Category Archives: gear

Making Great Vinyl Records–United Record Pressing on Mastering For Vinyl

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United Record Pressing has an interesting section on mastering for vinyl. There is plenty of advice there about the physical limitations of vinyl as a medium and what bands can do to make sure they get good fidelity from the finished product.

My only question about this section–having been written in 1997, is what has changed and updated since that time? Surely not the laws of physics with regard to how hot your master tracks can be before they overload and distort, or when too much treble becomes, er, troublesome. (Treblesome is not a word. But I almost used it here. Heh.)

Fortunately there are more recent discussions on the mastering to vinyl issue. Gearslutz.com has a thread from 2008 and another one here. CustomRecords.com throws its two cents worth in here, so you’ll have plenty to chew on. Continue reading Making Great Vinyl Records–United Record Pressing on Mastering For Vinyl →

Introducing the Roland SP-404SX: Roland Updates SP-404 Sampler

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Roland SP-404SXThe Roland SP-404 portable sampler is a battery-powered phrase sampler with a built-in mic for mobile sampling and resampling–perfect for DJs who love to throw in some extra oomph into their sets with tabletop gadgets above and beyond what Tracktor or any other laptop software or mixer-bound hardware gives.

Now Roland has released the Roland SP-404SX, the update to the SP-404. It has 29 DSP effects (filter, delay, subsonics, looper features and vox FX). You also get a dozen trigger pads, three control knobs, and a Sub Pad. The sequencer offers new shuffle features and 16-bit linear sampling.

The SP-404SX is priced well under $500, so this is not out of reach for a working DJ. Got turntables? Mics? Laptop and software? Add this to the mix for your secret weapon. And could you pre-load this with a pile of vinyl samples and hit the club with a pre-programmed plan of dancefloor attack? Oh yes.

P.S. Electronic Musician has an in-depth review of the Roland SP-404SX here…if you’re tempted, have a go.

Mackie D2 DJ Mixer Demo

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Yes, the name of this blog is TURNTABLING, and while vinyl records get much of the love here, our job is to cover all aspects of using vinyl including the industry responsible in part for keeping it alive over the last ten years–DJing.

In a recent blog post we covered the Mackie D4 production mixer, but if you’re budget-challenged and are considering the earlier Mackie D2 instead (or a used Mackie D2), you should have a look at this demo video from Mackie on all the features of the D2–including the firewire in/outputs, optical contact-free fader, backlit EQs and other features. Brand new, the Mackie D2 DJ mixer runs well under $1000 but used you could score quite a deal. Grab an eyeful on the vid, ignore the corny hipster-speak at the front end of the clip and marvel at the glory of all things Mackie.




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Mackie D4 Mixer

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mackie D4 mixer

Once upon a time I edited and wrote features for a website called Gearwire.com. One of those features was on the Mackie D4 DJ production console. I talked on camera with Mackie rep Ronnal Ives, AKA DJ Buttnaked, about the Mackie D4 at a music industry trade show, NAMM 2007. Revisiting that video now (where the D4 was featured in a demo of  Mackie’s Traktion3 software),  I am tempted to pick up the D4 to integrate into my setup for Paisley Babylon, which goes back and forth between straight music production/performance and DJ sets.

The D4 connects to your Mac or PC via firewire, features Onyx mic pres, XLR outs, and sports four stereo program channels for your CD player, turntable, and FireWire inputs. The turntable inputs have Mackie-designed pres. It also comes with Traktion 3 software.

I’d love to hear from anyone who owns and uses the Mackie D4–drop a comment and let me know how you like it.
Continue reading Mackie D4 Mixer →