Digitizing Your Collection (Microwave DJs Related)
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
So...I broke down and went Serato Dildo???. Two questions immediately arise:1) I have a Macintosh laptop and I've been told the built-in sound card on this ain't shit really. What would people recommend as an alternative for digitizing vinyl with mininum A) hassle and B) cost, yet better than what I already have? I know Mongo Slade was recommending the M-Wave but damn, that shit is $$$. 2) How do you avid Dildo??? DJs choose what to digitize and what not to? I can see competing reasons to digitize your most frequently used party records: on one hand, you know they're cuts you can always depend on but on the flip side, if it's that select, why not just bring those in by hand anyways? I guess, in other words, it makes more sense for me to digitize songs that I think I might use but don't really find essential. That way, I can have my sound file and then dump the vinyl. But for those records I know I want to keep, does it still make sense to spend the time digitizing them?Real Microwave Heads Wanna Know.
Comments
Digitize in order of importance and work your way down. That's the best way IMO. It allows you to re-evaluate your collection too.
Yeah - that sounds about right to me too. It's not like they upgraded the Serato box even if the software now allows for digitizing.
definitely digitize what you use, but i also digitize alot of my rarer tunes as well, that way i can play around with them on serato and not risk unneccesary damage on the originials.
i.e. - some of my rarer 45s i spin at home and practice with them on serato, but when i go out for gigs i play the originals.
Rep your tech specs. This kind of blanket non-technical statement makes no sense at all.
It might be true in your situation but it's definitely not a truth overall.
these statements are mad jiggery pockery. So if I have a vestax 05 pro and go out into my minijack of my soundcard record at the lowest kilohertz setting I can find, it will sound better than going through Serato?
nice.
Getting into Serato, if I were you I would do the following:
1 Digitize stuff you think other Microwave DJs will want and don't have, and then when you get to like 500 tunes, start trading with people who have already done the work encoding all the common stuff and other shit you want but don't have time to do. When I make a trade, I'm totally willing to give up 2000 common party joints for 300 - 400 good quality rare joints that I don't have on MP3 or record. Most DJs have already done all the regular party shit and aren't looking to trade for that kind of stuff anymore. It hurts a little bit to give away stuff you spent a lot of time and money to get the records, but your collection will grow real fast like this.
2 Save time by ripping tracks off of CDs - if you have Hard to Earn, why would you record from an LP and spend all that time typing in names of tracks and all that when you can just import them into ITunes in 2 minutes and have all that information already on the files. Make sure the BitRate is set at 320.
3 No matter where the music comes from, encode at 320. If you have the room, do WAV files and keep them on an external, becuase the internal Hard Drives are going to catch up and when they do your collection will sound that much better. Convert the WAVs to MP3s to use DJing out.
4 Save your music in folders by genre so that when you move your music around you aren't having to constantly re-sort your shit. I wish someone had told me this from the jump because my internal HD is a mess and I don't have the time to re-sort all that stuff now.
urrrs$$$,
i'm down for an mp3 swap. holler.
my routine is: record as .wav on another computer, save on external hard drive, dump from external HD to itunes on ibook, convert to .mp3, delete .wav, bpm the files that i want bpms for, put in appropriate playlist, type artist's name LAST (it's harder to find the files you just added once they are in alphabetical order), go to serato with the interface disconnected, hit "build overview", presto
if you grab a bunch of files from someone else's hard drive, or import a lot of cds at once, just do "build overview" before you go to bed and let it ride for the night, that shit can take a while
hope that helps, it has been a learning process, but i think i've got it down pretty good now
Care to confirm this techical debate over whether it's better to digitize from vinyl going through the Serato box or going through a third party soundcard?
I feed directly into mini-jack input on my laptop but I was talking to Mongo Slade about this and he was saying that the stock soundcard on Apple computers is shite.
Yeah, I hear the MBox is good but also chingo bling.
I'm open to other gear suggestions for those who don't want to spend $700.
I would suggest highly that you begin fucking with it. The shit is the best Serato build ever. Looping and encoding are tight.
Encodes to AIFF @ 44.1 khz & 16 bit stereo (32 bit is overkill. These are CD quality standards).
The 1.5 betas are definitely a good look.
Ok, you got me convinced. I'll at least give it a shot. At this point, I'd assume anything has to be a step-up from feeding through my mini-jack since that seems to be the consensus opinion.
Dude go to musiciansfriend.com or some such and knock yourself out. There are plenty of I/Os in the low hundreds.
Trust me on this one. The SL box is all you will need in order to encode your vinyl. There's rumor of an update that's gonna mimick the simultaneous 2 channel recording feature of the TTM57Sl.
But for now, the SL box WILL work for you.
cool. i'm always nervous about upgrading serato because i want them to work all the bugs out first. don't want to crash up in the club. btw cashless did you get the cd in the mail? jd mentioned you might not have...
I've heard some crazy things about future serato too - like automatically recording your mixes and then being able to edit them afterwards. Even having a digital crossfader in the editing program where you can make a sloppy scratch on point.
It's on there, you gotta sign up to be a beta tester though.
You can install multiple builds of Serato on the same pc/mac. I'm running three builds right now. The only issue is that 1.5 & up can't use crates made in previous builds. That's cool though cause the new crate format loads faster. Never had a crash with 1.5 yet. All of my crashes have been unrelated to Serato (user error, forgetting to shut off airport, etc).
I got the cd finally. Got mailed to 2 wrong addresses. Straight heat. Good memories associated with those tracks!