While in San Francisco, I dropped in on DJTT to meet the people I have been working with in the virtual world and to pick up some of the hot new items from the store. We all feel very familiar with our online community but I was wondering, just what is the physical techtools like?  Read on to meet the crew and take a look behind the scenes as I chronicle my visit to the lab.

WALKING IN

DJTT moved to this modern second floor SoMa facility back in Nov ‘09 after working out of Ean’s tiny apartment for several years.  Upon entering, you are warmly greeted by the well known “living room” where most of the videos are shot.  What you don’t see are the comfy couches, Foosball table and even a V-drum kit (you can see Ean sitting at it in the Prepping Acappellas in Traktor video).

This airy and well lit lounge is highlighted by the “wall of controllers”, which has so many DJ toys in it that you don’t know where to start.  There are early Midi Fighter prototypes and each generation of VCI-100SE as well as examples of many types of controllers from several manufacturers.  Its easy to see that a lot of testing and product knowledge goes on behind the scenes.

THE CREW

I don’t know how many of you have clicked on the ABOUT tab in the header, but there you can get a quick bio of the main players at DJTT.  By spending some time with them, you learn a little more than a bio can convey.

Zach (aka ZachDero) is the guy you talk to when calling DJTT, especially for store related matters.  Along with shipping midi-fighters, and building hardware, Zach patiently answers a LOT of phone calls and e-mails everyday helping people get started with their new acquisitions.  Behind the scenes he also does filming for DJTT videos but no longer gets to do any painting…

Chris (aka flashflooder) is DJTT resident product development guru.  Between dreaming up new controller mappings and magically finding ways to incorporate Ean’s visions into those mappings, he is leading several top-secret projects.  From the ones I was allowed to see, we have a lot to look forward to!

Cam manages the books.  However simple that may sound, handling a rapidly expanding start-up business is no simple task.  But Cam’s even, pragmatic approach balances well with Ean’s exuberance, leaving one with the comfort that DJTT will be with us for a long time.  We’re in good hands.

All members of the team are avid DJs and are active participants in SF’s DJ culture.  Sharing some stories with them reveals how passionate they are about that culture and also how excited and committed they are to being part of the DJTT culture.

There are up to three passionate interns hanging around at any given time.  They too are active participants in the DJ culture and have come to get a taste of the behind the scenes of the business. Here Tony is flashing a new midi-fighter with the latest firmware.

THE OFFICES

Like any good office space, there is also the large board room, but instead of hosting meetings it plays host to outgoing controllers and future ping pong battles.

That’s the very busy workshop area area where VCI-100SE Arcades and Midi Fighters are built with a lot of care.  On the left you can see several Midi Fighters in the assembly process.  With the new batch just being released, I helped build a few while I was there (with the signed Autheticity card to prove it!).  All of the MF tops are hand painted with fancy graffiti cans in a custom paint booth which has taken over the kitchen.

As was the case with Ean’s apartment, each room has been transformed into a staging area for everything that is required to keep this site running. Everything from prototyping, drilling, shipping, testing, shooting, and blasting tunes happens in the labs.

THE STORE

The store’s product line has recently expanded considerably, most likely due to the space afforded by the new office.  It was impressive to see all the wares neatly stacked on shelves waiting to be shipped (except for back-orderd and in-demand VCI-100SE).  With that many goodies just begging to be played with I had to indulge in a little gear acquisition.

I had already decide to ditch my old school bag that had been my gig bag for a few months, so it was nice to pick up the new Mono Kondensor bag for use with either the VCI-100 or Spin (my DX will not fit in there, I use a Mono 365 for it).  In fact, the laptop in the store photos of the Kondensor is my 13” MBP, explaining why the laptop went missing for a while…

I picked up a pair of Dicers (for my secret future plans…) and was really impressed with how much better the button feel is over the Launchpad. Finally rounded out the shopping cart with the “Pause Play” t-shirts that are finally back in stock.

THE MAN

Its hard to get a handle on a person from watching a few videos, so getting to sit and talk to Ean was a real treat.  He immediately puts you at ease and invites all kinds of subjects from DJing techniques, equipment and the business in general.  While not detailing plans that are under development, I felt that his open collaboration philosophy was an excellent way to make sure that everybody’s ideas and concerns get addressed.  No wonder the products are so well received.

This was a particularly exciting time to drop in the office as the NI controller had just been announced.  While not being able to divulge anything that was not apparent in the video (Ean obviously has a NDA with NI), you could see his involvement with the controller development as he described to me the details in the article stills.  While the rumors, comments and wild guesses about the controller ran rampant around the web, Ean remained calm and centered about it’s defined place in the market.

We closed out the day with a little fun and shot the fore mentioned Acappella video, bringing me back to the reality that I have a lot left to learn about DJing.  The good news is that we all have DJTTs to learn it from.

by Rifki Rostum
The DJ console has come a long way since Francis Grasso plied his trade with the first stereo mixers.  Today DJs have digital, analog, midi, and hybrid mixers. For hybrids, where analog, digital and midi are married among the available controls, great possibilities await.  Well that’s what the advertising promises.  DO they live up to the hype?  Lets break down the available hybrids and see if any of them show promise.

HYBRID OR THE HIGHWAY ?

Mixer manufacturers have looked towards the future and it is quite evident that the digital world is only going to expand further.  Analog will likely never go completely away, thanks to its warm, human character, but the real estate it occupies is now doing double duty with digital and/or midi.  Opening these possibilities becomes completely context sensitive and hard to totally encompass in a single article, but lets look at a couple of the mixers available and dip into what new avenues open up for us as digital DJs.

ALLEN & HEATH XONE 4D

Allen & Heath offer this no joke mixer more at home in the pro DJ’s studio or atop a two story stage during a five day festival  in Europe. At just under an arm and a leg the Xone 4D stays true to A & H’s quality, solid workmanship and design.
·    $2999.99 – $2599.99

·    105 controls in two sections with 227 midi messages

·    Shift mode allows seamless switching between program layers

·    Midi Merge allows for a peripheral, i.e. keyboard, to be intergraded into the DVS

·    4 stereo/analog in & 1 stereo/digital in

·    4 stereo/analog out & 1 stereo/digital out

·    20 channel 2.0 USB soundcard 96 kHz/ 24 bit

·    BPM push and pull midi time clock

·    All new BPM detector circuit

·    Award winning filters and effects built in

RANE SIXTY EIGHT

Rane has teamed up with Serato and pre mapped this monster mixer with scratch live functions and with features like dual USB ports for uninterrupted seamless switching between DJ’s  or parallel mixes it is sure to stand out huge amongst the club DJ’s.
·    $3299.99 – $2599.99

·    Scratch live mapped and full midi functionality

·    Two midi sections with 12 buttons and 2 endless encoders

·    Two usb ports for real time switching or mix in parallel with two laptops

·    Two 2.0 usb ports 32bit soundcard with 22 channels @48 kHz

·    4 channels with line/phono/spdif inputs

·    Built in effects section

·    FlexFX for multiple support of effects, hardware and software based

·    Headphone split cue

·    FlexFX mix levels

VESTAX PMC-05 PRO4

The PMC series is a staple in the turntablist’s kitchen and now with cue points and effects being directly mapped to your fingertips this hybrid mixer is sure to be rolling out some hybrid mixes and juggles.
·    Around $1000

·    13 midi functions per channel

·    New digital cross fader

·    Compatible with CoreAudio and ASIO

·    Transformer switch per channel

·    Effects send and return

·    USB port for computer connectivity

BEHRINGER DDM4000

Behringer steps into the ring with the DMM4000 digital knockout that’s sure to please the digital DJ. with features like EQ kill as well as sync for effects, cross fader and sampler this mixer will be going more then three rounds.
·    Sells for $399

·    32-bit digital mixer with beat-synchronized sampler, 4 multi-FX sections, 2 BPM counters, digital X fader and MIDI

·    4 Phono/Line stereo channels allowing max. 8 signal sources to be connected simultaneously

·    2 Microphone inputs with Gain, EQ, Talk function and FX

·    4 stereo channels with Gain, programmable parametric 3-band EQ with Kill function, fader curve control and flexible cross fader assignment

·    Fully featured MIDI controller for your DJ software

·    Sophisticated sampler with beat-controlled loop function, real-time pitch control, sampler FX and cross fader start option

·    2 freely assignable and BPM-synchronized, high-quality FX engines (Bit crusher, Resonator, Reverb, Flanger, etc.)

ECLER NUO4 (DISCONTINUED)

Ecler offers this simple yet power packed four plus one channel mixer which is perfect for the cross over DJ looking to expand their skills into the software world. A smooth lay out and midi features pushes this mixer into the new standard level for inspiring DJ’s every where.
·    $700 to $800

·    4 midi knobs and eight buttons

·    3 effects scenes

·    Deck A and B toggle button

·    Midi clock

·    No audio interface

·    Replaced by Nuo4.0 which has no Midi

PIONEER DJM-800

Pioneer has this new version of the DJM but can now offer a massive midi functioning mixer. Features recommended by many professional DJs and club engineers have been jammed into the DJM 800 and is raising the bar on sound fidelity and ease of mixer operation.
·    $1000 to $1500

·    96 kHz / 24-bit digital mixer

·    High-fidelity sound (32-bit sound processor)

·    61 fully assignable MIDI controls

·    4 sound colour effects

·    13 beat effects, including roll sampler

·    Large, bright dot matrix display

FUTURISTIC FOOLS OR JACK OF ALL TRADES?

What is the future for hybrid mixers? Is there room for these types of products in a fast growing market?  The answer is not really clear. With Ecler and Numark discontinuing several midi-mixers, there may be clear signs of a soft market. On many of these mixers, the midi-implementation seems to be just an after-thought or an extra feature requested by the marketing team not an innovative new look at DJing. We are interested in hearing what you, the community, has to say- how do these products fit into your DJing picture?

This is Rifki’s first article for DJTT, lets show a little DJTT appreciation for his work.

Michigan-born, Brooklyn-based artist Shigeto is one of my favorite artists on Ghostly International. AKA Zach Saginaw, Shigeto has been making collages of electronic beats, richly-textural releases, many of them following the narrative of his family’s experience in Japanese internment camps here in the US during World War II.

“What We Held On To” is a surprisingly-deep EP, following his last “Semi-Circle” and coming before the upcoming full-length “Full Circle.” It’s released completely free for download from Ghostly, and the tracks (included here) have also made it to his SoundCloud account if you want to share your comments on that favorite spot exactly one minute, 17 seconds into the third cut.

Shigeto stopped by the Ghostly International workshop I spent last week attending, and walked us step by step through one of his productions. His main axe of choice turns out to be Propellerhead Reason, making use of programming Reason’s sweet sounding effects. (He showed us some programmatic delay taps in Reason’s RV7000 reverb module. He also revealed that he plays a lot of rhythms live to maintain their feel. In this case, when he did turn to the programmed Redrum modules, he set the grid to 64th notes to actually program in swing syncopations.

Both technically and compositionally, though, collage is central, in cut-up samples, in sounds gathered on his field recorder (explaining a lot of those wonderfully-gritty timbres), and in the personal identity narrative interwoven with the tracks. Taken together, for me Shigeto’s records are worth repeated visits and contemplation.

Here’s a listen to the tracks themselves:

spring textures by SHIGETO

after she smokes by SHIGETO

Bitter Sweet by SHIGETO

what we held on to by SHIGETO

grandmas words // rise out of the stone by SHIGETO

[NEW MUSIC]: SHIGETO’S ‘WHAT WE HELD ON TO’ EP (FREE!) [Ghostly International]

http://ghostly.com/artists/shigeto

Looking for all the world like a high-end audiophile stereo radio receiver as much as pro audio equipment, the shiny, new Symphony I/O has arrived from Apogee. It’s a top-of-the-range audio interface designed for low latency, high-quality digital-to-analog conversion, and quality clocking, as well as flexible input and output, coming from a company known in the category. With Pro Tools HD support, it’s also a rival to Avid’s own audio interfaces, while also working with all major Mac DAWs – even Ableton Live. You’re talking an investment of a few grand here, depending on configuration, so this isn’t likely to appeal to every bedroom producer. But pricing, starting at US$3690 with the I/O modules, also isn’t astronomical.

Another big highlight: Ethernet and USB releases planned for later in the fall mean the Symphony I/O is a viable alternative for mobile, laptop-based users, not just PCI as on Avid’s Pro Tools HD interfaces. That makes the Symphony interesting as a solution for the road. (The Symphony also works as a standalone converter, not just as an interface.)

Your best bet – check out the full specs from Apogee.
Symphony I/O

I’m mostly ignorant of high-end audio boxes; I can speculate about them a bit as I would pro baseball. I can, say, however, that the trend in converter quality has absolutely been to greater quality for dramatically lower price. It’s also notable that configuring and using converters is much easier than it used to be. The Symphony I/O makes it easy to switch DAWs (though sadly only on Mac, not other OSes), and even plans 64-bit kernel support on Mac OS later this fall. It’s a far cry from the days in the 90s when you’d spend a couple of days mucking about with Mac classic drivers and expansion chassis just to get a Power Mac to do any audio recording at all. (I’m unfortunately more knowledgeable about that than I care to be; I’d like to leave that in the 90s with memories of the Lewinsky scandal.)

What I can offer is the first-hand thoughts of a very biased – but also very interesting – source. Kevin Vanwulpen is one of the engineers at Apogee, responsible for firmware, software, and digital engineering. He was excited enough about his baby that he wrote me an extended explanation of why it’s cool and why it matters. Note that this is not an official PR line (I’m sure PR’s not going to be terribly happy to see it – blame me, not Kevin, guys). And it should be taken with a grain of salt; this device is basically family to Kevin. But taken as such, I do enjoy hearing engineers talk about their creations, so here’s what Kevin has to say.

Executive summary of the highlights from Kevin:

• The converters sound a lot better.
• “Modes” for working with a variety of DAWs makes switching Logic, Live, and Pro Tools far easier. (That’s not news for your basic audio interface, but it’s new to interfaces of this class.)
• Analog fans, this is DC capable. Route control voltage to your heart’s content.

the proverbial cat is out of the bag: SymphonyI/O is online. As usual, I won’t bore you with the stuff you might as well read on our website :-)…but I do want to highlight some other points about the product you may find of interest, which is one of the things I love about your blog.

Also note this was not written by marketing but by myself and thus there is some of my bias/opinion/whatever in there.
Ok here it goes, in random order:

a. The sound….yes I am sure marketing covers that, but I am sure it will take a little while before people ‘get it’.
I do not have ‘golden ears’ (but some who do agree)…I truly can not tell doing a blind test whether I am listening to the analog source or AD-DA. Don’t get me wrong the previous generation was great…but well this is truly a major step up, which I am excited about (I am not in the business of designing the same thing in a new jacket…and neither are some others here, including Lucas our analog wizard)

b. I am excited about the Modes (marketing called it Audio Interface Mode). I personally compare it to multi-booting a computer (such as bootcamp and many others)
In the past Apogee’s products often got complicated very fast, because they are used in very different contexts and we had a hard time squeezing features and trying to make them make sense to everyone. In the end of the day if you’re using Logic you don’t care about ProTools HD specific features and vice versa for example.
Symphony I/O can be restarted in a mode of the users choice and allowed us to keep the box make total sense and easy to use…for the context it’s living in at that moment. Rather than all contexts all at once :-)

I personally will use it with Symphony64 at home…but it’s nice to (down the road) hook it USB to a laptop as that’s plenty in most cases (for me at least) when on the go, which I am not all that often anyhow.

c. As you know I am personally an Analog-synth and modular (eurorack) geek…until now us poor CV-needy souls had to more or less pick between the DC-capable MOTU with it’s crappy sound (for some reason with modulars that is sooo obvious) or better sound quality. I am talking about use with Expert Sleepers’ Silent Way (which I use) or MOTU’s Volta.

Well this thing’s DA’s are DC capable…yay.

But not only that they have an amazing sense of zero (forgot what Lucas calls it, he calls it true-zero or something)…but in short the zero offset is not comparable to the other stuff out there. The legs are veeery symmetrical which does mean you absolutely without worry can use it to get double the voltage swing (and thus octave range)

Second it’s extreeeemely temperature stable, which is clearly important in that situation. I have not ‘measured’ it versus a MOTU but in my experience once tuned I have not had issues (which i do with MOTU as my rig happens to be near the AC airflow in my relatively small appartment where there are physical constraints where I cna put my modular)
I actually last week got an Expert Sleepers ES-1 with DB25 to use with this puppy. I pre-ordered my personal SymphonyIO. I like my Ensemble and all I use right now, but well this is a good notch up.

Obviously it can go out quite hot (+24dBu) so you get a nice large range to play.

d. We do see this not just as a product but more so as a project or platform or whatever you call it.
That does imply we decided to not ship it all at once….yes it doesn’t do everything under the sun today and for those people they can hold of. Likewise for many it is everything they wished for.
Likewise the box is very modular in design in many aspects which will allow us to adapt and allow people to invest in this without the stuff that is valuable obsoleting as fast as technology in general does.
Personally I like the Hasselblad analogy where they had an impossible time selling such expensive digital cameras…untill they figured out to make the digital part a slide-in part that gets updated whenever new stuff comes out and evolves with digital camera technology…but the body/optics and all that stay.

Don’t get me wrong there are many great aspects to this box, but well I know you know how to read and can go through our website and all that…the above is sort of my own input and highlight of less obvious stuff that I find cool about it.

If you’re an Apogee user or in the market for this kind of device, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this offering and how it stacks up to the competition. And what do you think of the staggered release schedule as far as features, which starts now but extends through 2010?