On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Eddie Symons wrote:
quoted 15 lines Hey all,> Hey all,
>
> A uk specific thing, plus a question for everyone...
>
> Noticed in Argos that they have this 2cd+mixer thing, with 3band eqs and
> stuff... just over ?200 notes. I've considered getting a cd mixing system
> for a while and wondered just how shit this is. I'm assuming it's a bit
> shit, since it's not by a recongnisable brand, and it's stocked in Argos,
> but would it be a good place to try out mixing on the cheap??
>
> Or, could anyone recommend another cheap way in to cd mixing?
>
> (don't recommend vinyl please! I'd love to mix vinyl but 90% of my music is
> cds)
>
There has been a proliferation of CD players for DJs; I learned on Denon
2000 so anything too far from that confuses me. The Pioneer ones, which
are definitely more feature rich, are much harder for me to beat match
on because I've never sat down and read the manual.
For light use on of those 'all in one' dual CD+mixer things would probably
be OK -- especially for 200 pounds -- that's about $300 and the cheapest
mixer + decent dual CD deck would be at least double that.
The problem with those units -- as is the problem with anything that
integrates many functions into an indivisible unit -- is that if one
bit goes bad, it's much harder to fix.
The main question about this 'shit' unit is does it have pitch control,
does it have 'pitch bend' buttons, and does it have precise cuing? Without
all of those features you're going to have a hellish time beat matching.
CD mixing is completely different from Vinyl. On the Denon the procedure
is to play the track, hit pause close to a downbeat, and then use the search
buttons to back up to the edge of the beat. Then you hit 'cue' saving it
as a cue point. Then you hit 'play' on the down and adjust the pitch
to match. You hit 'Cue' again and you're paused at your cue point, and
you start it again and adjust pitch.
This actually has some advantage over vinyl, as vinyl makes it difficult
to return to a precise cue point, so you end up trying to nudge and drag
the disk into sync, then cue back to where you want to start. With
CDs, going back to the cue is easy, so you can pretty quickly tweak into
the correct tempo by successive approximation.
One annoyance with CDs is the granularity on the pitch control is fairly
crude -- on the Denon you're on average 5/100ths of a BPM off when you're
as close as you can get. That might not seem like a lot, but it means
that you'll be nudging or dragging with the pitch bend buttons if you want
to hold a mix for longer than 8 bars.
So my advice is that if this bargain device has the minimum controls
for mixing, and you won't feel bad about giving the thing to your kid
brother in 6 months, go for it.
Ultimately you'll want something better, and you'll end up paying as much
as you would for 1200s. I'd recommend either the Tascam Dual CD deck as
being very feature rich; Tascam stuff is built like a tank as well.
The Denons are OK as well, and something of a standard in clubs that
have a CD mixing setup. Pioneer has a new CD player out now
that has a giant jog wheel that allows you to do DJ scratch tricks; I've
not played with it. They were demo-ing it at DEMF and the demo dudes
sounded shit -- sure they were scratching, but they never seemed
to have the precise cuing that a vinyl DJ has.
If you don't mind spending some time on building your mixing and
beatmatching skills, even a good basic dual deck will do. All of the
tricky stuff they're putting into new ones is ultimately a distraction.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org