Serato

[kidlogic]

u conclude correctly, but once again, why would you either switch laptops with the mixer switched to line or turn off your computer - your power source - in the case of there not being an external power supply? there would be dead silence in the club while u do this... something i don't recommend for the middle of a show... tends to be kind of a turnoff for your guests.

Like someone said earlier, if you forget your power supply, do the ol' vinyl to serato swap... switch to vinyl on tt1, mix from tt2 to tt1, swap out cables on tt2, mix back to a vinyl on tt2, swap out tt1 cables, unplug lappy... no pop, no stop

the fact is that you need power to repeat a phono signal in order to pass it through to another phono input. whether that power comes from a laptop usb port or a dedicated power supply is irrelevant, but that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

to say that serato is in a beta state is also completely preposterous. when it came out four years ago, it worked reliably and correctly right away... at version 1.0! competing products at the time - like final scratch v1.5 and whatever pcdj was on - were all buggy and virtually unusable even after a number of revisions. the makers of serato are rightfully proud of their product, and unlike the competition, they make themselves publicly available in the scratch live forum and have since the release of serato made many improvements based on user suggestions. in doing so they have continued to add value to something i purchased over 3 years ago, and i can't say that's the case with much else i've bought over the years.

x2

[robotic]

Serato supports .aiff and .flac now

sorry, still no .flac support as of now... of course .aiff has been supported since day 1.

[Sharmaji]

serato doesn't color the sound. DJ's who see any knob with the word 'gain' under it and turn it up, even if it's a software knob on a screen, color the sound.

provided the equipment in question is working flawlessly--which is serato's main drawback, if someone spilled a beer on the turntable last nite you're shit out of luck-- serato is among the world's most foolproof creations. if you keep your gear in good condition and keep your vinyl clean, and play 320s or wav's, and know how to work a mixer to make it all sound good--

not exactly rocket science.

[djprojekts]

serato doesn't color the sound. DJ's who see any knob with the word 'gain' under it and turn it up, even if it's a software knob on a screen, color the sound.

provided the equipment in question is working flawlessly--which is serato's main drawback, if someone spilled a beer on the turntable last nite you're shit out of luck-- serato is among the world's most foolproof creations. if you keep your gear in good condition and keep your vinyl clean, and play 320s or wav's, and know how to work a mixer to make it all sound good--

not exactly rocket science.

Lol not exactly rocket science no but however im sure it called Dj science!!

Only certain people can do this subject 100% perfect.

[corpsey]

I'd obviously get serato if I had the spare cash but I do wonder about this 'having everything at your fingertips' thing- I have nightmare visions of sets featuring 200 tunes in an hour. It's like the downloading thing, think it can encourage disposability in music, and of making music a DJ tool.

Still, as I say... it looks good lol

[jred]

last week i was in the venue i play at mixing tunes on serato while downloading from a whole bunch of links i was sent on the same laptop ,download then mix it in just like that fuckin massive while in the venue thats freshness ya cant fuck with .

[shane]

yeah no shit, i do that at home all the time. track finishes dling, drop it.

[daphter]

Yeh no pop if you have the power supply otherwise it loses the juice when you unplug it from the laptop and cant transmit the line or phono signal.. That was my conclusion anyway..

u conclude correctly, but once again, why would you either switch laptops with the mixer switched to line or turn off your computer - your power source - in the case of there not being an external power supply? there would be dead silence in the club while u do this... something i don't recommend for the middle of a show... tends to be kind of a turnoff for your guests.

Kidlogic provided the solution, albeit tricky to achieve, not impossible! I figured it had been established we were talking about swapping from one DJs laptop to the other??

the fact is that you need power to repeat a phono signal in order to pass it through to another phono input. whether that power comes from a laptop usb port or a dedicated power supply is irrelevant,

I think its relevance has been established, you need a dedicated power supply (ie an additional piece of kit) to avoid the unplug replug scenario..

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

I'll keep an open mind about this however I think its fair that a product be put to this type of scrutiny rather than discussion becoming nothing more than a glorified advertisement, it is not unreasonable to say that the box colours the phono signal albeit slightly. Have you noticed the sonic differences between a Pioneer, Xone and Rane mixer? Every component adds its own colour to the sound. To my ears Rane DJ gear tends to sound crunched or "digital". Allen & Heath mixers have 0.01% distortion or something in that order and to my ears a "warmer" sound. I think that this is where further development should take place to improve the product as it is a very usable platform..

to say that serato is in a beta state is also completely preposterous. when it came out four years ago, it worked reliably and correctly right away... at version 1.0! competing products at the time - like final scratch v1.5 and whatever pcdj was on - were all buggy and virtually unusable even after a number of revisions. the makers of serato are rightfully proud of their product, and unlike the competition, they make themselves publicly available in the scratch live forum and have since the release of serato made many improvements based on user suggestions. in doing so they have continued to add value to something i purchased over 3 years ago, and i can't say that's the case with much else i've bought over the years.

Lol @ preposterous but some good points guy. I do agree that SSL is the best product in its category. I dont think its as good as it could be though and feel the retail prictag is too high especially here in NZ where it is developed. If I was considering forking out for it again (I did own it for a while) Id like to have a range of objective opinions to take into account.

[OoGuN]

Use Serato at the radio station and love it, but when it came to buying my own gear for my studio, I went traktor scratch.
No way am I going to spend hours converting Appple Lossless files to mp3, as I say..I love serato, but remember how long it took to get a player in it so you could listen to tunes without the decks and box plugged in?

Love serato for the Rane mixer with the built in effects...

Love Traktor for the cables, easy to connect and quick even in a dark dj booth. Love traktor for the timecode signal, 2khz instead of serato's 1khz - which is why pulling a tune (spinbacks) sound better thru TS.

Love the fact that serato is free to d/l and has no serial/activation bullshit - after all you need hardware to run it so why waste my time with a serial/activation nonsense.

Love both because I can finish a tune and test it against other tunes I like (vinyl and digital) and tweak it based on how it works.

Love the way that having good vinyl control systems makes it easier for my mates to give me dubs to play out but ABSOLUTELY Hate the idea that serato and TS are a license for people to d/l 'minge pussy threes' (big up Caspa for that description) and treat music as if it's free. Seriously, limewire? How the f*ck is a producer to get inspired to keep producing stuff for people just to tief it and go?

[lucky_strike]

Ive heard Torq is good, cheaper 2

[chef]

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

The rane box takes the digital source from the laptop and then converts it into an analogue sgnal, This is what is called a DAC or digital to analogue conversion, it isn't just amplified.

[darkmatter]

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

The rane box takes the digital source from the laptop and then converts it into an analogue sgnal, This is what is called a DAC or digital to analogue conversion, it isn't just amplified.

Glad someone pointed this out!

So the colouration depends on the quality of the DACs, as it does when using the analogue out from a Pioneer CDJ1000.

People talk about Vinyl vs. CD vs. MP3 vs. whatever else and they talk about it like their test setup is good enough to reveal the good and bad in each medium. Doesn't make sense.

They'll say 'CDs sound shit' - without trying them with a high end DAC, instead of the one in their numark CD decks. Or people will say 'vinyl sounds better than CD', because they've heard an unmastered dub alongside the finished plate that's had the Transition touch added to it. And they'll ignore the fact that you've spent hours tweaking it and that the masters you were sent were in digital anyway

And then there's other things, like whether the Rane Serato interface has it's power supply sufficiently isolated from it's audio carrying wires, or whether the tinniness people perceive from CDs is actually because they're not used to hearing the 16-20Khz that vinyl struggles with. Too many people making silly generalizations. I see so many people on forums forget about all this and just make silly generalizations.

[dirty]

Ive heard Torq is good, cheaper 2

Yeah torq is good for studio stuff and radio shows, infact the software is prob one of the best out there.

The problem with torq is the hardware, in my personal experience of usin it to play out I've had problems with crashing and grounding issues causing irratic playback. on 3 or 4 occasions!!

Also a basic issue is the fact that torq doesn't have phono pass thru. the signal gets converted to line which effectively dims the output of real vinyl. Fine in a radio environment coz u can turn up the gains but not the best for a club set-up.

All and all I'll be makin the switch thanks to Shafey gettin serato in a coupla weeks.

Home use: Torq
Pro use: Serato

[Amazing A]

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

The rane box takes the digital source from the laptop and then converts it into an analogue sgnal, This is what is called a DAC or digital to analogue conversion, it isn't just amplified.

It does, but it also patches the phono-input trough to the phono-output (which means no A/D D/A conversion). And, I guess, that's what robotic is talking about.

[chef]

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

The rane box takes the digital source from the laptop and then converts it into an analogue sgnal, This is what is called a DAC or digital to analogue conversion, it isn't just amplified.

It does, but it also patches the phono-input trough to the phono-output (which means no A/D D/A conversion). And, I guess, that's what robotic is talking about.

No guessing needed, the sound that goes into the mixer from the laptop is converted from a digital signal into an analogue signal, it's really simple.

Even without using the converters, just using normal vinyl run through the serato box will colour the sound.

Big up Darkmatter, you know what your on about.

[dj_rasheed]

what do you think about this one -> http://www.mixvibes.com/new/pageeng/page.php?x=webshop

[Amazing A]

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

The rane box takes the digital source from the laptop and then converts it into an analogue sgnal, This is what is called a DAC or digital to analogue conversion, it isn't just amplified.

It does, but it also patches the phono-input trough to the phono-output (which means no A/D D/A conversion). And, I guess, that's what robotic is talking about.

No guessing needed, the sound that goes into the mixer from the laptop is converted from a digital signal into an analogue signal, it's really simple.

Even without using the converters, just using normal vinyl run through the serato box will colour the sound.

Big up Darkmatter, you know what your on about.

My bad, thought you meant that the phono I/O passtrough also was AD/DA-converted.

Speaking of soundcolouring, I searched the seratoforums and came up with this.

[mewkin]

agh! i keep having this battle in my mind. I am in love with vinyl. I love everything about it. I could never, ever give up using/buying/collecting/DJ'ing vinyl..

but..

there are serious options open with serato. if i had obscene amounts of money i would probably go buy it tomorrow. but it's a lot of money to fork out and i don't really dig buying tunes online.

if i was a producer i'd buy it now!

dammit. just love vinyl too much. the day dance music turns its back on vinyl will be a dark, dark day. hope to god that never happens! agh! my eyes are welling-up just typing that! i'll still be cutting vinyl, even if i'm the last man alive doing it!

All my minds are 100% in agreement that CDs are whack.

big up the vinyl. it ages with you. every groove holds a memory. every time you play it, you become closer and every scratch/nick/spec of dust and durt holds a happy memory.

mp3s just don't do that! in fact, i don't even own an ipod!

big up the vinyl massiv!

[kidlogic]

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

The rane box takes the digital source from the laptop and then converts it into an analogue sgnal, This is what is called a DAC or digital to analogue conversion, it isn't just amplified.

It does, but it also patches the phono-input trough to the phono-output (which means no A/D D/A conversion). And, I guess, that's what robotic is talking about.

No guessing needed, the sound that goes into the mixer from the laptop is converted from a digital signal into an analogue signal, it's really simple.

Even without using the converters, just using normal vinyl run through the serato box will colour the sound.

Big up Darkmatter, you know what your on about.

On the passthru for vinyl though, it colors it no more than a mixer does.

Every aspect of playing vinyl colors the sound, from the needles, to the tonearm, to the cables from the turntable to the mixer, the mixer itself, to the cables to the amp, to vibrations from the bass cabinets through the tables, etc. Its impossible to put signal through anything without coloring it really, but with the Serato box its no more than a good quality short length cable would do.

[chef]

that brings me to your next point. sound coloring of the phono signal?? where did u get such an idea? the signal gets passed through the hardware, there is no conversion, no adjustment of the signal, just some basic amplification done by rane gear - and rane is a company that's been making professional phono amplifiers as part of their dj products for over 15 years!

The rane box takes the digital source from the laptop and then converts it into an analogue sgnal, This is what is called a DAC or digital to analogue conversion, it isn't just amplified.

It does, but it also patches the phono-input trough to the phono-output (which means no A/D D/A conversion). And, I guess, that's what robotic is talking about.

No guessing needed, the sound that goes into the mixer from the laptop is converted from a digital signal into an analogue signal, it's really simple.

Even without using the converters, just using normal vinyl run through the serato box will colour the sound.

Big up Darkmatter, you know what your on about.

On the passthru for vinyl though, it colors it no more than a mixer does.

Every aspect of playing vinyl colors the sound, from the needles, to the tonearm, to the cables from the turntable to the mixer, the mixer itself, to the cables to the amp, to vibrations from the bass cabinets through the tables, etc. Its impossible to put signal through anything without coloring it really, but with the Serato box its no more than a good quality short length cable would do.

Every added piece of equipment you run audio through will affect the audio in some way, why add more colour when you dont need to.

It may not colour it more than a mixer and i'm aware of this, but a kam or numark mixer would colour the sound in a worse way to an Allen and Heath mixer, every bit of kit brings it's own inaccuracies and raises the noise floor level and distortion ratio...

The only way to have the cleanest signal possible is to use the highest quality wires and components(the less the better) while using the shortest lengths of wires possible.

Running your vinyl through the serato box adds another unnecasry bit of kit and colour to the audio path.
The serato box needs to be powered for it to work as a vinyl run through which means the sound has to be processed, that's another stage.
If it was exactly the same as good piece of wire it wouldn't need to be powered to work.

It doesn't make your vinyl sound shit, but it certaintly ain't making it sound any better.