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Scratching MP3s with a real turntable 101

Posted by Hemos from the excellent-music dept.
Em writes "Wired News spotted these guys and their cool idea for making real turntables scratch and mix MP3s. Plug your Technics into your BeOS machine and scratch with their special vinyl. They map the 'record' to your MP3 file. I reckon I'd buy BeOS for this. " Jeez-combine this with the audio equipment we got yesterday, and Rob and I might cut a record. There's a disturbing thought. Someone alert DJ Shadow to this-I want the new album to come out soon.
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Scratching MP3s with a real turntable More

Scratching MP3s with a real turntable

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  • wow...gimme (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Man, now incredibly useful...

    As a dj (happy hardcore ;) i've got friends who are producing tracks and stuff and i'll eventually slide into producing too. The biggest problem with that is getting a dubplate cut. Man, with this...you can cue up the track on mp3 and everything and put your un-cut tracks on demo tapes and stuff...omg....

    Also, imagine the possibilities for scratch samples. . .

    *guh*

    I might just get BeOS after all.
    The only other thing i'd need would be a RealEncoder thingy for BeOS to do live broadcasts like with Win95 (eww).

    cheers,

    dj.nofrills

  • ANything like this for Linux? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is there anything Like this for Linux or is there a possiblity for a port. We need stuff like this in Linux. There aren't many good Wav editors at all or many good sound editors (wav or midi) I hope we get some soon cause I can't stand winblows and I can't get SoundForge to work in Wine. But SLab is looking great!
    Natas
    http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia

  • Probably a stupid question... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The idea is to make it sound as if the MP3 was stamped into the record, which lets you do the same kinds of record tricks that DJs did when records were common.

    Ummm, when did records become uncommon for DJs? Maybe CDs work for Top 40 but you can't get most good techno/house tracks on CD, and besides who'd want to use a CD mixer anyways? Most of the interesting DJ "tricks" and mixing can, IMHO, be performed much better using a couple of 1200s and a decent mixer than with CD players and mixers.

  • Now with CDs too, in BeOS (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The ever-fabulous M. Nelisson is currently developing a CDDA filesystem driver for the BeOS that will allow you to do similarly crazy things with the CD in your CD-ROM drive. Play multiple CA tracks at one time from the same CD in the same drive, play them backwards (400% pitch control) in Soundplay, mix two or more CD tracks together, not to mention drag&drop to extract DA right from the filesystem. Currently it's in its third beta I think, and even on my old-ass 2x results were OK.

    I admit I didn't believe it when Be went with thise whole "Media OS" schtick, but now... I'll be surprised if they don't own all of the audio market in short order.
  • They can just mod down. Rob and I are the only ones who can delete things, and I know we haven't been *sigh*. mySQL pisses me off some days.

  • Why use real's technology when you can scream cast? You can already do that with be afik. And if you can't - it would be soo easy to write the app to do it.

    Junglism. biatch. ;)

  • "The software responds very quickly to record movements, the delay is virtually not noticable."

    Well, I can scratch pretty well. I've heard others that are absolutely incredible though. Quick response time is critical. I hope this program/hardware can keep up.

    For now, I'll stick to vinyl (thousands of pieces of which are scattered about my room...)

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • There's a place in Boston that'll do it for $40 per dub plate. Dub plates don't last as long as records, though. (5 plays, I've heard, before the quality starts to go to hell, but that number seems a *tad* low.)

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • Various subtle design enhancements have gone into the 1200 over the past 20 years. The only reason most people don't know is because there are so damned many of the ancient ones still working, I imagine. At any rate, the electronics inside the thing have changed a lot.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • Jeez-combine this with the audio equipment we got yesterday, and Rob and I might cut a record

    I'd buy it. Where do I send the cash?

  • Posted by Soco:

    Like all things, it'll go digital to an extent. It'll slowly replace older stuff for most people, being techinically superior. It happens everywhere constantly. I've heard lots of sound tracks produced through high end midi synths that sound exactly like a real symphony. Scratching is one of the easiest sounds to produce and imitate. Much easier than say a group of trumpets (which in most midi patches sounds like shit). Algorithms for beat detection and rapidly improving. So if the product grows this far (if it doesn't one will take its place) it'll probably eventually do that. And since most jungle and dance music (or 'electronica' in general) usually have clear beats often designated by bass drums of some type. It only makes it easier and more realistic for a computer to do the beat matching for you. So next time DJ Shadow is doing a live performance and is in a pissy mood, he can let the computer take over. Much like Madonna lip syncs to songs very often when on tour. Except she does it because of the dancing.

    Who would pass up the oppurtunity to have a computer correct your mistakes in music? Most musicians don't, I don't think djs are an exception. Its very possible for the software to do that. When you get off beat and you start looking like ass, it'll could correct you.

    This product, because of BeOS, the new media kit, and translators, will also work on other formats than mp3s.
    Maybe not in the first release, but probably shortly thereafter.

    -soco
  • Posted by Soco:

    Yup, as even noted by AltOS, the BeOS has an exceptional amount free software, and as the few kinks are worked out in the posix stuff, more and more gnu stuff is compiling right outta the box.
  • Posted by Soco:

    Well music isn't quite like a circus or illusions. You listen to it, not watch it. So long as it sounds good, does it really matter? Lip Syncing and to an extent beyong that faking the playing of musical instruments is quite common. Who said that portishead or dj shadow never tried that once because the just didn't feel like it.

    Its much easier to carry around a cd or disk, than it is to carry around a live orchestra. Live music still has no real comparison. Not even the CD. My point is that all things are replaced. It'll happen with this to. No one says that eventuallly this won't be harder to play in the future, thus granting more technical merit (atleast from me). Musicians shouldn't be in it to 'look' good, if they are, they aren't true musicians.

    Its all about the actual music/sound being produced.
  • If you don't want to put up all the cash for BeOS and this new product, check out terminatorX [cjb.net]. All you need is a linux box, X11, a mouse, and a couple of wave files. It's great fun scratching up a bunch of Hitchhiker's Guide clips to a breakbeat :)

  • Ok, here's my idea for an MP3 extension, that I don't think anyone's gotten around to coding yet. There's one semi-related plugin for winamp, but it's not quite there.

    First, maintain some timing information about all of your MP3s: beats per minute, and a 'reference beat' offset time that indicates a time offset from the start of the track that the first 'beat' occurs. Now, the beat through a track is not constant, so for beatmixing purposes we'll probably need two 'reference beats', one near the start and one near the end. No need to perform realtime waveform analysis to try to figure out the beat, we can precalculate it or set it manually once.

    Next, plug all that info into a database. Point your MP3 player at the database.

    Now, as we approach the end of a given track, we start playing another MP3 with a 'compatible' bpm (we can set some sort of difference threshhold), matching the reference beats. Then, just crossfade from one track to the next. We can 'crossfade' the playback speed of the two tracks to compensate for any discrepancy in the bpm, as well.

    Viola! Perfect, automated beatmixing.

    Of course, there's lots of opportunity to add manual control, the crossfade and track selection to start with. No need to make the DJs feel like they're out of a job.

  • Omygod, somebody made a commercial applictaion, and it does not run on Linux. The world is coming to an end! Run to the hills! Linux is the one and only OS that should be allowed on this planet! This attitude is getting on my nervers, it's really damaging for Linux. Get a life, grow up, relax, and take a walk in the woods. I sincerily hope that I can choose between more than one operating system after 10 years....

    Sheesh!

    J.
  • We can't let Microsoft have all the fun, can we?

    J.
  • I would have killed to have had the CPU power I have available now available when I was a DJ... No more carting 300 CDs around... just encode at 160kbps, make sure that the soundcard can't pass past 40kHz and rock on...

    Most of the stuff I did was rock/dance/trance/techno so the MP3 loss of fidelity or choppiness of soft soft music wouldn't have been noticed...
  • But it's entirely in software, and at the moment only handles 16-bit .WAV files. However, it's extremely, gut-wrenchingly cool, runs on Linux, and is GPL'd. You load a .wav file (and, optionally, another .wav to act as a loop) and scratcha-scratcha-scratcha with your mouse. Check it out here [cjb.net]. . I've got (so far) the only user scratch on the "send Your Scratches In" page.
  • This seems like a kind of ack-basswards way of going about it, doesn't it? Mind you, I think that it's great that they're transforming the turntable into a real-time digital audio controller, but wouldn't it make more sense just to be able to burn your mp3s onto vinyl? Anyone know how much a used record press goes for these days? Or how hard it is to use?
  • For what it's worth, Workman 1.4 (at least in Solaris) had some of these features (play with speed control from -400% to 400%, extract to a file) for at least 3 years. The problem is that 1.4 never did make it out of beta, and so most people still use 1.3, if they use workman at all (I use xmcd now, and cdda2wav to rip tracks for MP3'ing).

    Playing multiple tracks at a time is a pretty cool hack though. I can't think of a single good use for it, except to show that it can be done (and isn't that reason enough?)

  • Shadow is at least semi skilled in the art of turntablism and probably doesn't need to scratch his mp3's as im sure he has an impressive collection of actual records.. This stuff is aimed towards mp3 kiddies who are too stupid/cheap to buy records for themselves or get plates pressed of their own music :P
  • I dont recall saying that he endorsed it.
    What i was commenting about is the fact that everyone thinks that this is some ground breaking thing when in the eyes of real dj's its along the lines of CD DJ's.
    Sure it may take skill that is similar to spinning real records, but is it the same thing?

    No.

    Does it produce the same sound and feel that real records do?
    No.

    Its some toy for slashdot reading technogeeks to jizz their pants over.
    So calx instead of slamming on me for a post try replying to the content of my post.

    P.S. Calx is a dodo head.
  • btw calx, soco's my ex roomate :)
  • If i weren't here to bitch, you wouldnt be able to complain about my bitching.
    So ha
  • I'm working on an ALL software solution.
    [alsa.jcu.cz]
    alsaplayer.It's not quite ready yet. Mixed with terminatorX it should do the same. The Vinyl interface is cool though (hi Markjan! :)

    Adnans
  • With the proper permissions (root) you can force a higher scheduling priority by calling sched_setscheduler() with the appropiate values. You can even achieve 1ms reschedules on a standard kernel!! If you check out "real-time" audio applications on Linux you'll see these programs do just that.

  • The last I checked, the most commonly entered word in search engines is still "sex". You were expecting something else? :)
  • It looks like all of my posts under the debian and job discussions have been deleted (at least, I dont see them). My threshold is at -1 so I should see them. What is the deal, has a moderator deleted all of my posts?

    -Eric
  • I should have shut up and waited an hour or so to see if the problem went away, which it did. Sorry for being such a high-strung dope.

    -Eric
  • If I'm producing, digital is good.
    If I'm spinning, digital is bad.

    Besides, I really don't want to carry my computer to every show. Things go wrong with computers, especially in a dark, sweaty, smokey environment such as a party or whatever. When was the last time you've seen a Technics 1200 have memory problems or a hard drive crash?

    For making tapes, I just run the output from my mixer into my computer and record it with some nice multi-tracking software. That way, I can layer to my hearts content and when I'm happy, burn to a CD or record to a DAT.

    In my opinion, scratching is supposed to be gritty noisy and analogue, not something digital. But then again, that's just me getting whimsical.

    cheers,

    JayPee
    Midwest Massive
    DrunkenMasters(TM)

    ps,

    Gabber bizatch! ;)
  • Yeah, uh, so the homies with strange trousers and baseball caps have a more flexible way of scratchin..

    Don' dis ma home bo'
  • Quote from Wired article:
    "There is a delay between when the DJ scratches
    the record and when the sound happens, said
    Bastian: 'About 12 milliseconds.'"
  • When does he start getting semi-skilled?
  • Ah well there is always someone to bitch about everything.
  • Actually, A lot of apps for BeOS are Open Source. you'd be suprised. I run it as my primary OS, actually, although thats mostly because Linux wont recognize my Modem. most of the Apps i run on BeOS are Open. I'd suggest looking ito it, its a really nice system.
    --Dave
  • well, sorda.. I also happen to really really like BeOS. I use 5-6 os's regularly. at work i have a win95 box and a HP-UX box (front and back end to our system) with some systems at work runing Dos 6.2. my personal machine runs BeOS primarly, with Linux and Win98Lite (yes, it works) I would use Linux a hell of a lot more, if i could get any internet connection with it. I am gonna move soon, and have a cable modem, but until then, i have BeOS.
  • I even got as far as desiging a standalone mp3 dJ console - a box the size of a large CD player with controls on tops and 2 CD trays out front. With a hard disk inside storing all teh DJ's favourite requests (I know I like playing my latest white label, but the audience always asks for old favourites) and an ability to play audio CD's or mp3 tracks off the CD's or disk.

    Pop mixer controls on teh top and scratch disc's on tops to give control of the CD's et. voilla a perfect DJ box... leave the record box behind...

    I'm currenty trying to get an interface which does the same with the mouse on a screen.... for liveIce mp3 broadcasts.
  • A problem that might make a port unfeasible on Linux is scheduler latencies.

    The BeOS scheduler currently has a quantum of 1 ms, with a maximum of 3 ms available in a timeslice (correct me if I'm wrong). So a realtime priority thread could theoretically awake within a few ms of when it needs to run. This is important if you're listening to input from a turntable

    On Linux, if I have been told correctly, the scheduler quantum is 10 ms. (again, I could be wrong) Not exactly optimized for quasi-realtime.

  • cool (Score:1)

    by prok ( 8502 )
    I stand corrected then.

    How does this affect other applications though? Any worse than on BeOS? (since you have experience there as well :)
  • I want one! Especially since there are absolutely no good record stores where I live.
  • Okay, I checked out the page, FAQ, and everything, and I still can't figure out just what exactly this thing does. So could someone please explain it in small, single syllable words?


    If I understand correctly, this lets you change the playback speed of an MP3 by turning a vinyl record. It's set up so that when the record is playing at normal speed, the MP3 is playing at normal speed. When you stop the record or move it backwards, the MP3 playing stops or moves backwards. If you "scratch" the record by moving it back and forth, MP3 playback moves back and forth in the same way. The idea is to make it sound as if the MP3 was stamped into the record, which lets you do the same kinds of record tricks that DJs did when records were common.


    _If_ I understand correctly :). I didn't read all of the related links.

  • BeOS (Score:1)

    by RAruler ( 11862 )
    That my friends, is another reason to switch to the power that is: BeOS.

    I don't use BeOS all the time, because I cashed in for a SBlive.. and there is no Sound Drivers yet.. 3 week of april.. and i'm in beos all the time.

    Hopefully Bochs is speed up, or Bewine is created.


    RAruler
  • Look at http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds/beat/ [mit.edu] -- especially under "Audio Morphing". I put this together as a technology demo, but the code is available (contact me) if someone wants to make a GPL'd product out if it.

    -- Eric

  • Be has lots of free software that runs on it. Check out http://www.be.com/beware. As usual another Linux bigot can only believe in the one true GPL way. I wish people were more interested in the quality of the software rather than the price. Quality and usefulness should dictate software decisions not money.
  • So is this MP3-DJ-Box running Linux or what?
    I'm planning to maybe do a little mp3-proggy (using the xaudio-sdk) and
    building a denon 2500f-like DJ-MP3-Player.

    Do any of you know of a pogram which already does that (without using a fancy interface)?
    The Porblem is: I'd like to use a little LC-Display or something, and not carry a whole monitor around for dj-ing.

    Any answer appreciated

    Ciao
    Leo
  • (can't resist..)

    free as in free speech. not free beer.

    If I go get BeOS, say I buy it (like I bought RedHat and Debian GNU/Linux), and I like it, can I give a copy to my friend who might also like it? If not, I'm not interested.
  • Welp, I was only "shunning" it because it does not meet my needs -- from my post I thought it was clear that I need the freedom available with GNU/Linux or FreeBSD systems, for the simple reason that I don't want to pirate software. I don't like violating software contracts and breaking the law, so I've stopped doing so (no more bootlegged win95 installs on my friends' computers).

    In order for an operating system to be really useful for me, I've got to be able to give out copies of it -- it has to do with the way that I use computers: I only use other people's computers. Most frequent are computers at my work, clients' computers, and my friends computers (many of which I assembled).

    I typically have some level control over the software that is installed on all these systems, and don't want to cause the owner to have to pay for software. Because if it belongs to my work, I'd rather get a raise 'cause I provide less expensive solutions. If it belongs to a client, I'd rather they pay me to set up a free system than blow their wad on software. And if it belongs to my friends, most of whom are not rolling in dough, I just want to save them some money. And I want to do it legally. So I can only in good conscience use freely distributable software. (and not all of this software is GPL "free" or even DFSWG "free")

  • Okay, I checked out the page, FAQ, and everything, and I still can't figure out just what exactly this thing does. So could someone please explain it in small, single syllable words?
  • Hey can't you already live broadcast with some other apps. Look into it I remember that you could with something...sorry pretty ambigous.

    your pal,
    johnnycal
  • I think he said he chose his *primary* OS based on his modem. As in, he has others that he also uses, but not as much.

  • Whimper (Score:1)

    by MrAl ( 21859 )
    Who said this was all you can do with the BeOS? I really don't understand some of these (seemingly) knee-jerk reactions to Be. If the software doesn't work for you, fine. If its missing drivers for your computer, fine. But why the snide remarks about the OS?
  • Please don't ... The thought is enough to MAKE dj shadow release to BRIBE you not to GREG
  • Okey okey, it was cool but consider the fact that it is commersial and its for BeOS. I relly can't imagine mysealf running that OS, its OK but its not free nor any software that runs on it.

    I hope that someone will make a clone for linux, and since we already have terminatorX we already have a ground to build on...
  • Somebody made one of the coolest audio appz, it's non free and made for a non free OS. If you like to get robbed and feel stupid for supporting a non free company I recommend you to do so. The only difference in our attitudes is you want to rule other peoples lifes while I care about myself instead of trying to fuck with others

    What attitude should linux have, shoud it maybe just go kill itself and leve you to BE ?, is it so dangerous to wish we get cool apps cloned to linux?, its the way it works
    GNU ain't commercial and GNU is lots more than LINUX. the only thing thats damaging to the community is looser who can't accept GNU but run it for some other strange reason.

    as linux said -- World domination -- ;)
    lets hope we wont have to run crappy oses within 10 years.
  • Wondering if Richard D. James, Thomas Jenkinson, Luke Vibert or other godlike beings are reading /.
    Does anyone have any info about what OS's they use? Atari, MacOS?
    I've heard RDJ uses a PowerMac. Thomas Jenkinson ought to have quite poor equipment, while Luke started out with just a synth.
    What kind of music do other slashdotters listen to?

    http://www.hyperreal.org/ hosted at apache.org
  • Er, you don't seem to be getting it.

    Have you ever tried to carry boxes and boxes of records around? It sucks.

    Having the same physical interface, and only having to lug two or three boxes around is what it's all about.
  • It *IS* fast enough. The first version of this software was beta tested on a 2000 people party last year by an experienced DJ. (it now is a lot better than that version)
    No one in the audience heard the difference. The only noticable difference was that the DJ entered the building carrying only 2 vinyl records instead of his usual 4 heavy boxes :-)

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