VINYL AND DJ'ING.. quote by Fabio

[Technobitch]

no one has mentioned what the crowd wants i know on my behalf its more visually pleasing to me to see djs on vinyl as it looks and adds to the whole experinece of goin out to a party or club i ve got nothing against cds as it is good for the dj to be bangin out the freshest tunes theve just created but we dont want to be goin down the road of watchin one man behind a laptop playin with live but with the exception of an inventive pa or in conjuction with vinyl

im always in the crowd, at the front generally as i like to see the dj mixing their set, i dont think it matters what equipment they are using as long as what they are doing it well! cd decks, 1210, both are good, and the dj's can use both to express their talent!

[Technobitch]

no one has mentioned what the crowd wants i know on my behalf its more visually pleasing to me to see djs on vinyl as it looks and adds to the whole experinece of goin out to a party or club i ve got nothing against cds as it is good for the dj to be bangin out the freshest tunes theve just created but we dont want to be goin down the road of watchin one man behind a laptop playin with live but with the exception of an inventive pa or in conjuction with vinyl

im always in the crowd, at the front generally as i like to see the dj mixing their set, i dont think it matters what equipment they are using as long as what they are doing it well! cd decks, 1210, both are good, and the dj's can use both to express their talent!

not forgetting laptop/pc etc, all do the same job at the end of the day (some maybe more technically advanced than others) but all play music and put smilling faces on the crowd!

[djfase]

I feel that going to a club to listen to dj mix records adds to the experience. I personally like to see the dj spinning records and not stood behind some laptop. It adds to the club feel

I used to love waiting for my tunes to be delivered. Getting home from work and seeing the parcel sitting there waiting to be ripped open and the slammed onto the decks and played loud.

Times and technology and changing all the time and its all about personal choice like everything is. So each to their own.

But my own opinion is that when i go to see a dj, i wanna see him spinnng vinyl and not cds. If u wanna play cds sit at home in front of the stereo.

Thats just my personal opinion.

[Technobitch]

can see your point, one thig about cd decks and live PA is that it means the dj's can play their tunes that they have just made so its like getting an exclusive

[dirty_bass]

Yep, I don`t see any skill difference, actually on some CD decks it`s harder to mix with them, than it is 1200`s, so the DJ is probably working harder.
Laptop DJing as opposed to live PA, can be a little inactive, but then, with the mechanical task of getting 2 pieces of plastic spinning in sync out of the equation, the DJ has more time to spend on the actual CREATIVE part of mixing, so they should keep themselves busy with this aspect.
It is all horses for courses, but essentially none are better or worse, and it`s only through education that perceptions will change about DJing, and what "is" and isn`t DJing.
When it comes down to it, if your gonna use the fake argument, then we can take it all the way back to an old argument, and say that all the music the DJ`s are playing is fake anyway, because the people that made the music didn`t play any of the instruments, they used sequencers, which is cheating and isn`t work.
In fact, what we should be doing is dancing round a fire, naked, while the witchdoctor, or shamen, bangs on some logs and animal skulls, cos that`s proper. Mixing on decks is soooo fake mate.

[massplanck]

[quote="dirty_bass"], but then, with the mechanical task of getting 2 pieces of plastic spinning in sync out of the equation, the DJ has more time to spend on the actual CREATIVE part of mixing, so they should keep themselves busy with this aspect.
[quote]

I agree a bit but disagree with what you said above.

(a) Getting two records in sync on a set of decks is actuallly a whole lot of FUN!

(b) I drop the needle constantly all over the place within tunes when mixing.. for breaks. intros.. back to the start.. chop in the end.. into again. I dont want to have to ****ing plan or agonise myself over how to do this fast on a laptop.

(c)I like having the cunting thing in my hand. The same way i dont ride a virtual bike to work or download the latest virtual guitar plugin as opposed to just picking up and playing one.

(d)I do use/have used songs from a laptop/abelton in sets and would happily use a CD deck.. but its not mutually exclusive. Use all formats at the same time.. then you can get ALL the benfits.

as for people complaining about dragging a record bag around with them.. whats so great about dragging 2500 grand worth of flimsy equipment around to a rowdy gig and having to set it up and protect it from twats who keeping spilling beer around it.

[dirty_bass]

as for people complaining about dragging a record bag around with them.. whats so great about dragging 2500 grand worth of flimsy equipment around to a rowdy gig and having to set it up and protect it from twats who keeping spilling beer around it.

Yep, that`s a pain alright.

[paranoiduk]

it looks to us like vinyl is on its way out. less people are buying it. times are changing and like it or not, i think you are all gonna have to get used to it. at the end of the day(at night, and usually in a club) as long as the jocks are playing some good shit, does it really matter what format it is delivered to us all in? love it or not, its not about the format to us(the fans), its the music thats the real deal.

[Miromiric]

pleasing people by taking out vinyls from the bag and such?

[gumpy green]

couldnt care what the rest do i will always use vinyl(and fx)as my main djing tool.......i do plan to add maybe a laptop or some hardware to add some of my own stuff(once its ready) . Vinyl just feels proper and has that collectable thingy to it which i luv. i also feel that its stoppin piracy withing the small net of djing....vinyl died and i had to use cd/mp3 i know i would steal......u cant steal record very easyily.

when in a club i prefer to see a dj using vinyl and when it comes to live sets i luv seeing a desk full of toys.

maybe i just luv knowing the artist had to work to get his shit to the gig...

[Jay Pace]

I really like having something in my hand, and I like the tactility of a turntable, so I bought final scratch. Digital doesn't have to mean CDs.

But I think its irrelevant - put in a good performance, rock a crowd and nobody gives two hoots about what medium you are playing from.

For those who think laptops sets look dull - check out Tim Exile's vid on the Native Instruments site. They are only as dull as the artist.

Personally I would like to see the end of the superstar djs playing fetishised vinyl being the epitome of cool.
I'd rather the emphasis was on the music, the crowd and the party. Everything else is pretty superficial.

Out of every major music forum I've seen BOA is the most forward thinking in terms of accepting new technology.
Full credit to techno for actually pushing things forward rather than treading water and crying about the old days...

[JamieBall]

I was off on my travels at the weekend and absolutely HATED carrying my records again. Not played vinyl for quite a while as I got spine problems and have been warned off lugging it around by the doc but OOOF. I thought I'd do it but I'd forgotten what 100 odd records weigh.

Also, I had to check them in as they were over 10kg and the airline weren't exactly being flexible. Then I had to wait for 3 hours at the destination for them to turn up as they'd been sent to the wrong place. Great.

Once I got them there was more lugging around to get to where I was meant to be.

Now, the upside of the whole thing is that I really enjoyed playing them on the night.

However, I'm going to test/invest in one of the final scratch clones (or perhaps the original) as it's just more practical. Need one you can scratch without trouble on, though. One that keeps up (any suggestions). I do like the feel of playing 'records', maybe I will also check for the new technics CD decks but they're far from being universally installed in clubs so I guess that'd mean more lugging around of stuff.

Also I can only carry so many pieces of vinyl, so there's always going to be some that I wished I had but couldn't take. If I had a hard drive full of every record I have I don't think I'd be wanting for much, and I could take a laptop in hand baggage with 2/3 timecode records no problem. This would definitely guarantee that I could play to the best of my abilities with the full army, rather than just doing sorties with a small detachment of troops (if you get my meaning).

I don't see that it makes any difference playing off of vinyl/pc/cd whatever, as long as the music is good I don't care. It's not the medium, it's the tunes and the performance as far as I'm concerned.

It may sound like a small gripe and I'm sure people out there will think that it's not much to suffer but I've had a CRUSHING headache for the last 3 days and it ain't fun.

[kai]

There is now the ability to produce and go for the real low thick frequencies and absolute clarity mi/highs that are not well translated on vinyl. For my ears, I cant stand the flat sound of vinyl anymore.

Is this true?

I ask the question not because I doubt it is true, but because I have always been led to believe that digitalising music reduces the quality compared to vinyl, as part of the process by which soundwaves are digitalised chops off the top and bottom ends of the sound spectrum in order to convert the wave to a stream of 1's and 0's.

I could be completely wrong here, which is why I ask the question.

[TechMouse]

Is this true?

Yes, CDs are better quality than vinyl on all but the most expensive of high-end audiophile equipment... and even then, you'd have to have superhuman hearing to notice the difference.

The difference is particularly noticable in the low end, because of the RIAA EQ curve.



This is applied to vinyl recordings so that the needle doesn't jump out of the groove when loud bass occurs in a recording. It's why you need a preamp for vinyl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

[Jay Pace]

Its not true mate.

Compressing things down to low bitrate MP3 chops off the top and bottom, but playing a WAV is playing what the producer had in their studio.
Vinyl can not produce ultra low bass frequencies or high frequencies. Vinyl has a characteristic "warm" sound (or muddy, depending on how you look at it), but a properly set up digital PA has tighter bass and crisper highs.

However, I'm going to test/invest in one of the final scratch clones (or perhaps the original) as it's just more practical. Need one you can scratch without trouble on, though. One that keeps up (any suggestions).

Rane Serato Scratch is best if you want to scratch. Final scatch has a nicer interface which is basically a cut down version of NI's Traktor. I rate Final Scratch 2 very highly, but I'm not a scratch dj. Turntablists seem to rate the Rane version, and go so far as to claim that you can't tell that you're not playing real vinyl.

[TechMouse]

It's like the old analogue vs Digital Synth debate. What most people mistake for quality in real analogue synthesizers is the circuits misbehaving and distorting in their own particular idioms. Digital Synths are actually much more crisp and accurate.

[kai]

Hmm, all makes sense - cheers guys.

[kai]

Thinking things through from there then, it seems to me that while the issue of quality of the digital music is usually a non-issue, so to speak, it does become one when people are playing mp3's – which is the preferred file format for many DJ's playing off CD's as they can be easily downloaded and burnt to disk from many a website.

So what is the difference in quality between mp3 and vinyl, as this is the most commonly used digital format, discounting PA's played on laptop's where the WAV file is present?

[Jay Pace]

Depends on the bitrate.

A 128kbps MP3 sounds ok on your walkman to an untrained ear, and a pretty crap on a PA. Vinyl wins.
192kbps is a little better, but probably not as good as vinyl.
320kbps is pretty much spot on. You'd struggle to hear the difference between that and a WAV, even on a PA. Much better than vinyl.

All depends on the encoding rate.

[kai]

;) Cheers mate.