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Does DVS improve or hurt the "sound" of scratch music?


Jam Burglar

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After listening to the new Skratch Piklz LP, "13th Floor" and listening to more and more clips online where DJs are operating strictly off DVS, I can't help but notice something doesn't sound "right" to me.

 

Phantazmagorea sounded so dope, kind of organic and reminiscent of classic era hip hop. 13th Floor sounds a little sterile in comparison. I don't mean compositionally (I know 13th Floor is stripped down in comparison) but I'm talking about the overall sound quality. I actually think the concept behind 13th Floor is really dope and it's amazing that they recorded the album in a few days, live, more like a jazz album. It just doesn't sound as vibrant to me. It sounds too clean and overly compressed or something. I don't know if its the lack of crackle or the lack of hand-thumps or something, but it just doesn't sound "right" to me.

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Guest petesasqwax

I have to be honest: I've still not heard it. Speaking from my own perspective, I'm only really happy with using DVS in moderation. If I using it for the beat, the melody and the cuts it seems to lack and I have to work at it with the effects to get he track sounding something like. That said, I don't currently actually have DVS...

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agreed.......i think it sounds wrong as well.....at least, wrong in comparison - and also - knowing what actual records 'should' sound like

 

i really dont like cuttin on DVS too much....i will always plump for an actual scratch wax opposed to DVS if at all possible.

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I totally agree with Ed and ELGEE. I don't like cutting on DVS and it doesn't sound as good either, just purely as a listener. But it is really good for mixing and juggling. It's made me heavy handed when it comes to juggling real records though.

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I can adapt to the additional latency that DVS brings into the picture, but I'll always prefer real wax. The same goes for sound quality Real wax > DVS for ScratchMusic.

 

When I asked D why he's using DVS, when I did interview him (during the Rock Hard Bastard Tour), he said that it's a bitch to organise/press up show-wax and that he no longer wants to do this...

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Guest Symatic

i thought the ISP 13th floor stuff sounded amazingly clean when i heard it live - really clean for a tunrtablist set. you could do a lot more in terms of controlling the production quality and it would remain pretty much consistent from studio to show.... also theres no feedback or rumbling issues.....

 

but i way prefer vinyl over all. even with all the dirt.... the weirdness you get from turntables is all part of their character.

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When I asked D why he's using DVS, when I did interview him (during the Rock Hard Bastard Tour), he said that it's a bitch to organise/press up show-wax and that he no longer wants to do this...

As someone who 'produces' (i.e. little more than basic editing) their own routines, DVS is a no-brainer. The whole drama of pressing up routines on vinyl, hoping they're flat and don't skip... hoping they sound like they should... DVS is a godsend for that sort of thing.

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We've made 4 show-vinyls from 2005-2011. It was always a tuff act. But if time is no factor, then I would always prefer preparing/pressing a dedicated showvinyl. But I can see the advantages/benefits of having a DVS vs needing to press-up a showvinyl

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I had the same experience as JB listening to 13th Floor - it's all a bit too squeaky clean for me but I still liked it a lot.

 

I'm not a fan of cutting with DVS either. Does anyone else find you have to keep licking their fingers, Sinista style, or you lose traction on your record hand?

 

The pros of DVS for me is getting instant doubles of everything in your collection, the ability to cut up stuff that you'll never find on vinyl, such as film soundbites, etc, and the ability to thrash really expensive records without any detriment to the physical copy.

 

As for show vinyl, I've never done it but I'd like to. I wonder why Dave finds it such a ballache? I always thought it would be cool creating your own scratch tool and testing it out, etc.

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Guest Symatic

Yeah it would be a ball ache getting a pressing for every show... shit can go wrong easily. But worth it i think.

Lathe cut dubs are now very affordable though....

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Guest petesasqwax

Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to make up a record which essentially became your palette, though. Time-consuming, sure, but loads of fun and you could press up a decent amount and then sell the extras once you'd done performing it

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i agree with the masses, it doesn't sound as good. I think in some cases, a Z2 in particular further exacerbates that.

 

It's not really audible when it's just scratching buried in a mix with a full sounding beat, but when you're going for really minimal classic Turntablism type material, I find it ranges from 'a bit off' to scrappy sounding and too digital.

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Guest petesasqwax

When I got Traktor and my Audio6 I purchased it entirely from the perspective of taking tracks I'd produced in a DAW, rendering loops of the component parts and then rebuilding them via turntable. I was fucking gutting to discover that the quality just wasn't something I was happy enough with and I had to do serious work back in the DAW once I'd recorded in the manipulated loops in order for them to sound anywhere near like what I wanted. This ultimately meant blending the turntable tracks with the original loops... which totally negated the point and also made me feel like I was cheating (not that there are any rules... but THERE ARE RULES obvs)

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When I got Traktor and my Audio6 I purchased it entirely from the perspective of taking tracks I'd produced in a DAW, rendering loops of the component parts and then rebuilding them via turntable. I was fucking gutting to discover that the quality just wasn't something I was happy enough with and I had to do serious work back in the DAW once I'd recorded in the manipulated loops in order for them to sound anywhere near like what I wanted. This ultimately meant blending the turntable tracks with the original loops... which totally negated the point and also made me feel like I was cheating (not that there are any rules... but THERE ARE RULES obvs)

 

I find that running DVS sounds back into your DAW through a loop pedal breathes a bit of life into it.

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Okay, so I'm not tripping. I just started messing around with it and I figured it would be better because (a) no hand thumps and (b) no record burn (especially bass, which can burn out super fast). It is really dope for speed of selection and being able to use non-vinyl samples. It's also good for those testy kids records that are on 45 and semi-warped and hard to cut with.

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Unfortunately the world caved in and gave their money to asswipe companies that decided "You can only use this soundcard with our DVS"

RME had soundcards out that completely blow away anything available right now for DVS, well over ten years ago, but they were too expensive (RPM/DIgiScratch) and only worked with open DJ software.

Get an RPM or DigiScratch and use open software and the latency is way way better, the sound quality is a ton better too.

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Guest rasteri

I reckon a lot of it is that DVS reproduces high frequencies better than a mastered record/stylus. Certainly when I put a gentle lowpass around 15khz on a serato recording it sounds a lot better.

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My gut says it's because we're so used to hearing hand thumps and whatnot picked up through the needle and all of the minor sounds you get from dirty and worn records. I also wonder whether it's not partly due to the use of ultra-clean and/or compressed digital sources for the original files. All that dirt and vinyl specific dynamic range gets erased.

 

Also, I haven't messed around with DVS long enough to notice, but with scratching on wax, if you speed up the record the volume increases. This ads natural dynamic range to scratching. Does DVS act this way too?

 

I hadn't thought about frequency range (high frequencies being picked up better on DVS). When I record from vinyl to CD and don't do anything to the waveform afterwords, I think it's a pretty damn good representation to how the vinyl actually sounds, at least when I play it back through non-DVS applications. I don't have enough work on DVS to notice whether Serato itself might be coloring the sound.

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Guest rasteri

Aaaaah the old "Digital sounds harsh" chestnut hahahaha, i can remember the original wars years ago on various music forums, roll off the top end and most people hear it as warming up the sound hahaha

I can't find it now, but I remember reading a study where they tried to quantify "warmth" and it turned out to just mean "400hz".

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I don't know if it's just me but I can kind of feel the sound as it passes under the needle, I love that I can feel the sound, I miss this with DVS.

 

DVS has no soul, it's the fuckboy of djing, all clean and poncey, I also don't like how it gives every tom dickhead and harry the ability to look half decent but in reality they are shit without it.

 

In the other hand it made me enjoy mixing more and opened up a shitload of creativity that I lost a long time ago just mixing vinyl.

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Aaaaah the old "Digital sounds harsh" chestnut hahahaha, i can remember the original wars years ago on various music forums, roll off the top end and most people hear it as warming up the sound hahaha

I can't find it now, but I remember reading a study where they tried to quantify "warmth" and it turned out to just mean "400hz".

 

 

Hah brilliant

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