Vinyl or CD

[conor_j]

cant see why any dj with plans of playing clubs would buy anything other than industry standard gear imo, i.e technics 1210's or cdj1000's

[EdRyan]

Those Numark CD decks are good, but too big and heavy.

Vinyl is pretty much dead, certainly for dance music. Bar the odd special edition, it seems most labels are now doing it as cd and d/l only.

I think the big nail in the coffin was Vital and Amato going under. They were the big distro's for vinyl. So the problem now is even if people want to release on wax, getting it to sale may prove a bit tricky. I know one person who's taken it all on himself. He arranged mastering, cutting and is selling just through juno and himself. Fairplay !

I still like to play on vinyl when I get chance. It just feels more hands on then anything else, even if things like CDJs and Ableton let you tamper with the record in more creative ways.
The last time I played out I did a vinyl set, and people seemed to appreciate it. You can't carry thousands of tracks in your pocket, or mix automatically. So the crowd sees more thought go into the selection and mixing process. It felt good to get back to where I started, and away from sounding like every other person on the planet who downloads the same tracks from the beatport lists

[Meander]

At my last gig I had the DJ's from the other room (who were using CD's) coming in and telling me how much the admired what I was doing! (IE using vinyl). IMHO the "show" is about people being able to SEE the skills you have which can't be done on a CDJ.

I'm not a technophobe, I've used CD's in the past but I don't have any fun doing it and it seems that the punters prefer it too. Personally I'd be devastated if I couldn't get the stuff I wanted on vinyl but it seems that for my chosen style, atm at least, that is not the case.

[Benoit]

Ableton for me. You can be so much more creative with it. When I started using it about 4 years ago I got a bit of stick of my vinyl junkie mate. My argument is that playing records at the right time in the right order is the essence of djing not what tools you use to do it.

Although I do agree that the DJ persona is lost a little when it looks like there chatting on facebook all night

[EdRyan]

I LOVE Live. It's great for helping out with converting records over to digital. I on;y really use it for correcting the timing errors on records that I want to save onto cd.

I know I'm not using it to anywhere near it's potential, but it's all I want from it. Because, for dj-ing with, it takes too much away. I don't have as much fun playing with live, as I do with vinyl or even cd decks..

I don't think that we will really see Live take off, the way it could, until clubs update their sound systems to handle it. Imagine what you could do with a multichannel live rig...good lord even I might think that be fun. I wouldn't call it dj-ing, but it would be something new to get into...

[e-vinyl]

I personally prefer vinyl i like its quality better and i personally think the cracks and pops add a sexy feel to the song xD. And with turntables you get a better response than jog wheels, at least for scratching (in my experience although im still quite novice when it comes to scratching). The only problem i see with vinyl is their oversize comparing to cds you can bring 2 cds in a pocket with all your gig songs :P that is not true with vinyl.

[sureno]

Originally Posted by e-vinyl

I personally prefer vinyl i like its quality better and i personally think the cracks and pops add a sexy feel to the song xD. And with turntables you get a better response than jog wheels, at least for scratching (in my experience although im still quite novice when it comes to scratching). The only problem i see with vinyl is their oversize comparing to cds you can bring 2 cds in a pocket with all your gig songs :P that is not true with vinyl.

i hated lugging vinyl around, now its laptop, hard drive and the key ingredient lots of pic'a'mix and im away especially with the pink prawns and cherry coke bottles, people take drugs and drink when they go out, why? when you can have a flying saucer

[Khazul]

Originally Posted by ndk

I would personally be more inclined to go with something like this rather than cd or vinyl:
Numark IDJ2 - Numark IDJ2 Mobile DJ Workstation w/iPod Dock / DJ at DV247.COM

I have one of those and I would say its fine for house parties, wedding DJing, and simple mixing of obvious beats.

It works alot better off a large memory stick or USB hard drive than an ipod - much faster loading and much quicker to do the preparation work locally on you PC and copy the libbrary over.

I love its portability and minimal setup. I find it is good for mixing where you dont do long transitions - or at least you are willing to work hard on keeping them in sync over its hiccups etc. the problem I find with it is its clock doesnt seem that stable - you get something perfectly matched up ready for a killer 3 minute transition/mash on some pair of beautiful progressive house/trance tracks and suddenly in the middle of the mix it jumps out and completely kills the moment. You have to choose your material very carefully for this kind of thing.

I also suggest you ignore its own beat indicators and use your ears - I have actually stuck black electrical tape over those LEDs to avoid being distracted by them.

On the plus side for it - the fine control you get from its platters is actually very good - smoother than traktor 3 I think (I actually find trackor rather course when beat aligning - you have to be really careful with it if you need to re-align the live deck), so with both hands on, you can keep it exactly in sync for quite some time easily with alot of focus and good reactions - in that sense its kind of like manuallyy winding a record to speed itt up until itts motor catches up with the pitch lever change you made. Those using to CDJs and tiny nudges to the rim might find it a little odd.

The other reason its great for party type use - if you need a break - stick the ipod into direct mode while you on deck B and live match deck B back to the ipod before you bring in a mix CD off the ipod and go and have a beer etc.

One final annnoyance - there is a tiny bit of latency bbetween the phones output and the main output - cant remember which way, but if you mix with one can on against the live sound then you could be in for a shock at times when after getting it in syync on cue, you drop the cans and goto transition and find its actually a bit out - grrr!


Anyway - Im thinking of selling mine - I finally got around to gettting a really nice controller for Traktor 3(Vestax VCI-100) and am using that all the time now.

[Khazul]

BTW - has anyone tried working with the Denon CD decks with the spinning platters - any good?

[Khazul]

Originally Posted by EdRyan

I LOVE Live. It's great for helping out with converting records over to digital. I on;y really use it for correcting the timing errors on records that I want to save onto cd.

I know I'm not using it to anywhere near it's potential, but it's all I want from it. Because, for dj-ing with, it takes too much away. I don't have as much fun playing with live, as I do with vinyl or even cd decks..

This is why Im experimenting with a dual laptop setup - one running tracktor the other running live and having them slaved via midi over a network, separate controller for each - combine the freedom of more conventional style DJing with the on-the-fly creativity and easy mashing you can accomplish with Live.

[sureno]

Originally Posted by Khazul

BTW - has anyone tried working with the Denon CD decks with the spinning platters - any good?

yes, if your used to cdj's it takes a while to get used to but i would use them as a 2nd best to my cdj1000's the pitch shunt isn't the jog wheel but buttons. overall a good deck imo

[conor_j]

denons are an excellent deck, equally up to the job as pioneers. just takes a bit of getting used to as sureno says. I find the platter on denons easier to scratch with also