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DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

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Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#41

Post by Lio »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #35
Lio wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the cost of tooling and materials. The original 1200 was a pure hi-fi deck in a large and very competitive market. DJs just adopted because it could be repurposed for their needs. When Matsushita redesigned the 1200Mk2 they could afford to maintain their market leading position by investing in things like die casting and superior bearing. Any OEM manufacture now is unlikely to want to spend that kind of…

> The original 1200 was a pure hi-fi deck in a large and very competitive market. DJs just adopted because it could be repurposed for their needs. Funny, originally the Roland drum machines were not targeted at dance music producers. Initially a handful of such producers adopted those machine for their purposes. Amazing how a set of failed products spawned a massive industry *and* cultural movement. Can you feel it?

"The street finds its own uses for things"

- William Gibson

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#42

Post by secretsatan »

par wrote: post #10

i mean, i love vinyl and spent a lot of time on the wheels of steel back in the day. But who isnt using a digital controller these days?

I like to use Serato with my decks, I just prefer it to a pure digital controller, feels more physical/mechanical?

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#43

Post by secretsatan »

ewwhite wrote: post #29
dotBen wrote: post #17

Tl;dr - you should have bought 1210 or 1200's, mkII mkIII or mkV, 20 years ago :)

Basically. I'm holding onto my 1999 1200's forever.

Yeah, mine still work perfectly and I don't see why they wouldn't last me another twenty years.

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#44

Post by tinus_hn »

unwind wrote: post #40
rfreiberger wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak on this owning a pair of Technics 1200 mk2 I bought new in 1995 and a pair of Reloop RP8000mk2 I bought two years ago. What might be confusing is many DJ turntables are made by the same company now, and are reffered to as "super oem", so the small things are changed, like logos, but they come from the same factory. My Reloops weight close to the same amount as the Technics but the base allows for more rum…

Uh, speaking as a mere human, can you actually hear the music shift in tempo from 99.5 to 100.5 bpm? Or does this become apparent when using tools/mixers/whatever to work with the audio stream? I just quickly tried this on Google's built-in metronome widget (TIL) [1] and I can't hear the difference between 99, 100 and 101 bpm. However, the switching is discrete (the audio stops and restarts) which probably makes it m…

You might not notice the speed change but most people will definitely notice the accompanying pitch change.

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#45

Post by Intermernet »

unwind wrote: post #40
rfreiberger wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak on this owning a pair of Technics 1200 mk2 I bought new in 1995 and a pair of Reloop RP8000mk2 I bought two years ago. What might be confusing is many DJ turntables are made by the same company now, and are reffered to as "super oem", so the small things are changed, like logos, but they come from the same factory. My Reloops weight close to the same amount as the Technics but the base allows for more rum…

Uh, speaking as a mere human, can you actually hear the music shift in tempo from 99.5 to 100.5 bpm? Or does this become apparent when using tools/mixers/whatever to work with the audio stream? I just quickly tried this on Google's built-in metronome widget (TIL) [1] and I can't hear the difference between 99, 100 and 101 bpm. However, the switching is discrete (the audio stops and restarts) which probably makes it m…

If you're trying to beat match 2 tracks, and they're playing together for more than a few seconds, this becomes frustrating. A test I do is play 2 copies of the same record simultaneously and see how long it takes to noticeably go out of sync, given all other variables matched as closely as possible.

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#46

Post by dopamean »

unwind wrote: post #40
rfreiberger wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak on this owning a pair of Technics 1200 mk2 I bought new in 1995 and a pair of Reloop RP8000mk2 I bought two years ago. What might be confusing is many DJ turntables are made by the same company now, and are reffered to as "super oem", so the small things are changed, like logos, but they come from the same factory. My Reloops weight close to the same amount as the Technics but the base allows for more rum…

Uh, speaking as a mere human, can you actually hear the music shift in tempo from 99.5 to 100.5 bpm? Or does this become apparent when using tools/mixers/whatever to work with the audio stream? I just quickly tried this on Google's built-in metronome widget (TIL) [1] and I can't hear the difference between 99, 100 and 101 bpm. However, the switching is discrete (the audio stops and restarts) which probably makes it m…

I can definitely hear it when I'm performing. However even as a dj if I'm on the dancefloor having a good time it's mostly imperceptible.

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#47

Post by ehnto »

bionsystem wrote: post #39
ehnto wrote: post #33

(Shoutout to any of my DJForums regulars from way back, I miss ya'll) Given all the very good and correct advice throughout this article and this comment section, remember: * The internet loves perfect * You don't need perfect * Imperfect is better than nothing, use what you can get * You can always get another set of decks/mixer/etc later on In other words, be pragmatic, buy smart but don't fall for the hype. I wish…

I bought a pair of Numark TT 200 (the low end for DJing), both 2nd hand, a set for traktor also 2nd hand, and a numark pro smx that was new but during a shop liquidation. Total was below 1000€ and I had many months of fun. Unfortunately there is not so much room for me to play in my condo now and the walls don't have great isolation so they are stored but last time I checked they work pretty much like new. Especially…

I bought a Traktor Kontrol S2 and play with headphones in my current house for similar reasons. It's great because it doesn't take up much space, and it lets me scratch that itch every now and then. It just means I can't touch my record collection so I don't have my whole library at hand.

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#48

Post by drewbeck »

ehnto wrote: post #37
drewbeck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Addicts. Like myself DJing with vinyl is fun as hell, gets me away from my screens, let’s me find music in a really satisfying and interesting way AND takes me to shops where i talk to people and learn things from them. The digging is maybe the best quality — walk into a place with a limited set of music, guide your search based on categories, album art, personnel listed in the sleeve etc. Digital provides almost non…

Tonnes of great tracks never made it to digital that's for sure. Especially for the heavily DJ'd genres like house, DnB, hip hop, trance and all that. The industry was hundreds of different small labels churning out wax. many of which likely didn't survive long enough to port their back-catalogue to digital.

It boggles my mind how much music we humans committed to physical media over the last 70 years. It seems endless. One of the great joys of DJing is getting to swim in that abundance.

Re: DJ Turntables: Buying Guide by Vekked (2016)

#49

Post by rfreiberger »

unwind wrote: post #40
rfreiberger wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak on this owning a pair of Technics 1200 mk2 I bought new in 1995 and a pair of Reloop RP8000mk2 I bought two years ago. What might be confusing is many DJ turntables are made by the same company now, and are reffered to as "super oem", so the small things are changed, like logos, but they come from the same factory. My Reloops weight close to the same amount as the Technics but the base allows for more rum…

Uh, speaking as a mere human, can you actually hear the music shift in tempo from 99.5 to 100.5 bpm? Or does this become apparent when using tools/mixers/whatever to work with the audio stream? I just quickly tried this on Google's built-in metronome widget (TIL) [1] and I can't hear the difference between 99, 100 and 101 bpm. However, the switching is discrete (the audio stops and restarts) which probably makes it m…

I personally cannot tell, if I was mixing vinyl I honestly would never have known about this. But using a digital vinyl system like Serato which displayed the bpm as 100.0, it's very apparent the tracks will fluctuate. The other issue is since your turntable is keeping time, two of them playing the same BPM, say 100BPM can drift 1BPM in theory. That's a large number when playing slower songs like hip-hop, and easily cause drift within 15~30 seconds. It's not a big deal, most dj's ride the pitch fader but it's worthy of a mention that the Technics 1200's are just over engineered.
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