Chroma uses all digital as well, and by now most people should know I use it. I use it because I am on a limited budget, and ordering wavs from beatport and other sites for only $1-2 is very inexpensive. Also..alot of the tracks I play out have been personally remixed or remastered to have the tracks come off sounding the way I want them to; as well as getting more into producing my own material. For remixing/producing...digital is pretty much the only solution because I certainly dont have the access or the resources to create vinyl pressings of every single track I put together.

Bottom line is you should stick with the format which is the most convenient for you. Vinyl has its advantages and disadvantages over digital. The advantages vinyl has is that its the most accepted among the peers who have been in the scene a while, and most of them assume vinyl will always sound better...therefore chances of getting booked are much higher. There are other reasons why people consider vinyl better than digital..but these are mainly subjective reasons and I wont go into them..because everyone has different outlooks.

On the issue of sound quality however, I will just share what I have learned. Not every vinyl is going to have the "perfect" sound. Depending on the setup, you could have distortions such as feedback, grounding issues, noise if the needles are dirty, and the fact that each and every time a vinyl is played (depending on the weight/pressure from the tonearm) vinyl will gradually lose sound quality every time. The high frequencies will give out because of the decay of the waveform and the introduction of pops, clicks and such noise into the grroves will be introduced. It doesnt happen quickly, but say if you wanted to bring back that track that was big in 98, yeah it isnt going to sound as clean as the track you just picked up from the record store. Also..alot of tracks on vinyl...are taken from DIGITAL recordings when they are produced in the studio. Protools, Cubase, etc...its all digital. Im not going to write down how exactally a vinyl disc is mastered, cut, and mass produced..there are books on that if anyone is interested. But the old days where tracks were recorded, mixed down, edited and mastered on pure analog tape machines are over.

Which brings me back to using digital. The WAVs one can order from beatport and the single CD-Rs you can purchase, promo cdrs etc, are synonymous with the digital masters of the tracks as they left the studio, so they really will not sound too much different over a club system. I'm willing to bet that I could drop vinyl and digital version of tracks over Eternal's sound system, and not one would be able to say which was which. Now...if one is planning on using digital...DO NOT DOWNLOAD AND PLAY OUT MP3s, this is where people who use digital get a bad rep from. You can order 320kbs mp3s from beatport, but any sort of data compression on a waveform, will compromise the sound, so I recommend against using them. If you must use mp3s like say for Final Scratch, I would say use nothing below 256kbs..or the higest quality VBR. I dunno enough about MP4 except that like MP3...its a compressed format, and thus inferior to WAVs.

Digital's drawbacks are these..as well as my recommendations for getting around them. For anyone using digital and has a computer...go out and buy a 180GB external harddrive and back up all your WAVs on it. You will thank yourself later. CD-Rs are extremely vunerable to scratches and nicks which will cause a track to skip on you if the CD is damaged enough. Another thing is if your case with all your music happens to get stolen. Its happened twice to me already; while at marco v in houston my music and my headphones were stolen from my car, same thing happened at Gabriel and Dresden friday night (they dumbasses missed the headphones thank god) forcing me to drive to houston and back to replace them. Luckily, I had every last song backed up on the harddrive so I was able to show up saturday night with everything I needed to play. Where vinyl is concerned...my heart truly goes out to any artist whose ever had a record crate stolen.

On a final note, I will not say either medium is better. I use digital soley for budget and producing convenience. It doesnt make mixing any easier (actually much harder if you dont have the CDJ 1000s or something similar). Finally..they wont prevent you from getting booked as in the past. I have had to deal with alot of ignorant promoters and musical peers who basically..had their heads up their asses. It wasnt until recently, after seeing that every last headliner was showing up with digital, many promoters finally figured out that digital was becoming more commonplace at clubs. In other words, if you can mix..and have a solid demo to hand to the promoters, and your CD-Rs or final scratch audio doesnt consist of shitty sounding MP3s (below 256kbs at the very minimum) chances are you can be booked, and possibly asked back.

I know this is rather long..but just saught to inform I do realize they may be people on this forum who support analog 100% and likewise condemn digital in the same fashion...thats okay. As I said, its all about preference and whatever works for the individual artist.

quote:

Originally posted by DeviantxPete I'm all for supporting your favorite artist

When you order tracks from beatport, i-tunes, or whever you can find them...you still pay for each track...just not as much as vinyl. You only pay $1-2 for the tracks..and the artists get just about the same or maybe more of a royalty for each track as specified in the deals they made with the distributing paysite.

This is probably an incredibly lame analogy-- but whenever people pose the question you asked I think about the scene in "Caddy Shack 2" when Jackie Mason is playing golf.

In the movie he uses a "twelve gauge shotgun" driver and putters with laser guidance systems. Granted, he is able to play a better golf game, but their is a purity in playing golf the way that it has always been played.

quote:

Originally posted by Travis Dose This is probably an incredibly lame analogy-- but whenever people pose the question you asked I think about the scene in "Caddy Shack 2" when Jackie Mason is playing golf. In the movie he uses a "twelve gauge shotgun" driver and putters with laser guidance systems. Granted, he is able to play a better golf game, but their is a purity in playing golf the way that it has always been played.

Just kindly pointing out the mixing on CD-R isnt necessarily any easier than mixing on vinyl. you still have to beatmatch, phrase, and hope to god the tracks stay aligned during transition (not too mention the proper EQing qith the mixer) none of that..to my knowledge anyway..is done automatically. I will say the CDJ 1000s have a bpm readout...but it is even more inaccurate than the DJM 600s is lol.

We all have our opinions though

Matthias, your first post pretty much covered everything on the benefits and details of using CDs. Don't burn mp3 to cd and play em out, but if you're using wav sources from beatport (do they offer wavs?) or from promo CDRs, I can definitely see a lot of advantages of CDs. As far as mixing CDs vs vinyl, both are just as easy/difficult imo. It's just a matter of knowing the equipment, but all the concepts are the same and very easy to adjust to. Personally, I prefer the hands on interaction of mixing with vinyl, though I love the idea of being able to play harder to find tracks through the use of CDs and a QUALITY source.

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"I played 12.30 til close at 3am at the club (Antro), following on from an Australian dj,
which seemed unusual in deepest Texas." - Judge Jules

One major advantage to playing CDs:

CD decks don't drift...

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"Ok Boys, Let's Pony Up And Get This Bitch Done." - Redneck Dave

quote:

Originally posted by DJ_Octane One major advantage to playing CDs: CD decks don't drift...

+190201932980329032093290

that is the one thing I really love about my cd decks over my turntables. the accuracy and hold on the pitch is far superior to vinyl. I love vinyl, but I really hate making small adjustments during the transitions. With my cd decks, I usually only have to tweak the pitch once during a long transition just because the pitch control is not analog. With the records, I find myself tweaking over and over to keep it perfect and it makes me lose concentration on the mix itself.

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Helping girls make bad decisions since 1979

Play the best music possible... whatever the medium.

Vinyl does reproduce sound better than any other medium. And I've been told by several women that manipulating vinyl is sexy.. just an added bonus. Mixing vinyl will always be an art form...

I play both CD-Rs and Vinyl. Live (Ableton) is cool, but a bit on the geek side. Given, I use it as well

You have to look this way... You want to have as many tools at your disposal as possible while playing, so you have options.

MP3s sound like shit on a good system, so get FLAC or WAV versions, they will sound better.

best
-lance

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"Do Right and Fear NO Man"

quote:

Originally posted by Rememberence_ but if you're using wav sources from beatport (do they offer wavs?) or from promo CDRs,

they send you the WAV on a cd

quote:

Originally posted by DJ_Octane One major advantage to playing CDs: CD decks don't drift...

Sure they do

___________________
"I played 12.30 til close at 3am at the club (Antro), following on from an Australian dj,
which seemed unusual in deepest Texas." - Judge Jules

quote:

Originally posted by Rememberence_ Sure they do

I am almost positive that they do not.

Wow and Flutter is the measurement of drift that one would expect from a new turntable. Vinyl tables have that measurement, but CDs do not. What happens when you load a CD into the table, at least with my Technics, you can hear it read it very quickly, throw it all into memory and then everything from there on is controlled digitally which means that Wow & Flutter can't happen because it is not relying on anything "mechanical".

Besides all of that, I have noticed no drift on my CDs while my regular tables do a little bit.

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Helping girls make bad decisions since 1979