you can use it as a VST insert which is rather handy.
they offer 2 versions, the 'pro' version gives you timecode.
www.deckadance.com
they offer 2 versions, the 'pro' version gives you timecode.
www.deckadance.com