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M-Audio TORQ vinyl control package now in stores! (pg. 3)
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| nem0nic |
| I didn't say that. I can't really tell yet. But I did say that the control vinyl that it comes with is very thick and heavy. The first timecode records released for FS were also very heavy and thick, and that prompted Stanton to release a new thinner lighter version. |
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| DjWoody |
| Have you used Serato? If so, which one do you like better and why? Serato or Torq? |
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| nem0nic |
Yes, I've used Serato. I've had it in my home for testing twice - once around 1.2 and again around 1.4. each time I had it for about a week. It's a great program for vinyl emulation, but because it lacks independant key and tempo and MIDI support, it's not suitable for my needs.
I could even stand to give up MIDI support if that was the only problem (using MIDI Translator to translate MIDI data to keystrokes SSL could understand), but the lack of independant key is a deal breaker for me.
I've been a beta tester for FS and TDJS for a couple years, and until now it was the only system that did waht I wanted it to. |
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| Prism |
| You should have been beta testing Conectiv in the first place!! |
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| Ryan0751 |
Ok folks, just got my torq installed and running tonight. So far I haven't gone too deep into the application (need to spend time with the manual), but I'm impressed thus far. I've been mostly using the control vinyl with my 1200 MK5's, and it works quite well. As far as I can feel, mixing on Torq feels exactly like normal vinyl. I have NOT used Serato or FS2 however, so I can't really compare against those.
I'm not a turtablist, but I did try scratching a bit and backspinning... no issues. I tried a very very long backspin, and it didn't miss a beat. Relative mode worked just as it should.
I did try using one of my CDJ-1000's with the control CD. I was impressed, very impressed. Turning master tempo on on the CDJ seemed to confuse the timecode a bit, but that's expected and it's totally useless anyway (torq has it's own master tempo function). Reverse, hot cues, and looping all worked exactly like they do with a normal CD. All pitch ranges worked perfectly. Cueing, etc, all work like a normal CD. Very nice indeed!
I didn't spend much time mixing with the CDJ's and control cd's, as I really bought this to get more use out of my 1200's. Perhaps over the weekend I'll try this again as I'm curious to see just how accurate the timecode is and if it can resolve the .02% pitch increments of the CDJ.
I'm running this on a Macbook 1.83, 1 gig of RAM, and thus far the CPU usage has hovered around 20%. When loading new tracks, it does some sort of waveform analysis that spikes the CPU a bit, but nothing too bad.
I basically agree with Nem0nic's review thus far.
Problems:
1. For some reason, using the touchpad on the macbook causes the music to stutter/pitchbend/something if you leave the laptop alone for a few minutes and come back to it and touch the touchpad. I have no idea what that's about, but using an external mouse gets around it. I'm going to log a bug with M-Audio for that one. I had previously had Microsoft Intellimouse drivers installed (which I since removed), so I don't know if that has something to do with it.
2. The "Mix" knobs on the interface can switch between the sound coming from your vinyl or cd decks and that of the Torq app (for playing regular vinyl or cd's). I noticed that the levels coming from torq are much higher than that of normal vinyl, so you have to fiddle with the gains (quite a bit on my Xone 92) to get them the same. With CD's they were much closer. There very well may be a setting in the torq app to get around this (PFL's or something), so this might just need to be tweaked. |
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| nem0nic |
Sweet. Another review. If anyone is able to test it out over a long period of time I would REALLY be interested in feedback from that. I won't be able to do that kind of testing until early next week (work sucks this weekend).
OK, so I've played a little more and have more info for you guys. I want to apologize beforehand for the fact that the only video camera I have is a cameraphone. The image quality is pretty bad, but let me explain what I did and how I set it up, and that might help you make sense of the video.
I wanted to test how "absolute" the Torq absolute mode was. The best way I could think of to test this was to physically mark the vinyl and see if I could make it correspond with a specific event in an MP3. So what I did was load a little sample that I made (a simple loop with the "AHHHHH" sample in it about 45 seconds in) and loaded that MP3 into boh decks in Torq.
I then took a small piece of tape and set up an old school "locked groove" - an angled piece of tape set so that it would knock the needle back to the start of the groove every rotation. Yes, I am ing old.
In the video below, I show you this mark and that it corresponds to the right point in the song (the AHHH sample). It loops for a bit, then I pan over to show the display scrolling and jumping in time to the audio.
I then move the needle into the record and do a few needle drops. What I'm trying to do here is clear out the buffer. I then move the needle back to the locked groove and show that it's still skipping at the same point it did before.
Next, I show you that the same sample is playing on the other deck using unmarked vinyl. Sorry it took me so long to get to the sample. Once I get there, I remove the unmarked record and bring my marked record over to that side. I needle drop and let it play until it gets to the locked groove. You can see that it correctly skips at the same place it did in the other deck.
So what this tells us is that absolute mode is really absolute, and that a point on the timecode vinyl always corresponds to a specific point in the song. This can be good or bad (good for visual reference - as the Conectiv vinyl is marked by a visual groove every minute, and bad because a skip or cue burn cant be mapped away from using an offset.
I did this test for the more scratch oriented DJs out there. As a more mix oriented DJ it probably doesn't matter as much.
http://www.nem0nic.com/absolute.wmv - for the video |
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| Ryan0751 |
| Just tried the autosync/auto-beatmatching feature... check my thread "Torq auto-beatmaching..." to hear a sample.... |
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| nem0nic |
Ryan, this is a tip regarding your Macbook problem. Taken from Konix in the DJF forums...
| quote: | | Tell him to plug the Connectiv box into the other USB port. This is a well known problem with Macbooks/Macbook Pros when using SSL. If you touch the trackpad you will get dropouts if you have the SL1 plugged into the "bad" USB port. Actually I was waiting for someone with a Macbook to test this and see if Torq suffers the same problem, looks like it does. Usually it's the left USB port that's the "bad" one, tell him to use the right USB port and that should solve that problem. |
See if that works. |
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| Ryan0751 |
I KNEW I had read something about a problem like that... thanks for the solution, I do in fact have it connected to the "left" port (looking at the laptop from the side). I'll try it tonight. Thanks!
I did enter a defect on the M-Audio site, I wonder if it's correctable or not.
| quote: | Originally posted by nem0nic
Ryan, this is a tip regarding your Macbook problem. Taken from Konix in the DJF forums...
See if that works. |
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| RJT |
| Well it's looking more and more like this is going to be the answer... With looping and hot cues looking to be working well, at this point I'm just going to wait until I hear a bit more about how they work with CDJ's (pitch accuracy, corrections, etc.), but it's looking like this will be a good route for me... No more worrying about burning new CD's before every gig... |
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| Ryan0751 |
Actually once you try the loops in Torq itself, I doubt you'll want to use the loops on the CDJ's. You can create a 1,2,3,4 bar loop (or do it by beat if you set it up that way) and it'll be perfect every time.
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
Well it's looking more and more like this is going to be the answer... With looping and hot cues looking to be working well, at this point I'm just going to wait until I hear a bit more about how they work with CDJ's (pitch accuracy, corrections, etc.), but it's looking like this will be a good route for me... No more worrying about burning new CD's before every gig... |
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| djkoolaide |
| Just got mine, and after an hour of use I must say I am EXTREMELY impressed! For 299 at GC it's definitely worth it for those who can't afford SSL or FS2. I'll post a better review later tonight, but I'm kind of worried that I won't ever get away from my decks anymore :p |
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