Vinyl or cd ?

Pazzo

Pazzo

Paz
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Hey is it me or are cd's taking over when it comes to djing psy-trance, Ive been fed up with hearing people playing party's with no original music all playing the same boring and relentless beats...and its drove me to getting back into djing so I sorted out all my tunes and now im looking towards buying a new turntables, I then went to the wicked people at chaos and looked new tunes...but what I found was most of the tunes I loved were only on cd :lol: so Im wondering is cd the way forward ? Anyway im goint to stick with vinyl and hopefully some point in the in the future I will have a go cd decks

Are green nuns still going ? man do I love rock bitch mafia

cheers Paz ;) [/url]
 
im afraid that cds are the way forward with psy the best tunes are on cd and you can get such a crisp mix on cdjs so get o0n the cdj deck they are the way forward :tongue1:
 
Yeah id like to get cd's but I play loads of other music to and I have a vinly collection of all sorts !!! :bananada:
 
thats cool mixi tech house and breaks it all ways good to slam a cd into your set there so much more you can do with a cd deck these days but vinly all good never going to stop mixin it :tongue1:
 
I'm a great fan of vinyl and my 1210s are never going to leave me, along with my vinyl collection - too many memories. Plus in a few decades having a set of decks and a vinyl collection that spans a number of styles over a number of years will be quite a novelty I reckon...

I dont think I am likely to buy any more vinyl tho cos CDs and CD decks are becoming a mainstay - you can get all music on CD even if you have to transfer it yourself, yet nobody has developed the vinyl drive and recordable 12 inches that you can connect to the computer!

The only thing I have to say about CD decks is the user interface still doesn't tweak my buttons in the way a slab of plastic at 45rpm does - to have a perfect imitation of a record deck that plays CDs would be awsome and I would be sold right away.

Pioneer?
Denon?

C'mon guys be inventive!
 
Yeah Ive got loads of cd's this is why im starting to think of cd decks, But at the same time I want vinyl,o i THINK IVE JUST MYSELF IN A RIGHT MUDDLE !!!!!!! :mad:
 
Jodha said:
I'm a great fan of vinyl and my 1210s are never going to leave me, along with my vinyl collection - too many memories. Plus in a few decades having a set of decks and a vinyl collection that spans a number of styles over a number of years will be quite a novelty I reckon...

I dont think I am likely to buy any more vinyl tho cos CDs and CD decks are becoming a mainstay - you can get all music on CD even if you have to transfer it yourself, yet nobody has developed the vinyl drive and recordable 12 inches that you can connect to the computer!
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I'm currently using my 1200s with a hardware/software combination called Serato Scratch Live (similar to Final Scratch, only it actually works like its supposed to...) http://www.rane.com/scratch.html which lets you mix MP3 files (and CDs if you want to do it directly) on your computer (I have an Apple Powerbook, it works on PCs too, though) using a pair of vinyl decks (or CD decks) as controllers (it comes with a pair of special vinyl, as well as a pair of special CDs, as well as an interface box). As long as you encode the MP3s at a decent bitrate (I encode at 200Kbs+ VBR using a decent encoder), the sound quality is very good, and it really does feel just like mixing vinyl, you can even scratch and do backspins. You can also play regular vinyl with this setup at the flick of a switch, so can mix vinyl into MP3 and vice-versa etc.

This setup works very well in my home environment, the only problem I can see with it is that most psy-trance nights *only* seem to have CD decks, so (unless I learn how to use CD decks to control the software, which defeats the point a bit) I would have to bring my own 1200s to a party *and* find space for them and my laptop (which ideally needs to be somewhere where you can see the screen well). Also, there would be some cable switching required at the back of the mixer when taking over from a CD DJ and vice-versa.

At some point I will probably buy some CD decks, as I don't really buy vinyl anymore, but what to do with all my old vinyl? I guess I could record it all on my computer and burn it to CD, but that would be a very laborious task...

FlameBoy
 
Sounding very cool but MP3s are bad bad bad for clubs and proper music delivery regardless of bitrate - the system inheritely strips out frequencies it considers the human ear cannot hear be it masked by other present frequencies or that it considers falling below the regular threshold of hearing - its a lossy data compression system.

Your EQ tweaking will not have the same effect compared to a digital recording with all the frequencies present from the original take (or indeed and more so, the original analogue recording if it exists), and playing over a big system you will loose a great deal of grunt that should be there to make up the chunkyness of the music - you may not hear some frequencies but they will resonate bits of you giving you that all-encompassing submersion into high power sound energy.

PCM coding at high sample rates and bit depths or a well thought-out sigma-delta coding system are the true digital way forward for decent digital acoustic reproduction.

The day they make a CD deck that takes an SACD will be a great day, but alas I fear the SACD technology wont ever take off enough for it to take over from the CD.

CD quality is only just passable, remember it was developed in the '70s and released in the early '80s and hasn't changed since (check out the 'Red Book Specification') - our technology has advanced substantually since and originally they only took it up to the spec high enough to get away with, any more and it would have been too expensive to become a consumer product. You get greater fidelity off the good quality multitrack tape they use in studios, and thats old analogue technology.

MP3s have high popularity because of their much smaller file size making transport and storage more effective, its nothing great beyond that and the system chews up the sound information in some truely horrendous (albiet very elegant and sophisticated) ways.

Sound is analogue, keep it that way or preserve it in the digital world with as much original fidelity as possible, dont fall for consumer trends.

Sorry, thats my digital audio rant over, on the whole I am very glad we can work with sound so easily in the digital world, but there are too many misconceptions about the present day common digital music products.
 
Jodha said:
Sounding very cool but MP3s are bad bad bad for clubs and proper music delivery regardless of bitrate - the system inheritely strips out frequencies it considers the human ear cannot hear be it masked by other present frequencies or that it considers falling below the regular threshold of hearing - its a lossy data compression system.
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True, though I don't think there is a fixed low frequency threshold as such at which it cuts off (at least not with the settings I use in the LAME MP3 encoder: --alt preset extreme) the settings I use do have a high-frequency cut-off at 19500khz, though CDs only go up to 20000Khz anyway. Obviously, as you point out, it is a lossy compression system, though, so some information is obviously lost, I'm not sure its as simple as saying it strips out the sub-bass, though, it uses a more clever pyscho-acoustic model than that.

I would be interested to try it out over a club-system, though, just as an experiment - maybe I'll bring along my laptop and some of the control CDs when we setup the next Baraka, just to see what the MP3s I've encoded sound like over a big rig? I wouldn't be at all surprised (or too dissappointed, Serato Scratch is just a stop-gap solution for me really, just so I could get back into mixing using my CDs) if they do sound noticeably worse than CDs, or lack some punch, but I'd quite like to test it out for myself! :)

Ultimately I'd like to save up for a pair of decent CD decks, probably CDJ-800s (even though I know Pioneer have support "issues"...), but to afford them I'd probably have to sell my 1200s and most of my vinyl...

FlameBoy
 
FlameBoy said:
it uses a more clever pyscho-acoustic model than that.
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Yeah, thats exactly what I am talking about.

Threshold as in the level of any frequency in the spectrum, if its below a certain dB level it gets cut and forgotten - that level is dynamic and dependant on what else is happening around that frequency. It works forwards and backwards in the temporal domain too to an extent rather curiously, buts its all very sad :(

MD does something similar, played an MD over a system and even with gain turned all the way up it was still percievably so much quieter compared to the CD and vinyl going into the mixer...

I'm assuming the output voltage from the MD should be the same as the output voltage from the CD player making the two systems comparable in that instance, but then maybe I am wrong about that and it was a crap MD player with a lower output voltage...

Nurse, the multimeter please!
 
Jodha said:
FlameBoy said:
it uses a more clever pyscho-acoustic model than that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, thats exactly what I am talking about.

Threshold as in the level of any frequency in the spectrum, if its below a certain dB level it gets cut and forgotten - that level is dynamic and dependant on what else is happening around that frequency. It works forwards and backwards in the temporal domain too to an extent rather curiously,
!
Click to expand...

That sounds like something out of Star Trek! :huh: :)

Jodha said:
buts its all very sad :(

MD does something similar, played an MD over a system and even with gain turned all the way up it was still percievably so much quieter compared to the CD and vinyl going into the mixer...

I'm assuming the output voltage from the MD should be the same as the output voltage from the CD player making the two systems comparable in that instance, but then maybe I am wrong about that and it was a crap MD player with a lower output voltage...
Click to expand...

I think MD players curiously are -4db quieter than other line-level sources, I don't now exactly why, though.

FB
 
compressed music is poo!
it sounds nasty coming out of my hi-fi, and i can only imagine how it would sound coming out of a big system...........
:(
i just don't think you can beat the sound of a well produced tune being played on vinyl on a high quality system!?!?
think cd's in general can sometimes lack warmth and sound a touch harsh!
well that my 2p worth anyway,
ben :D
 
Its rumoured that digital sound processing has the effect of emphasising the odd harmonics whilst analogue sound processing has the effect of emphasising the even harmonics, just as a strange outcome of the different ways the sound data is handled in what ever form.

Even harmonics are much more musical to the human ear...
 
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