NAMM 2008 News'n'Rumours

I agree with you there dude, if you're going to use a motorized platter to emulate vinyl, you have to do so in such a way as to preserve "traditional" or as you so well put it "legacy" skillsets. There had better be some fight to that motor, and with the smaller platter it needs to be proportional in torque. I fell down the stairs today and boggled my head but good, so I won't even attempt the rotational physics stuff but suffice it to say that placing my fingers 3" away from the center of this platter should feel like placing my fingers 3" away from the center of a Tech12 or comparable Vestax/Numark.

I for one though never really got into using the spindle tip (nipple) for fine-tuning via pitch bend, I used the pitch control or (when slowing down) brushed the platter side. I could do just fine without one, but every jock matches up slightly differently. Aesthetically it would be quite nice to have a little spindle on there, if only for me to mount a GI Joe figurine to that would spin round a la music box ballerina dancer.

 

toys

yes I am all about the dashboard.

 

if stanton were to jump through the NI hoops and implement their DVS certification Do you think NI would have them. ANd would that change how the scs.1d works with the software? hmmmmm. Stanton sort of has its head on the chopping block here having designed a mixer that has no analogue mixing functionality but evidently some nice software control features AND a space for perfect DVS COTNROL. Any vinyl control sytem may be placed against it and then the SCS.1m controls the software mixer. The audio card outputs the signal from the computer. Ecler's NUO four is actually a better option if you plan on using your vinyl for an analogue circuit and mixing and somthing I don't want to over look. So my opinion is that Stanton needs to one -up this thing and add combo VCA's and at least two analogue channels to this system. OR a high qaulity turntable preamp and ADs and internal digital bus that is controlled by the current controllers.. Much easier to do at this point. Also they shouldn't forget. That digital bus should have a return to the computer at its AD's and master out before the DAs so that the Turntables may be independently sent to software and efx as well as master and thing else one might hook up.

for 1k this must be aplicable to the software. easilly programable and very durable. And as I think it. NI isn't going to support this thing. Though I wish these two companies would kiss and make up so that there would be no debate about who made who and support .. etc. Because We made them--Djs made this happen not companies and It is annoying that these companies do not cater to our every need and put their own little agreements and agendas ahead of our progress.

@boysteve "suddenly im not so edge" thats a good point here. This little issue and the issues surrounding all our gear and compatibility is causing our platform to be viewed as some-what unprofessional if only novel and maybe a huge pain in the arss to get into.

In my perfect scenario I walk to the car(70 GTO) and run it for few minutes to scare the hell out of the street people turn it off. Get back out with my climate controlled brief and small support amplifier. Then , walk into club where i have got my foot in the door only four minutes earlier. Upon opening the breif My potential clients are confronted with alien like gear that is already to go. I make one connection to support amplifier which consists of custom tube stage and Beautiful sounding British Guitar cones. I Open the Laptop which is connect to controllers wirelessly and set it on The fero-platform which senses the laptop and auto runs power up sequence. Software opens and plays my intro music .. along with video from previous events. I ask the clients if there is anything they would like to hear and I have it. Either by way of my 1 TB on board library or by the server which my system accesses through my website being displayed along with videos. I Load their song of taste and the gear takes over playing a pre-programmed mix that immediately creates visuals and feedback in the gui. One client asks if she can touch the control module..its intuative and easy and gives the client an immediate sense of satisfaction and approval from her comrades -- and its immediately evident that this system blows everything they have ever seen away. Not only does the clientel want to hire me for the gigs but they are interested in software and equipment purchase also available through my website. I leave them with some of my demonstration mixes which are tailored to their friends and clientel so as to gather interest for the upcoming event. they recieve promotional materials in mail/email a day later confirming the contract and giving them reinforcement of the posative and and professional demonstation that I have provided in person.

This is what I want from my set-up. Putting this together is at least a year down the road and i don't see technologey or modules that are capable at this point. better luck next year.

 

if the prices i have seen for the stanton stuff are even close..... it will be out of reach for the target market.and this stuff is not even that innovative. not what i am into for sure. but for traktor only i can see how it would be a decent solution.

 

http://www.djdeals.com/stantonSC.htm
not sure how trustworthy that price is but....

 

those prices are correct. We have all the prices, reviews and details about every important controller from namm here http://www.djtechtools.com/?p=171

there is one there that no one has talked about yet and its the coolest by far!

 

Which one?

 

I think he's talking about the EKS controller they have on their website. It wasn't widely covered because it wasn't shown to many people. BTW, EKS are the people that made the XP10 if that gives you any insight into their background.

I have a feeling that Musikmesse will have another round of announcements that will be just as groundbreaking as the ones we got this year at NAMM. I know of 2 products that are being developed but have not yet been announced, and some cool new software developments are in the works after all the backroom meetings at NAMM.

And as big as the SC announcements were, Stanton isn't done, yet. More good stuff is on the way.

 

Eks Xp 10

How come nobody has spoken about these controllers:

The EKS XP 10
http://eks.fi/product.php?p=products&id=31

and The EKS XP 5
http://eks.fi/product.php?p=products&id=31


I can't understand what the difference is though. They look exactly like what I need.


They seem very sturdy and well made.


edit: Links seem to send you to the same product but you can choose.

Has anybody used these with Traktor well?

 

Because they're old and not something that came out at NAMM in 2008. I'm not being snarky here, just sayin.

I think we have a couple guys on here that use them. I seem to remember someone with a pretty nice mobile rig based on them.

 

Keng~ was looking into these I don't know that they actually got one but it seemed like a pretty good option when we were discussing it.

If you have ever used a Numark Axis Nine cd player .. .. that is what this jog system reminds me of, i love those things.

 

The EKS OTUS! Daaaammnnnnnnn!

Has anybody checked this out:

http://www.gearjunkies.com/news_info.php?news_id=2628

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYipPjKASgw"]YouTube - EKS "OTUS" -Exclusive First Look[/ame]


This thing looks incredible......

 

Not convinced by motion sensors or ribbon controllers - what do you reckon Bedward and Rocdollar? ; )

 

m the Dutch importer we got the news that EKS is working on Version 2 of it's XP10 Dj Controller, called EKS OTUS. As far as we saw they only had a mockup but, ... it looked like a million bucks! :angry: One detail that is very clear is that at the coming MusikMesse in Frankfurt the OTUS will be introduced to the general public.

so yea.. that thing could be a million bucks.

Ive recently nailed down an old fs2 scratch amp that I can run on my 3.2.085.

As I understand it: time code is the only thing that will give high resolution control of traktors transport. All these jog wheel systems and platters are useless; (as far as being as good as vinyl or time code dvs) unless they some how create timecode. and get that to traktors transport control in the software.

Ive been looking into Lemur and Dextar which are expandable re-writable systems but there is not much written for traktor on them yet. lemur is around 2500$ and it would supply the ceramic stove top look as well as visual feed back from the traktor midi out signals. This all creates extra processing too .. so for me running on the 167 ppc alot of this stuff and the added processing of t3.3 puts the idea of a complicated controller in limbo. so for now im just gonna get an fs2 system and play with that and my current controllers. The new stanton mixer pretty much has space for this to work with my current system. so for a mixer controller I might do the stanton mixer ... im waiting to get the scoop on that thing.! patiently .. it isn't available till may. ! so im really going for the scoop! anyone .. ? any one ? scoop me.

 

Give me your specific questions about it and I might be able to get you answers.

 

:S okay.

specifically:

-what does the power supply look like is it wall wart or in line wart.
-how is the turntable and line in signal treated? for instance do those have to rout to computer and bec controlled by software to have mier functionality. Or are they mixed in the mixers digital bus and added as digital signal. Or.. are they an analogue circuit(being free of digital muckery to their out put at balanced out) that is tapped by the digital bus and in addition routed to computer. Basically a signal routing and DA AD schematic more or less. Who knows this might be classified info but certain configurations do suck. And this might not even be a concrete schematic as yet.
-what is up with the unbalanced microphone jack? This is then a 3 IN mixer providing three streams to the computer.? two from the switchable phono/line and one from the mic jack. and then a 6 out with rec out, balanced out, headphone out, or is it only a 4 out -mains from software + monitor channel to drive headphones. and then the rec out on the mixer is a reflection of the main? there is nothing about this in the literature.

-basically I really want to know internals on how the bus is designed where everything comes from and goes to etc. and also exactly what kind of DAs and ADs are in there Evidently this is 96 khz capable. And also the mixer control section has to be capable of controlling my traveler as well so wondering how well that translates how does the controller switch channels and what signals and notes come from which controls.

For sound quality this has to compete with my MOtu Traveler being mixed through my soundcraft lx7ii.(im looking for a more portable and compact set-up.. please see my previous post about my ideal setup.this is dreaming of course but thats what ishoot for... stars)

Also the data section is this a jog control transport wheel so it could be used for scrubbing through audio? and transport control as well? and making adjsutment s in daw etc. I have hot keys for playlist navigation. What will this give me over and above simple playlists navigation.

the data encoders. and midi knobs. what types. Is there a similar device employed in other gear out there? So i can read up on how that installation is fairing.

There is more info I want on this a disclosurish schematic would answer alot of qeustions giving anobjective tour of the technologey under the hood.

what kind of cheese is this... is it swiss cheese . german cheese . how big are the holes.

additionally i got ahold the mackied4 pdf today and am reading it the signal routing on this is pretty cool

http://mackie.com/products/d4pro/pdf/d4_Pro_OM.pdf

 

I will check on the information that I can, but you're going to have to get used to not knowing alot of what you asked unless you buy it and open it up for yourself. Hell, most people couldn't answer my questions about SSL's internals (or they got it wrong) and I ended up buying it myself and taking pics of the guts. But I will not be taking apart a prototype in order to answer your component specific questions. Since it's firewire based, I'm ASSUMING that it's based on the BridgeCo chipset like the Scratchamp 2. If so, that's a great chipset with well developed drivers. I would expect that also like the Scratchamp, something like high quality AKM or Cirrus Logic converters would be used.

The microphone input is what it is. I can't imagine it being changed at this point.

The power supplies are switching, so yes there's a "wart" on the line.

A couple of your questions ask about what specific data is being supplied by what controller. I don't think that's something that can be answered with a single answer. The SC is protocol flexible, and will (depending on the profile being used and the software it's talking to) include MIDI, raw data, and whatever else may come into vogue in the future. I also expect that within the MIDI profile itself the data controllers send is flexible. The jog wheel, for instance, may be set up to send pitch wheel data, NRPNs, CC, or whatever other data is appropriate.

The turntable connects to the mixer unit or the computer via a firewire connection. No audio passes through the turntable controller. the I/O for the mixer is pretty clearly laid out in the PDF on the Stanton website, but I'll get a clearer picture of the whole deal when I get my hands on it (maybe as soon as next week).

 

The folks at NI aren't new, so if a killer new product comes along that can perform well with their software, I think they'll probably be pretty quick to support it in one way or another. It's my hope that this is the year that more software devs look at adding support for higher res MIDI messages and more widely implement feedback. I also hope that something like OSC becomes more widely implemented, since it's use solves SO MANY problems modern digital DJs face.

I'll keep you guys informed as I learn more.

 

http://www.skratchworx.com/news3/comments.php?id=893
a look at Torq new update

 

So I've taken a back seat and pondered a great deal over the swath of new
controllers that came out over the last few weeks and looked closely at what
each brings to the the table.

To be honest and I mean no disrespect to to anyone when I say this (I mean
nothing personal whatsoever in these opinions) there is simply NOTHING
revolutionary for me in any of the controllers announced with the exception of
one and it isn't even targeted at Traktor users.

Heres the breakdown (and sorry to say I can see this being a rather lengthy
piece)...

Traktor DJ's at present seem to fall into two fairly natural buckets. those that
want jog wheels and those that don't see the need for them. If you scratch then
pure and simple the single most effective and efficient mode to do that today is
to use a rotating platter mechanism and jog wheels of various sorts fit that bill. It does not hold true that ONLY scratch DJ's need a form of jog wheel in Traktor, though. There are those using Traktor today who feel "naked on stage" without having those two wheels of steel to their left and right even if its only to convey the sense of being a DJ of sorts. To be honest even for me it feels odd turning up at some small event following on from Vinyl DJ's and all I plonk down is my laptop an Audio 8 and I go at it working the keyboard and Trackpad to death. Its somehow comforting to bring the BCR2000 and or Kinetik controller to the gig to make it obvious look like I'm doing much
more than just lining up tracks in iTunes and reading email.

Back to topic...There are those DJ's (me among them) who for the most part don't NEED jog wheels for all the conventional wicky-wicky uses. However! despite that last statement, there is simply no better way to quickly scrub through a track to get to some point in the middle of the track that I want to play from. The jog wheels are superbly suited to adjusting phase sync on tracks for those times where the beat grid is not quite perfectly aligned or you need to adjust the position of the grid marker or the Track tempo (to adjust your beat grid). All of these things today are done in traktor using buttons and SOME are do-able with knobs or jog wheels too. None of them make it imperative to have only jog wheels for them, but when you can actually get good control of the functions using Jog wheels you truly begin to understand the control they afford you in Traktor and also in Ableton.

OK so now we've got that seemingly out of place commentary made, lets look at
what we actually got announced. Huge Thanks to Ean Golden for doing an excellent
roundup on www.DJTechTools.com of the announcements, its been very interesting to read other users perspectives.

First off let me say I was very much underwhelmed by the announcements almost without exception In only one case did I come close to just being 'whelmed'.

After last years announcement ofScratch and the subsequent two month fire-fight on the forums about it I was almost glad NI had nothing in the DJ line to announce. I think this year for NI is and 'DESPERATELY' needs to be about consolidation and improvement (we'll get to this later). The announcements by other vendors though while interesting held NOTHING Revolutionary. Evolutionary on some scale certainly, but absolutely not one of the controllers announced will change the way DJing is done in any substantial way. In no small part it because despite what you read, every single controller except one that I've looked at presents the stereotypical conventional 2 decks and mixer model to the user and it forces the user to adapt to the hardware, much more than the hardware adapts to the usage model. Were the hardware to be 'revolutionary' then it would have found a way to break the conventional control models and break that stereotypical two decks and
a mixer model.

IMO, Stanton, for all that has been said about this being a revolutionary product, isn't! Purely and simply its two decks and a mixer with more bits added. Its nice that its all firewire connected but the fact that it has yet another soundcard built-in is a big minus for me. I have several perfectly good soundcards that allow me to integrate DVS into Traktor, the last thing I want and need is something sucking yet more time critical resources from my system slowing it down and making 'in-to-out' latency worse in the process. Making thing even worse is the uncertain nature of application support. To date I've not seen announcements that Traktor, Serato or other big players in the DVS market space are moving to rapidly support the hardware. A compelling case could be made for some DJ's if Stanton move quickly to interoperate with Serato and Traktor, the latter as a certified mixer. Given the recent history though, its going to be a bitter pill to swallow on both Stanton and N.I's part to make that happen. For the good of both companies though and the success it really is going to need to happen and happen quickly. Statnon cannot sit idlly by and lean on the crutch of open system and expect software vendors to line up. Both sides will have to get all juggly about it and do lots to bring prouduct support to reality. On the Serato side adding the Stanton system to the fold is good and bad. There are those that don't see USB as a viable communications mechanism between a computer and peripherals, despite the overwhelming preponderance of data that shows that it is, not just on a technical level but also on an economic level. Those users are stuck with ieee 1394 (firewire) being their weapon of choice, and Stanton gives them a product to take advantage of it. Its no good to you though if the software can't / doesn't support it. There is a lot to like about the Stanton product but I still have to get my head around the usage model for 4 decks. Right now my biggest criticism is that the deck transport adjustment is tied to the jog wheels so the best you can do is control one deck at a time with a single SCS-1d.

Its a shame to see that despite all the other well thought out ideas, the system still uses a conventional pitch fader. Cost may have played the biggest role in that decision but to my mind a touch sensitive ribbon controller would have been a better choice. In fact two of them would have been the right number, one for pitch, one for key, plus buttons for lock and sync.

Nem0nic has already indicated that Stanton aren't done with the platform announcements. I'm hoping that we'll know more at Musikmesse, but I ain't holding my breath. At an estimated $2500.00 (I think), this system is not for the faint of heart or lightly moneyed. It competes with the Xone 3D but A&H quality carries it there so its a tough choice.

Stanton hardware has a generally positive but somewhat checkered or spotty past. The original FS scratch amp had several compatibility and reliability issues that were not entirely hardware, FS2 was better but there were still plenty of compatibility issues we dealt with here. I'm in no doubt that the initial SCS maybe good but we'll see compatibility and reliability issues surface in time. It maybe no better or worse than other products, its unlikely to be a problem specific to Stanton however.

Overall, the SCS system looks interesting but as it is today, is not for me. A combination of price, application control that does not really fit my DJ style, unclear software support, possibly proprietary control protocols, unclear O/S platform support, unclear midi capabilities and the fact its really a Stanton version 1.0 product mean I'll wait and find out a great deal more about the SCS system before I would consider it. It does not mean I won't try it out if I get the opportunity and I'll definitely give it a fair shakedown if I do, there is just so much to answer before I could consider it.

SCS has taken a long time to get here, we talked on the forums here about such a system some 18 months ago when I theorized that such a system was being conceived and developed. SCS isn't late to market, its competitive with other products in the space already and the line as it is today doesn't redefine digital DJing.

Next up is the Numark NS7... more later...

Phil