Vinyl DJ Setup
With limited technology, comes great technique
Should You Start With Vinyl?
Learning to mix vinyl will teach you how to mix music by ear better than any other style of DJ’ing. It is also the most hands-on form of mixing and has the best audio quality.
But learning to mix on vinyl is tricky because there is less technology to help you master beatmatching and tempo control. It is also far more expensive to buy tracks. For the price of a vinyl record, you can purchase ten tracks from Beatport. You also have to set things like the weight of the needle, which can be fiddly. Plus, everything is mechanical, so parts eventually wear out and need replacing.
So why would you choose to go that way? Because vinyl is fucking sexy. Because vinyl is the purest form of DJing. Because collecting vinyl gives your life a purpose and gets you physically into music stores where DJs and audiophiles live. And vinyl retains its value, whereas you will never be able to sell your digital music collection.
But most importantly, it’s because once you can mix on vinyl, you can mix on anything.
Vinyl Turntable Setup
Below is a Vinyl Turntable Setup. The setup is just as straightforward as the CDJ setup and up until a few years ago was still seen in most DJ booths around the world.
Turntable Brands
While Technics has long been considered the turntable of choice, there are plenty of other options too. Brands like Technics, Audio Technica, Reloop, Pioneer, Numark and Denon all have really great turntables for the plucking. The question is, which feature set do you like better and what features can you live without?
Turntable Needle Cartridges
Cartridges are the most important part of any turntable. They “read” the sound from the record and can literally make or break your experience with them. They also wear out, making them an ongoing cost that you don’t see with CDJs or Controllers.
Manufacturers recommend that you change them at around 1000 playing hours, which if you are playing daily, is every few years. That’s if you are doing everything right, which if you are getting started, isn’t the easiest thing to manage. And at several hundred dollars for a good needle (times that by two turntables), it’s a cost that bears considering.
The Dream Turntable Setup – DVS (Digital Vinyl System)
There is a turntable setup that blends old with new—the Digital Vinyl System. This setup uses a timecoded vinyl to tell the software on your computer what is happening on your turntable. You then assign a track to that vinyl in your software, and the software outputs the audio.
Traktor Scratch Pro, Serato DJ DVS, Pioneer Interface 2 Audio and Rane SL4 (which works with Serato) are your four options.
You will need an external sound card to make these systems work, which is expensive, plus you need a computer, timecoded vinyl and the software to run it all, making it a gear/cabling/computer heavy system. Still, they sound awesome, work great and were a club standard for a very long time, only decreasing in popularity in recent years.
Turntable Conclusion
It really depends on what your goal in the sport of DJing is. If you already love vinyl and you just want to expand on that philosophy, then a Vinyl setup is for you. For anyone else, I would suggest doing a lot of research first at places like DJ Tech Tools before committing to one of these setups.
