PDX 3000 alternatives?

[props to the finger]

I've been looking to invest in something like a PDX 3000 for a while to be able to use midi to control the pitch, to replace my 1200. Found a pair, but they're expensive and I don't have the space for two of them even.

 

Are there any good alternatives to the 3000s? Seems like nothing has the midi-pitch control option the 3000 has.

Edited December 28, 2016 by props to the finger

[Guest broke]

I think there's a mod you can do to the PDX 2000 to allow midi pitch

[Flexinoodle]

Numark CDX/HDX support MIDI note input

Rasteri is working on a project to convert the CDX to USB stick (Don't hassle him though, He is doing it as and when he can)

I suspect in the near future that the CDX is going to become an out of date classic.

[Guest rasteri]

Once I perfect my cloning machine I'm going to have one of my clones work on a superoem midi mod.

 

Till then though yeah those are your options.

[Mutis Mayfield]

I was trying to do my own fretless fader but based in pitchshift guitar pedal. I saw somewhere (maybe scratchworx?) a discussion about fretless where someone told the same idea but it doesn't took off...

I still think it could be by far more universal and straightforward solution than midi. Anyone interested? Experiences or opinions?

[Flexinoodle]

If you are using a pedal you have multiple options

You have a whammy pedal

There are shitloads of pitchshifting rack effects that you can plug a pedal in to aswell

You could even run a metal touch strip up the side of the deck or mixer

In fact a mini MIDI keyboard could be used next to the deck running in to a pitch shifting rackmount like a DIgitech or something too.

You could even use a pitchbend stick off a keyboard too.

 

Personally i have never heard anything done with all this pitch stuff that makes it even worth the effort of plugging in a whammy pedal.

What do i know, i'm an old fart.

[Guest Symatic]

I just got backtracks midi in / ultrapitch mod for technics in the mail... will let you know what level of dope it is

[Mutis Mayfield]

If you are using a pedal you have multiple options

You have a whammy pedal

There are shitloads of pitchshifting rack effects that you can plug a pedal in to aswell

You could even run a metal touch strip up the side of the deck or mixer

In fact a mini MIDI keyboard could be used next to the deck running in to a pitch shifting rackmount like a DIgitech or something too.

You could even use a pitchbend stick off a keyboard too.

 

Personally i have never heard anything done with all this pitch stuff that makes it even worth the effort of plugging in a whammy pedal.

What do i know, i'm an old fart.

Yeah I'm aware about of these approach but I left all these djing related stuff to focus in other musician areas (like iOS producing as you know). I came to dv adviced by a friend which is still trying to mod his pt01 and dns3700. Share files (that surely I will not use in the future) and so. If finally rasteri makes the cdx alive again I will try to fix my own but nowadays I haven't dj mixer or similar.

I was messing with the pitch stuff to replicate the Roland VariOS (I'm fan of Variphrase as you know too ) for sampling purposes. Turntable are in my heart but not my first tool of choice (I sold my last to buy a Sp555 years ago which I sold to buy my first iPad for loopy more or less).

 

I was trying to figure why pitchshift approach was never arise, or it done somewhere? Also ask for experiences and obviously open to share my few research on it

 

I just got backtracks midi in / ultrapitch mod for technics in the mail... will let you know what level of dope it is

Back on Topic and question.

http://djworx.com/dj-backtrack-ultra-pitch-technics-mod-kit/

 

[djdiggla]

Numark CDX/HDX support MIDI note input

Rasteri is working on a project to convert the CDX to USB stick (Don't hassle him though, He is doing it as and when he can)

I suspect in the near future that the CDX is going to become an out of date classic.

I'd always wanted a HDX. The CDX was great but the drift makes it annoying to mix on. Figured they'd have fixed that on the HDX but maybe not. Never could find a HDX cheap enough to justify buying tho.

[Vekked]

I was trying to do my own fretless fader but based in pitchshift guitar pedal. I saw somewhere (maybe scratchworx?) a discussion about fretless where someone told the same idea but it doesn't took off...

I still think it could be by far more universal and straightforward solution than midi. Anyone interested? Experiences or opinions?

The pitch shifting on guitar pedals isn't that great for turntable stuff cuz we use a much wider variety of frequencies and such that guitar pedals don't always handle well because they're optimized for guitar or bass. And controlling pitch in notes using an expression pedal is very difficult... It does have some merit, but only for a handful of notes, definitely not a replacement for a fretless fader.

[Mutis Mayfield]

The control will be the same with expresion pedal input (modded with softpot or fretless mechanism) and for the range it could be possible to adapt it, not in the same way like midi scale, but in harmonic sound. Take a look (if you didn't see this before of course...)

 

 

For the frequencies point I wonder it's different resample (the way a turntable works) than realtime phase shifting fx (the way these pedals usual work) which makes sense and lot more for monophonic vs beat material. If I could grab another us600 I will make more tests.

 

Thanks Vekked for sharing your POV!

[Vekked]

The control will be the same with expresion pedal input (modded with softpot or fretless mechanism) and for the range it could be possible to adapt it, not in the same way like midi scale, but in harmonic sound. Take a look (if you didn't see this before of course...)

 

 

For the frequencies point I wonder it's different resample (the way a turntable works) than realtime phase shifting fx (the way these pedals usual work) which makes sense and lot more for monophonic vs beat material. If I could grab another us600 I will make more tests.

 

Thanks Vekked for sharing your POV!

Haven't tried that one, so definitely worth a shot, but my main fear with using digital pitch shifting is that the quality degrades pretty drastically as you go up or down in pitch, in my experience.

 

The benefit of the fretless + PDX is that you're changing the playback speed of the sample and minimizing the negative artifacts of the pitch shifting process. But digitally pitch shifting has the benefit of changing pitch without altering speed for beat matched/tempo based sample. I think if you're after this, it's generally easier to use the built-in Serato/Traktor pitch shifting options than a pedal nowadays, unless you're going all analog of course.

[Mutis Mayfield]

Agreed (and I check these to add to other "analog" instruments apart from turntable)

 

[Guest rasteri]

I'd always wanted a HDX. The CDX was great but the drift makes it annoying to mix on. Figured they'd have fixed that on the HDX but maybe not. Never could find a HDX cheap enough to justify buying tho.

What's the drift problem? I remember you mentioning it but I couldn't get mine to do it, maybe I wasn't using it the same way as you.

 

EDIT : and yeah traktor/serato's builtin pitch shift is almost certainly much better than a guitar pedal

[bobkruijer]

PDX 3000, controller one, numark cdx, hdx, pdx 2000 with midi mod, pdx 2000mkii with midi mod and sl1200 with midi mod are your options. If you're not too afraid to solder some things I'd recommend getting a 2nd hand pdx 2000 and doing the mod there.

 

The downside I've seen (haven't used it myself s a bit of a disclaimer) of the 1200 midi mod is that the torque of the 1200 is not as great as the Vestax decks. This manifests itself in a noticeable slide from note to note. The Vestax decks have this too, but less so.

 

With regards to the pedal topic, if it is digital pitch correction I agree in the extremes it becomes noticeable. However, I would just use Serato or Traktor for that purpose. And to counteract the 'artificial' side of it you could even use different samples at every midi note...

[Flexinoodle]

Again, i am going to preform this question with the statement, I AM OLD

 

What exactly is the point of any of this ?

Why not just use a sampler ?

If all you are doing is changing the key to play a tune, then just play a sampler (Hardware or built in to your DJ app)

I am at a total loss to how any of this is useful (Again, I AM OLD)

 

Example

Aaah sound loaded in to sampler, play on keys as you wish

Same Aaah sound on vinyl scratch as you like

 

Aaah sound on vinyl with MIDI mod, play turntable with obvious lag/latency because of changing motor speed

Scratch as you like

 

What is the difference between the obvious advantage of zero lag on a sampler ?

 

By the way i am not saying non of this is a good idea, i have just never seen anybody do a demo that i actually thought, yep that sounds cool or is clever, i just listen and think "Oooof sloppy keys player" (And i am shit on the keys hahaha)

[Mutis Mayfield]

Well in my particular quest I want to repitch without changing duration (just as variphrase) but for realtime sound (just as vc-2 vsynth xt card) and with scratchable playhead of the sample (this part the less important as time goes) or apply it to non turntable instruments (like sliced samples and loops as fx).

 

About the control maneuver I'm more a keyboard player than pad madman or turntablist but.. we are here (dv) and I'm crazy plus masochist. XD

 

So I agree as old I get the less I care about weird workflows. I'm just try to do this with djplayer app and vestax pad one xy.

[Vekked]

Again, i am going to preform this question with the statement, I AM OLD

 

What exactly is the point of any of this ?

Why not just use a sampler ?

If all you are doing is changing the key to play a tune, then just play a sampler (Hardware or built in to your DJ app)

I am at a total loss to how any of this is useful (Again, I AM OLD)

 

Example

Aaah sound loaded in to sampler, play on keys as you wish

Same Aaah sound on vinyl scratch as you like

 

Aaah sound on vinyl with MIDI mod, play turntable with obvious lag/latency because of changing motor speed

Scratch as you like

 

What is the difference between the obvious advantage of zero lag on a sampler ?

 

By the way i am not saying non of this is a good idea, i have just never seen anybody do a demo that i actually thought, yep that sounds cool or is clever, i just listen and think "Oooof sloppy keys player" (And i am shit on the keys hahaha)

We are turntablists, not pad mashers. I have infinitely more control over a record than a sampler... Think about how much more stuff you can do in real time with a single note on a turntable than you can do with that single note on a sampler. Now if you have pitch control, you can multiply all of those possibilities by how many different pitches you have.

 

Probably the most relevant example recently is Brace using both the controller one and fretless to do a bunch of different styles of melodies that would probably be tougher to achieve otherwise, and nearly impossible to re-create identically:

 

[Flexinoodle]

Sorry, i still don't get it

"We are not pad mashers" then show a video of a controller one with buttons (Same as pads)

Add that to the fact that he is triggering a ton of samples in as he scratches them, i don't see any difference to triggering the samples and playing them on keys/pads/buttons in a sampler (Keep in mind here, there are a shitload of samplers that can be scratched in DVS, exactly what he is doing)

He is literally doing everything triggering samples except pitching them haha

Using DVS and changing motor speed, the "Changing the motor speed is better quality, digital degrades" is completely negated by this fact, because the controller one DVS is actually just changing the pitch digitally, exactly like any trigger would

The fretless is through a guitar pedal or such and extremely distorted, and anybody who tries to tell me that that is better quality than a whammy pedal, erm no (In this video at least)

Awesome set though

But still shows nothing that could not be done exactly as i mentioned for a whole shedload cheaper (And as pointed out he uses all the techniques i mentioned, triggering samples/pitches on buttons/pads)

The fretless i am just going to ignore, i have never seen one do anything of particular note yet

 

But i shall back away quietly now and just carry on being OLD (Even though that awesome video proves my point more than anybody elses, it is completely digital and mostly triggered samples)

[Jam Burglar]

Agree the midi controller foot pedal is going to hard to manage for pitch shifts. One of those large multi-button ones would probably work better than a wah type pedal.

 

Flexinoodle, it's just one of those things that I think you have to put some thought into from a turntablist's perspective. The best way for me to explain it is to break the pitch changing down to a very basic level. You've got the "beep, ahhhhhhh" sample. A turntablist is going to want to flip that as many ways as possible. The "beep", being more musical, is going to have lots of noticeable variation when the pitch is changed and is going to sound best in a musical scale.

 

Loading up some kind of DVS setup where you load different "beep" samples at different pitches is doable but not really as practical as being able to take that "beep" and be able to flip it into different notes using a turntable. Using a 16 levels MPC type of sampler to flip the pitch will work, but you can't scratch the sample then. A scratch DJ is goinig to want to be able to not only flip the pitches but also maintain control over the sample for scratching and bending and all the other stuff turntablists do. A pitch shifting turntable is just easiest way to get from point A to point B.

 

Now, you can use your imagination to expand beyond what you can do with "beep". You can apply the above logic to any sample on wax or your DVS. You can have your scratch samples tuned to the underlying track. There are many more possibilities when making musical tracks that are composed directly off the turntable.

 

We can argue all day over whether "scratch music" sounds good or is not the best way to make music but that's really just opinion. I could just as easily argue that sample music in general is stupid because the sounds can be played by "real musicians". The bottom line is that scratch DJs have legitimate and valid reasons for wanting pitch shifting turntables. It's not a pointless exercise.

[Vekked]

Sorry, i still don't get it

"We are not pad mashers" then show a video of a controller one with buttons (Same as pads)

Add that to the fact that he is triggering a ton of samples in as he scratches them, i don't see any difference to triggering the samples and playing them on keys/pads/buttons in a sampler

I'm not really sure what your argument is. At first I thought it was "what is the point of using turntables + pitch changing gear when you can just use a sampler instead of turntables". My point is we aren't pad mashers... aka we play turntables, not samplers.

 

(Keep in mind here, there are a shitload of samplers that can be scratched in DVS, exactly what he is doing)

But here it seems like you're saying to use turntables with samplers? I'm not sure. I don't think there are "samplers that can be scratch in DVS" but I'm guessing you just worded that poorly. If you're saying you could just re-pitch all of your samples in a sampler, then scratch the notes on a turntable, then yes you're right, but that's a way longer process and you have to have it all planned out, whereas with controller one, fretless, etc, you can do it in real time without any prep work. So if you're asking "why would you do real-time pitching on the turntable when you could do hours of prep work and bounce a bunch of files back and forth?", your answer is there.

 

The fretless is through a guitar pedal or such and extremely distorted, and anybody who tries to tell me that that is better quality than a whammy pedal, erm no (In this video at least)

How exactly are you going to do any of this stuff with a whammy pedal? Have you used a whammy pedal with scratching to try and play melodies? It's a cool pedal, but it's extremely limited in what you can do, and the re-pitching is wayyy worse quality than a fretless fader... I have both, and the whammy is a cool pitch effect that I nearly used in DMC last year myself (the first routine in Brace's video was originally a team routine idea that we cut where I was using a whammy pedal to play a version of that melody), the only advantage is extreme pitch changes with zero glide... so basically using it as a whammy. Both the controller one and fretless change the speed and pitch both, which is inherently going to be better than any effect algorithm that's trying to preserve the tempo and change the pitch. Speed a tone up 50% on a turntable, then use a whammy pedal to pitch the same tone up a perfect 5th and see if you can't hear any artifacts

[Vekked]

Loading up some kind of DVS setup where you load different "beep" samples at different pitches is doable but not really as practical as being able to take that "beep" and be able to flip it into different notes using a turntable. Using a 16 levels MPC type of sampler to flip the pitch will work, but you can't scratch the sample then. A scratch DJ is goinig to want to be able to not only flip the pitches but also maintain control over the sample for scratching and bending and all the other stuff turntablists do. A pitch shifting turntable is just easiest way to get from point A to point B.

That's it. Even if you made cue points for every note you pitched it to, doing something as easy as baby scratches moving up a scale is way harder with cue points than it is with a fretless or controller one. Each method of pitch control has it's own strengths and weaknesses... The ideal solution is definitely some combination of a bunch of the options we have, and as time goes on we're getting more and more control over melodies as technology gets better and wizards like the guys here come up with more ideas on how to do it.

[Flexinoodle]

Of course there are samplers that can be scratched with DVS !!

1 You can use cue points and scratch them (That is basically a sampler that can be scratched) different cue point, different key (Prep time is seconds)

2 Some DJ software allows samples to be scratched in the built in sampler

3 http://www.stagecraftsoftware.com/products/DJs/ 3 example products, one a VST sampler that can be scratched with DVS, another a DJ app that allows you to scratch anything, lastly a sequencer that allows you to scratch anything

4 You can load any VST you want in to Virtual DJ and control it with DVS, I have scratched Maschine

5 Traktors remix decks are in fact samplers with sequencers and can in fact be scratched with DVS, however it is a while since i used these in particular and i am unsure if they support resampling (Playing on keys) however, even if they did not, you could load different sample pitches of the same sample in to slots and play the notes that way, and with the new sequencers, wouldn't this be playable pitched looping too, for even more creativity ?

 

Prep time would not be high at all, loading a sample and exporting at different pitches is a one click macro in quite a lot of audio software, advantage here is that you can use all kinds of pitching from resampling through a ton of high quality stretching algos, this way the pitch would change but not the length.

In fact there are so many, i am not sure how you could say that there are no samplers that can be scratched unless you just haven't looked around ?

 

I never once said don't use turntables, i said use the turntable to scratch and use the MIDI playability of the sample to change note

When i said use a whammy pedal i was using the generic term, not an actual whammy which has a particular tone, but there are plenty of super high quality pitch shifting effects, some for guitar, some not, if you do use a guitar pedal then make sure to impedance match or the quality will be poor.

Some of these effects have built in keys on the front of the hardware and/or allow you to plug in a MIDI keyboard.

 

But here is the facts, a controller one is a bunch of keys changing the speed of a motor to change note of a tone, controlling a sampler with DVS and using some buttons to change the note will have very little lag, be way way way less prep time (Put a tone of C on the actual key of C for example) with perfect tuning and still scratch-able, and actually, very very cheap, and anybody who tells me they don't like the sound of samplers, really ? Yes we all love turntables, but if you don't like samples and everything about sampling, then i am at a loss ???

 

But yeah anyway, i was just trying to show that there are options out there that work as well if not better, I was never saying don't do it your way, i was pointing out that nobody has done anything worth note on any of these pitched setups, and the video you posted was no different.

Problem is, you are turntablists, not keyboard players or pad mashers as you put it, if you want to do anything useful, then you are going to have to become keyboard players or pad mashers.

 

 

Heres a couple points to mull

1 My technique vs changing a turntables speed, chords, yep my way you can play chords

2 Mellotron VS Sampler = Turntable VS Sampler, Both great, but one does the job of the other without costing the earth and breaking down a lot.

[Flexinoodle]

You know what, nevermind, in the new year i move in to a new place with some space, i'm just gonna do some vids showing that there is more than one way to do this stuff, i may be a crap scratch DJ, but shit i know technology haha

[Vekked]

No offense but all your suggestions are things that we've already tried and don't like. You're suggesting using hot cues on notes, which we've been doing for a decade and is a very limited way of making scratch melodies. Sure you can bounce all the notes really quickly but unless you just plan on cueing each note without trying to incorporate scratch techniques and styles into it, it's going to take a while to line all of the notes up properly and have them beat matched and close enough together to move the record between. And you're going to have to change them up every time you scratch on a different song with a new key/tempo.

 

The fretless fader has dozens of scales and modes at every root note, etc all programmed in so you can take a single note and play over any song in any key without having to open a DAW. You can literally export a C-note and play over any key or tempo with it.

 

I've tried the Digitech pitch shifters, the Boss pitch shifters, I've had 2 TC rack mount units with all their pitch shifting algorithms... They're not that good, and both Serato and Traktor do that within the software now, and do it better than the external units.

 

i was pointing out that nobody has done anything worth note on any of these pitched setups, and the video you posted was no different.

Problem is, you are turntablists, not keyboard players or pad mashers as you put it, if you want to do anything useful, then you are going to have to become keyboard players or pad mashers.

Well, the guy in the video has broken 4 million views this past year and has won the most prestigious instrumental music award in the country for his turntable music, so I think a lot of people would disagree with you that he hasn't done anything note worthy, and he's doing pretty good without being a keyboard player or pad masher.