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Turntables and DVS Expansion Packs

Welcome my name is d j hopper from scratch dj academy and I'm here live in seattle that creative live offices on dh you are tuning in to a little segment that we are doing around surat o d j and this is one of three of these segments that we're doing I like to call the modules so this is one of three modules that we're doing around surat o d j and specifically highlighting this new release of one point seven point two that surround the dj has released and there's some really great features in the software that we wanted to share with all of you out there so whether you're a beginner whether you're somewhere intermediate or you're in advance user I feel like it would get a lot out of this session um and I think uh I think you have we're going to cover a couple of different topics in this in this particular module one of them being the ability tio to hook in turn tables to a controller um uh with the dvs expansion pack we're going to talk about like hardware and like routing so not only ...

just the turntables we're also going to talk about the cd jay's using cd jay z's in c d j two thousand's using a thing called h I d mode which a lot of people aren't super familiar with on dh yet the c d j two thousand's they're seen in night clubs all around the world and are pretty common place so the ability to use more functions and features inside of the hardware with your surround o d j software so we can cover that as well um we're also going to talk about um the sort of elephant in the room oftentimes the sync button and and what sink is doing and sort of talking through like creative ways maybe using sync and finding ways toe um wrap your head around how how do you think when do you think how not to rely solely on I think um we talked about a little bit of that so um I'm joined by a by a good friend who's out in new zealand of all places right now which is actually the cerrado headquarters matt perry a k a deejay cut corners is with us matt are you there you know what's a papa how are you man I'm very good thank you how are you? I'm good I'm good thank you for joining us from all the way out in new zealand I think you'll have obviously a lot of insight tow add into this particular module and for all the modules that we're doing here on surat o d j for those of you who are out there I mean how cool is it toe have um not only me it's probably pretty cool to have me here but I'm no it's really cool that have that perry here because he's able to give it really straight from the source this is we've got suraj o on the line so it's great I want it I want to dig into it I want to start by talking about sort of how things connect up so one of the you know a lot of these controllers have become very very popular over the last couple of years and there's so many of them that are out there now and there are many that are out there that are preloaded with surrounded deejay so they work right out of the box all you really need to do is to plug in the power to the controller and then plug in the u s be to your computer you know so long as you have surat o d j downloaded and then open up surat o d j and there it is everything works everything works together it's a super clean simple set up and then obviously being able to run you know out to speakers and plug in your headphones but you know everything is mapped you've got u two decks you've got your lay out your mixer in the center you know there's all sorts of different types of controllers today in studio I've got the dd jsx too so there was the d j s x and this is the newer model there's definitely some added features and functions that are in the newer model including a future that we we talked about earlier, um, or we're talking about later depend on how you the order in which you watch these things, but we talk about it. Another module here. I'm called flip. Um, and this has the ability to it has actually buttons assigned on the actual, um on the mixing board on the controller itself. So, you know, there's little things like that that I think are in the er sx two and hey matter you there, you sir, are there any other things that you you can think of that air like major advantages on this sx two? Well, it's been pretty much basically the same as the a six one, but it does have a higher expect usb port, the drug wheels a little bit more sensitive, and the the eight pads now have multiple colors, whereas before it was just blue. So like it, she said a q point, the q point will be eliminated the same color on the pad as it is in the software, right? So I'll show you that really quick to if I go and this is a cool and then actually was funny like theirs. There's a one of the guys that's here in aa, in seattle, he owns the sx and and gsx one and not the two and he's a little bit jealous of the fact that the pads light up on this one and his don't so yeah that that might be reason enough tio upgrade but if I change the color of the queue point I'm not changes to green for instance now now this q point on the controller turns up green so that's what what mats alluding to right there's the color pads but the other really cool thing too though in this one as well is that this then is um dvs ready it's ah digital vinyl system ready so this can then I can take a turntable plugged the turntable into my controller and be able to use time code tio to deejay with on dh using this as my mixing board and maybe even like deck s one into and still be able to use the cube points and all the functions that are in the controller so it kind of provides like the best of both worlds and doing that and I want to talk through that really quick of how tio how to do this so um I do need to have ah the expansion pack so one of the things that you'll need to do is you'll need to make sure that you have the dvs expansion pack so if I uh if you come to my screen and we're looking at my screen in the bottom right corner it says my cerrado if I if I pull this up there'll be a couple of different lengths one is we can watch tutorials we get support on we can click on this and that's expansion packs and activations so everybody when you download cerrado deejay um it will ask you to put in your email so that email now is your password as well so that email and password is now what activates your account so you got to make sure that you're signed in to your right account um so we're actually using my assistant d j three sixties account right here and let's see what he's got under his products um he has everything enabled including davis expansion all right so this allows me to do exactly this unlocked dvs and connect turntables or cj's to your controller set up so there are certain controllers that are compatible with this and there are some that are not um hey matt can you talk through really quick? Do you happen to have like a quick little list of the ones at this point in time that are enabled for dvs expansion? Yeah, sure. I just off the top of my head uh the ones that feli enabled are obviously the rain hardware so the I sell to the sixty two mixers and and all those tvs mixtures of course the pioneer deejay and nine hundred thirty are already devious enabled the asx two the kite annex and the new mark csic devious upgrade ready so you can purchase the devious expansion pack but if you bought the dean e d t j l z for example that is stevie s enables so you don't need to purchase the on upgrade for that one it comes with it got it so that's a cool advantage tohave to going out and then I just getting the easy is that you then aren't having to pay the extra money to then enable the devious if that's something you're interested in cool, sweet and I assume that there'll be more to come definitely yeah awesome cool so at this point in time if you've got one of those units you can do that um you know it's a cool thing tio recognize how to go about doing this? I'm gonna walk you through it, but in this also I want to talk through sort of how things were routed because some of you maybe you know maybe you're mohr of ah controller guy and you're you're thinking about like getting a pair of turntables or maybe you want to play with a friend of yours who is more comfortable in turn tables or more comfortable on cd jays and you want to plug that into your sx maybe you want to figure it out like that so that would sort of be some use cases for why we would you know, maybe try and do this so first of all, I need to make sure I have my dvds expansion pack activated so in this case it is we're good to go you'll also notice that if I go to my set up screen so if I go to set up one of the things that I need to look at is deck set up right so it I need to assign whether or not I'm going to read the input as phone or line so turn tables or cds um and I'll show you this um on the hardware as well and then um one of the other things that I need to make sure that I have um no that's that's all for right now I believe yeah, that should do it. So one of the things that I want to show you though, is that the turntables I'm running an rc a cable out of the turntable and for those of you who maybe are newer to two d jane and newer two turntables the world of turntables some turntables have a ground wire that ground wire needs to be locked down so this one does have a ground war and this little this is a knob that you might be wondering some of you might be wondering what what is this this actually for and this will screw down the ground wires so I need a each ground wires coming out of the turntable I need to make sure that that is in fact grounded down so that's what that knob is for on dh then morning these are cia is out of the of the turntable and those will need to go into so if you look at the back of this you'll see channel one channel to channel three and four so the turntables ah is often referred to as like a phone a graph um it's like a it's running phone oh, so that's why this says phone oh so phono equals turntable on dh the reason for this is that when you're running a phono into a mixer this is sending out a signal that is lower in terms of like the output of it so it actually needs to get amplified so um often times if I were just a plug this actually this is true survivor just a plug this rc a into like let's say a speaker directing to speak or direct into something that wasn't specific to amplify and the phone no signal you would you wouldn't really hear anything could be such a low volume so it's important that I when I go into this, that you'll notice that there's not a separate in this particular channel to there's not a separate input for phono and for line necessarily it's just one input and I'm able to switch and say whether this is in fact a phono input or line input and that's what this was when I go back to set up when I go back to settlement says deck set up I need to make sure that that's set to turn to you because that's what's actually going to amplified this signal if it's on cds it's not going tio amplify the signal loud enough for me to be ableto play something so I need to make sure that it's on phone oh and it's plugged in the phone on so we're good um the other thing that you'll notice and this is in the front so you're not going to be able to see this um but actually maybe you can let me see if I can get this up so maybe we can grab this on the overhead cam okay, so I have inputs elects and this is kind of in an interesting place right here like usually it would be up on the top or closer to the top. But right here is my input select on this particular controller so I have a pc have phono in line for each you know, for channel one for channel two so I've got this switcher that will switch between between these so I want to be on pc to be able to utilize cerrado d j but if I switch it to phono we'll go here is you'll actually hear what is really just playing on the record so you hear the tone the control time so if I had a vinyl record that I wanted to play and let's say like let's say I was playing a gig with a friend of mine that want to play a pure vinyl set on and I was using the deejay s x two and maybe like another buddy there's three of us and another one is using cerrado but wants to use the time code this would be a good setup for that like I could plug then the turntables into this um for the guy who's just on vinyl a switch this to phono and now he's ready to play just vinyl same thing on this side switch this to phone oh, now he's able to play just vinyl and then you know um and then if I switch it back to pc now able to play off of cerrado so if I go back into this now you'll notice that I'm playing right off the throttle and everything is, uh is now hooked in during I see you'll see actually you can have a display here my high iq's air still laid out for this one uh I've got my pitch control though here on the turntable now and my sort of starting stopped there but everything else that's I'm using this as sort of a mixer and also a controller of some sort, but I'm able to control it with time code, so this actually provides a great, like best of best of both worlds if we could get either the yeah, probably overhead again, I'm going to show you again as we're talking about, like how a phone oh, how a turntable plugs into a system. I also want to talk about this sort of the rain audio boxes that matt also mentioned. So this is ahh rain sl three this little guy will do wonders. This basically allows me to plug, um, up my cerrado or my computer through us be on, and then I can use either turntables or see deejays and be able to play using surat o d j so, um, I can plug in my imports that are right here. So I've got my ox, my left and my right dex, I would plug in my right deck into here in the same sort of thing that I was saying in terms of like, you have to tell it whether this is a phono or line so is this coming in phono or line and that's like, is this thing a turntable, or is this thing a cd? Ah, a cd turntable and in this case it's a turntable so I want to make sure that this is assigned to read to accept phone oh, so there are switches these dips which is right here that it says phono up so if I switch those dips which is up and one into our here three and four five and six so there's three switches so that would be down um and up so I wantto say meyocks coming in that's I wanted to put like, a phone or night ipod or an ipad or something like that into here some believe that down for line and then these two though I'm gonna sign to phone oh, and then basically plug these in and then this is my input and then I need to go from my box out to a mixer of some sort so I could use any any mixer really and be able to plug our cia cables from the right deck into a right channel left deck into a left channel auxiliary if I wanted to into an ox channel and then out through the usb um to my computer and so that's how something like this would work thes they're often called serato boxes like that's sort of like the common name for these is like, hey, do you have a cerrado box like I have got one and they haven't sl to an s l three um the first one that came out was an s o one uh, one of the biggest things with the sl want is it didn't have this ability to switch, so these actual port couldn't go between photo in line. There was a separate port for phono and a separate port for lyme body. No, there was in the sl one matter. You still there? I think in the s o one you end up having to switch in the software, whether it's phone or line right with that song, I believe I believe you're right. Yes, back with scratch a lot that was that's like way back when I'm testing your testing, your history there cool, but there's asked how to and sa three in an s o for and the biggest thing that we want to make sure that you're comfortable with is like the concept of routing so cool where we're turntables a plugged in I've got have that final control on my turntable. We're good to go, um, one of the other things that I want to talk about, and this is ah, the difference between modes in regards to when you're using a vinyl control is the difference between absolute mode relative mode and then this internal mode, so if we come back to my screen um things in surat o d j for for those of you who are scratch live users things in surat o d j there are even mohr functions and more features inside of surat o d j it's a much more powerful program than its predecessor scratch live was which I know like a lot of us all love scratch live and that's what made us fall in love with dorado um and I think in this new version of surat o d j you have even mohr toe work with and certain, but certain buttons and features are are tucked away in different places, so you know, we have a full other section that we're doing another module here, and if you haven't watched that already, we kind of do a general sweep of the of the interface of the of the gooey of the the user experience here tio show you where certain buttons maybe in different places than where you're used to, but this one in particular absolute mode and relative mode is right here it's under the, um it's up in this top section of each deck and there's a drop down so I can choose between absolute mode and relative mode here and I want to show you the difference so absolute mode is the same as sort of a pure vinyl mode, so the way that this time code is working is when you're at the very beginning of the record, that essentially is like zero zero zero and as you sort of as the needle moves closer to the center, we move closer in time and you'll notice that there actually minute markers that are like darker line's um and that helps kind of separate the minutes and then there's a sort of even darker line, which is sort of the your five minute mark and so if you actually look at the record, you'll notice that do you have these different sections and we able to get kind of a close up on the record? I just want these guys to see it on the overhead and see if they can see the the marks and if you're you've got this at home like just take a look, I don't know if you've ever even really dove deep into this to look at this or maybe you're a cd jay guy and you never really opened up the vinyl records that came with let's say the cerrado box you bought so you'll notice here are the five minute marks it starts here on the edge so this is the beginning and the needle moves closer to the center, so this is one minute to minute three minute four minutes, five minutes is right here and so on and so forth, so this record in particular is fifteen minutes in length um the other side is ten minutes so you'll see the same sort of thing where you'll see the five minute mark right here and then you sort of have this other band in this area is where you have some other controls like scrolling through through your tracks and stuff like that um so cool um what absolute mode though does is that it treats it as if it were a regular a regular piece of vinyl um in that if your song was three minutes long when you then get two minute three of your song was three minutes and thirty seconds long when you get teo three minutes and thirty one seconds you won't hear anything so you would then have to pick up the needle and go back to the top to then start a new record again so I'll show you really quick um so this song in particular cz three minutes and forty one seconds if I jump I'm gonna jump down teo the about the two minute mark what you'll see here this's actually a good thing to notice too you'll see on the dial that there's the time elapsed and time remaining so you'll see that two minutes into the timecode I've got a minute and forty one seconds left on the time code on the song I thought I'd come down and I'm now at five minutes this is at five minutes and there's now nothing and that's, because obviously the song is not five minutes long into an hour into something else, so if I want to go back to the top of the song, I go back to the top and here we go, we're right back where we were, um that's it that's absolute mode now there's certain things, an absolute mode than that, like, I can't do like, for instance, I can't jump to a q point, so as is one, I can't jump to a q point because I'm an absolute mode s o I also can't do things like set loops, you'll notice that a lot of the the rial powerful features of the software now aren't really available to me, so no, whatever your preference might be some some guys really prefer like absolute mode and that's the way they prefer to use the software whatever, however which way use it, I think it's just important to know what what is out there and what's in the actual software what that means so a b s er doesn't mean the six pack of abs that you desire tohave it's, absolute vote um and then if you switch tio relative now this unleashes all of the the functions and features that are great with the software like the ability to jump to q points to set loops um to enable features like flip and all that stuff that exists out there like that so um it's a uh this is sort of the difference and if you want to watch what I'm doing here um if I jumped to a q point the record is still rolling and I can go back to the top right? So I'm basically like restarting the track back to the top, but I'm not having to move the needle back to the top in order to do that and I'm able that if I pick up the needle even and put it down here close toe minute ten, ten minutes into the record I'm still at the same place that I was so the way I like to think about it is when you're in relative mode where you are here doesn't is relative to where you are in here like it that it's really based off of like where you are in this song on the song is what matters not necessarily where you are in the actual record like the time code piece of it kind of goes away like it's also it's really based off of where you are in the software so um that's the biggest difference and then and then internal mode internal mode allows me to then not play with the sec and all I mean this case I'm still using dvs um so it allows me though to, like, hit play and if I wanted to jump back and get back in tow plane off the record, I could do that and jump back to rose now it's working in relative semen so I can jump seamlessly between relative mode and internal but I can't do that seamlessly between absolute and internal so I can't go from internal and jump back to absolute because the needle would have to be exactly where would have been if the time code we're running hopefully that makes sense um, cool uh, the other thing I want you to notice is if you look on my software when you're using dvs there's, a couple of things t pay attention to one is the tracking of the needle um and then the other one is to open up the scope in the set up and I'll show you first the tracking of the needle, so if your needle is maybe there's dirt or dust, I mean, when you're using a vinyl turntable there's a few other factors that you have to consider, um, the needle itself there's, multiple components, right? So I've got the needle that then screws into the tone on, um and the needle all that needs to connect to the record so there's a lot of things that, like, could kind of ah not just they go wrong but like things that you just need to be more aware of so when I put the needle on the record and if you look at my uh my deck to and if you look right here above the dial you'll see that there is this bar now this bar is going to give me sort of the information how the needle is tracking so you'll see it when I start the record yeah that see how that bar became gray that that's giving it a good signal if it was if it was read that would not be a good thing so I'm gonna try and see if I can simulate that in having a bad neil connection so I'm going to unscrew the needle obit just so it's not fully connected tracking pretty good uh ok rio uh that's right so this is kind of giving me an all or nothing so if I'm it looks all right like the needle looks like it's connected but it's not all the way screwed in you notice that I'm not getting a tracking signal you're not seeing the needle the needle is not being recognized is not tracking in the software so I know that ok maybe there's something wrong with the needle let me make sure that this is connected right and again there are four pins on the needle cartridge and there are four pins inside of the tone arm it's important that these pins connect to those pins correctly if there might be a piece of dust or something like that that's floating in there that you might need to get out of there there's like an old school technique which I've is sort of a uh uh like has been passed around a bit and, um I was asking somebody from from a needle company, if that if that actually helped and it tends to be something that I think we all learned from another d j but isn't necessarily a good technique like one one thing that you you might find sort of, uh, guys that came from an era of, like, when we're using turntables a lot more frequently, I was like, well, if there's a bad connection from the needle on that I want to know if you've heard of this, if there's a bad connection with the needle, just lick the back of the of the pins here like I kind of what the back of that and then put this into the tone arm and it'll make the connection better. And I've heard that that from needle manufactures that that is not the way to do that that will not prolong the life of the neil, in fact will do quite the opposite have you heard of this? This technique of licking the backs of the needle yeah I'm a reformed a needle liquor myself it is a terrible way to get sick as well so I mean, you know clubs not usually the most hygienic places the one the one method I know of is as actually up the whole swabs that's the that's the best way to clean them at the back of a needle that would be a much more sanitary way of going about it as opposed to licking it the other thing that you could do is you know, oftentimes maybe there's a a bit of dust that might have gotten inside of the tone arm every now and then what I'll do is if I have an issue like that all sort of give it a nice like nintendo cartridge blow of like blowing that out of there just to make sure there's nothing in there making sure that there's nothing no like bits of particles on the back of this like sometimes it's like an obvious thing it's just like a little piece of dust that somehow got in there and then just screwing that in and see if that works on so cool so right now I'm tracking well, the needles tracking well if your needle isn't tracking well, you you'll notice that and it'll it's actually a really big deal if you're using dvs and your needle is not tracking right, you will not be able to perform correctly like the um it may even disrupt especially if you're using, you know, surround a deejay in time code it may disrupt the tempo even of the record like as you're throwing things in it's like slow and you're not sure why it's so so and maybe that's only because the needle is is only track it is not tracking the full amount of times it's only getting a piece of that which is then throwing off the whole thing so it's really, really, really important that you understand how to troubleshoot a needle if you're using dvs, the other thing that we can look at is we can look at the scope here, so if I go to set up and actually met all my have you weigh in on this too, just tow tio give your insight on this, but you'll be able to notice that when I start the record getting this circle that's happening on this calibration here and you're you're seeing like, sort of this different like x y and this balance this left him right in this p a balance now the way that I understand it is the best way to do this would be too hit the estimate button start on that this is suraj goes way of this's harada's way of like trying to give you the best setting possible by hitting that estimate button we'll give you the best calibration of the of the devious possible matt, do you have any insight on the on the scope and another techniques or things that you should look at when you're looking at the scope? Certainly specifically with the estimate function? If you're in a loud club and you get a lot of bass river reverberation in the club, president estimate function is going to be a best way to eliminate that bass frequencies ruining your you're tracking there. So if you're in a loud club, you could just put your needle on the record. You don't even have to press play necessarily just press that estimate function is going to set a threshold ofwhich frequencies not to listen to. So especially if you're in a massive, massive club in his subwoofers, right next to you. Ah, that will really ruin your track and experience of by president estimate button that sets the threshold of the right levels so that you don't get that base interference. And another really great technique. Just while we're on the internal mode is is a is a function called emergency internal mode, so for whatever reason, if you ah, I happen to get a whole bunch of dust on your needle or some hospitals, a drink and your track, and starts going bad, and you're like, oh, my gosh then they're going to do I need to get this track plan right away if you priss command and then click on the internal mode button the I n t, it'll set the throttle software into emergency internal mode, which means the picture returned to zero and start playing right away at zero pitch so you won't lose any track position. We'll continue to play at zero pitch in your song will keep going on. Everyone will be part of a party, but you won't have to worry about bad tracking from your control, and I'm writing this down control control, click on internal mode. Yes, command lifesaver command clips yeah, okay, so I don't know like what he's doing about I'll expressed you like what can happen here? So, like if for some reason like it, you're you're playing a song on the tracking goes bad like like what he's saying is, like, things start to fall apart. Oftentimes what happens? It'll create this like gargle e, like pitch down like it sounds like because things are not tracking correctly it almost like take it down to a half speed or some variation of that where it won't sound like the actual record, and even if you hit internal mode, if you just click on internal mode, it will then play that at that internal speed so it will still continue to play that like guardedly sound and low at that like low tempo um and so that's a huge one I don't even know I'm writing that down control committee click command click on internal right that's the one that didn't click yes that's the lifesaver that's the that's the bailout that's a rip cord right there all right so you got it um I knew I knew having you around would be good for something today awesome sweet um learn something new every day so cool so this scope um the other thing that the scope will tell you on and I'm going to try and stimulate this year we're also now dealing with our cia cables um where we're running dvs through our cia cables which you know there's definitely a life span on cables and the paint on how you care for your cable is depending on how they might not even be your setup maybe you're setting this up in a club and you know, the rcd cables might be bad or whatnot or one of the cables isn't working properly so like if you do see if that does happen, this is maybe what you'll see let's say the white one the left one is bad oh wow, we're in trouble here you see if I can uh that can this control command internal save us? Oh, my gosh did work very nice street thea made it stop on that. So, um, what had what happened here? Was there's a bad connection on one of these? And what you're seeing on the set up is you're seeing a just a straight line. Ok? So you're not even getting a full circle, you getting the line? And if you're getting that straight up and down line, that means that something is wrong with the left, with the left channel that's coming in because you're getting right and left. So the red and the white I used, I like to think of like, um, you know, red, right? They both start with our, um so red is right and then left is the white one. Um, and so if I pull the red one out, you'll notice it gives me this other the opposite, so it gives me a horizontal line as an error message, which means there's something wrong with the with the right one. Either way, I think that you don't necessarily have to memorize that piece of it, but as always, you know that like, wow, ok, when I'm seeing the line and I'm not seeing a full circle, something is wrong. There's also a lot of other there's a lot of literature that's out there around different scope readings on and there's an entire like even in the in the manual that you get when you first purchase um you know, cerrado when you when you buy like a piece of hardware and get the manual there is like, this entire list and pictures of scopes of like, if this if you're seeing this than that's what this is if you're seeing this and that is what it is, so might be a good thing to just teo look at in the brush upon but basically in a nutshell, if you're not seeing a a nice round circle there's something wrong with the connection so I got a nice circle and we're looking good I'm not getting any sound out here because I am an internal mode and I hit stop, so I'm going to go back to relative way we're good cool um sweet, so that is that is pretty much how to set this up how to use dvs while we're on tvs. And while we've now talked about this like absolute versus relative and internal mode, one of the other things that I want to show you and and matt, I know that you're like super excited about this particular feature which I am to, um is ah feature called sticker lock