DVS. What to do?

slipmats don’t communicate with traktor. The needle and the control vinyl send timecode signal to your DVS box and traktor.

Just get a cheap mixer. If you are in US you can get a decent Stanton one for $30 off of one site!

and as far as TT’s go, just make sure you get direct drive

Hi,

Yep, certified mixers have built-in sound cards that can handle time-code. Might wanna look at the Denon X600 mixer.

You wouldn’t have to buy the A10, just a bare Traktor Scratch license. Officially the X600 is not certified, but is fully DVS ready (read up on the Denon product page), but it has the same sound card the X1600 has – which IS certified. Apparently you can use the X1600 driver with the X600 and it will trigger the DVS plug-in in Traktor.

It has good digital FX on board, but you can also use the FX in Traktor. Also there are some midi-assignable buttons. You could even browse through Traktor tracks.

I have it’s big brother, the X1600, with a bit more features. But if you are on a budget, this might be the mixer for you.

As far as turntables go, obviously direct drive, but have a look at the torque too. Another thing is the amount of needle pressure that can be set (with matching anti-skating). You’ll have the choice of (many) SL-1200 look-alike’s new or a set of used (get refurbished) original Technics.

Good luck & greetinx,
C.

LOL, yeah vinyl is definitely not CDs 🙂

Especially for those faint of heart who were used to less than 1 gram needle pressure and now having to turn stuff up to 3-5 grams … then forgetting that you need to set anti-skating accordingly.

Cartridges pretty much limited to Stanton or Ortofon. The latter I prefer(red) because of the unobstructed view of the needle, which made dropping it at the right place a little easier. Just be sure to carry enough spares, they will break eventually.

Greetinx,
C.

I remember glueing a coin to the shell for some extra weight in the early days … hehehehe

Heh Chuck I remember the times, glueing stuff on turntables hehe

Indeed the Z2 is a good choice. If that seems a lot of money, be ware that DVS is nothing cheap and the cost of needles, cartridges etc. will easily go up to 500 to 1000 bucks a year (that is if you actually use the gear, if you use it once a month in your bedroom costs will be considerably lower).

You can certainly break anything, depending on your … uhmmm … “style”.

And certainly in the early days (talking 35+ years ago), it was very normal to go through a mountain of stylii a year.

When I worked professionally (6 nights a week for 6-8 hours depending on the club), standing order was a bi-monthly needle change. We were allowed to stretch it to 3 months if need be (I was in places where getting new gear in wasn’t always easy, like mid-80s Baghdad). I have gone stretches without breaking anything, but I have also had months with two broken needles.

5gram needle pressure and heavy back-spinning and super quick needle dropping … it CAN be killing for any needle.

Greetinx,
C.

Like you saw me tell Terry, in the days before SL1200s we would actually glue pennies to the shell to get more pressure LOL.

And for the 1200s I seem to remember you could buy alternate “weights” at the end of the tone arm to increase the pressure. You’d have to also tweak the anti-skating then. Bit vague but I think it was spring loaded and you got a new spring with it to replace the old one. Something like that anyway, shoot me when I am wrong.

5grams was heavy even for us, but not uncommon. 3-4 was average. Nobody really did anything under 2.5 and that was considered running light.

And yes, needle dropping with a high pressure level will surely do more damage than the usage you are describing lol.

Greetinx,
C.

Sorry for the dumb question, but.. Given all the ‘cons’ of a dvs system you guys have described, what exactly are the ‘pros’ compared, say, to a controller like the NS7/V7 or any spinning platter controller out there? Just seems like a lot of hassle for very little gain to me… But then again I’ve never had hands-on experience with dvs.