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Test System Specs
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (DirectX
9.0c)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP, 2166 MHz (13 x 167) 3000+
Motherboard/Chipset: ASRock K7S8X v3/SiS 748
Memory: 1024 MB (DDR SDRAM)
Video Adapter: RADEON 9200 SE
Disk Drive: Maxtor 6Y120L0 (120
GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Turntables: Technics SL1210mk2
Cartridges: Shure m35x, Shure m44-7
Introduction
It feels like an age since the first digital systems using control vinyl appeared, with the original Final Scratch software back in 2001 running on BeOS. Things have moved on since then and we now have a plethora of options available for those who want to mix digital files from their computer, using a vinyl or cd interface they are used to.
For those new to this area, the premise is actually quite
simple. Special vinyl or CDs containing a control signal are
used to manipulate audio files on your computer. How this actually
happens varies slightly from product to product. Generally
the turntables or cd players are hooked upto an interface -
either a custom piece that comes with the product or an existing
suitable soundcard - that sends the control signal into the
computer. The software interprets movement and positioning
and applies this to whatever audio files you have. It will
then spit out the corresponding audio through the interface
back to your mixer. In an ideal world this will be a totally
transparent process, whereby you just pick out tracks from
your hard-drive rather than sift through your record bag.
On
the face of it, it's a very attractive proposition. No more
damage to your beloved vinyl collection, vinyl style control
of any audio files, instant manipulation of any samples or
new productions you make. Sounds like heaven. Is anything in
life ever that easy though?
The Package
The Digiscratch software is available in a variety of flavours.
It can be bought as standalone software which operates via
a compatible soundcard, bundled with an interface such as the
Audiotrak Maya44 USB, or at the very top end as a package including
their own Digiscratch box. I say their own, but it is actually
essentially a RME RPM soundcard (which is based around RME's
Hammerfall DSP System). So as well as the phono/line RCA ins
and outs it includes a microphone input, MIDI in/out and a
1/4" monitor output. It hasn't got the 1/4" balanced
outputs that the RPM box has and bears the Alcatech and Digiscratch
logos instead. In all other respects, it is identical.
As
such, the Digiscratch box packages come in 2 configurations -
one which uses a PCI card for desktop PCs, and another which
uses a PCMCIA CardBus card for use with laptops. The laptop version
comes with an external power supply as not enough power can
be delivered by the PCMCIA route itself. The Digiscratch box
then is connected to the respective card via a supplied closed
LAN to IEEE 1394 cable (4.5m).
I
won't gush too much, but the actual Digiscratch box is formidable
- as anyone who is familiar with RME's products will know.
It comes with their Hammerfall DSP software mixer and their
rock solid low latency ASIO drivers. Definitely at the top
of the pile as far as audio interfaces go. The huge benefit
that this gives is that you have a fully useable soundcard
for any other audio applications you might want to run, rather
than solely an interface for one piece of software.
What
else is in the box? Well we have 3 pieces of their Digiscratch
vinyl, 2 control signal CDs if you are that way inclined, a
paper quick-start guide and a USB dongle which must remain
connected to your PC to run the software.
Installation & Set-Up
Installing a PCI card is slightly more traumatic than a USB
or Firewire device, but not immensely so. The obvious downside
is that the whole unit is not amazingly portable if you are
using the desktop version, as you'll need to whip out the PCI
card to move it to another system. Again, you won't be able
to transfer it to a laptop or vice-versa unless you get the
corresponding Hammerfall DSP System card. So pick a system
and stick with it!
Everything ran smoothly for me - drivers were
happily found on the installation disc and all was well. Likewise
the software installation proceeded without a hitch, though
one of the YES/NO prompts was still in German! The quick-start
guide details the main pit-falls and trouble-shooting areas
but the full English manual was not available at time of writing
- which left me a tiny bit blind at times.
The only other thing left to do was to run my turntables directly to the Digiscratch box and the outputs of the box to the LINE inputs on my mixer. Pretty painless. A quick check on the Hammerfall DSP Settings and away we go. A quick mention regarding the ability to bypass the Digiscratch box. You can select to bypass the box which sends the inputs straight to the outputs, but includes the phono pre-amp if selected - meaning you don't have to use up extra channels on your mixer. So everything can be done through the line outputs, no THRU needed. But it gets even more clever. There is a disconnect mode which retains all settings including the DSP mixer settings, provided you have an external power supply. So you can happily use it as a standalone box with personalised routing and set-up. Very smart indeed!
Main Software Interface
The
overall full software window is not resizeable and seems to
just about fill a 1024x768 resolution, but not quite. Alcatech
inform me that a resizeable window is on the way, to cater
for differing screen resolutions. It is broadly split into
3 areas; the waveform and playing track info, the current playlist,
and the file archive section - which can be toggled to display
the mixer section. Certain areas within these can be expanded
or hidden to suit individual preference, allowing a degree
of customisation (hint: look for the little orange triangle
buttons).
Personally, I like the orange on black look of the
program. Everything is clean and clear. It doesn't take much
guesswork as to what the main controls do and everything was
labelled enough for me to jump straight in.
Although I didn't
have a manual, most of the program options are fairly self-explanatory.
The main option of note is the one related to calibration -
to ensure the software is happy with the control signal you
are sending it. Quite a simple process, you place your needles
on your records without playing to get a background noise level
to use as the threshold of detection. Then whilst playing the
records you press the calibrate buttons. At least, that's all
I did. If the software is happy you will get two clear circles.
If they look wonky or the software is unhappy then it probably
points towards dirty needles, bad grounding or poor cartridge
connections. So just as with a typical analog system, your
setup needs to be running reasonably smoothly to get the best
out of it.
The File Archive pane is like a virtual folder system
in which you can setup main directories and sub-directories.
You then add individual files or search whole folders / sub
folders on your hard drive for audio files to add to your archive.
Digiscratch handles 16-bit 44.1Khz .wav, .mp3 and .wma files.
It mentions .ogg support though that wasn't quite ready for
this version release. You can virtually arrange the archive
section through standard Windows highlighting / drag and dropping.
You can choose what tag columns to show and can sort alphabetically/numerically
by clicking any of the columns. You can also directly edit
file tag info here though for large amounts of tagging I'd
probably use a specialist program. You then drag files from
your archive to the playlist section. Here they are assigned
a number in the playlist - you can drag them around to different
positions but cannot sort the tag columns as you can in the
archive area. You can save/load playlists and the program seems
to remember playlists by date as well automatically. It's then
just a matter of dragging the files over onto the relevant
player to gain control of them.
Hands-on Control
Each of the Digiscratch players can be used in one of three
modes; Internal, Absolute & Relative. Internal makes them
behave like a software cd player, and there are transport controls,
pitch controls and pitch bend facilities available. Not of
huge interest to us, except they could get you out of a spot
of bother if you are having turntable troubles. Absolute mode
behaves exactly as normal vinyl, that is - positioning and
direction. So you can drop your needle anywhere on the vinyl
and it will be at the corresponding position in the audio file.
Relative mode relates directional movement only - the audio
file begins at the start irrespective of stylus position, and
then follows the movement. So you effectively make a skipless
record, good for those who don't trust their cartridges. If
you need to change track position in relative mode you can
grab the position marker on screen and drag it to the required
spot. You can also select 33 or 45rpm as your root speed.
The
first time you drag a track into one of the players, it builds
a waveform for that track. It does this remarkably quickly,
within a few seconds on my PC. You have a whole track overview
at the top and then a zoomable overview below which will give
you a better idea of where individual sounds or beats are.
Both
of the Digiscratch vinyl sides are virtually identical. They
contain 12mins of time-code which then goes into a locked groove
- so that tracks longer than 12mins can be played (obviously
if you are in absolute mode it will switch to relative mode
at the 12min point). The only difference I can see is that
side A has visual markers every minute cut into the vinyl.
There is a section after the locked groove which allows you
to select a track in your playlist. By dropping the needle
in the area and moving the vinyl forward or backward you can
move up and down your current playlist. Once you have highlighted
the track you want you just move your tonearm back to wherever
you want to begin playback of that file (depending on what
mode you are in).
Performance
So the big question, what's the performance like? For mixing it felt indistinguishable from normal vinyl, it responds to subtle nudges just like the real deal and there doesn't feel like there is any extra drift or trouble from the software side of things. It's a nice feeling picking out tracks from a big list and then mixing them as you are used to, although from habit I kept removing the Digiscratch vinyl at the end of each track! One criticism of the vinyl itself is that the time-code is amazingly loud through just the mechanical cartridge noise it generates. It sounds silly but was really annoying at low monitoring volumes! It's just the right frequency to drive you totally mad.
For scratching it performs o.k. in most situations in terms of tracking, but the sound has noticeable digital artefacts and can warble a tad on higher pitched sounds. To put this in perspective I'd say it's probably around the middle in terms of quality you might expect from a professional dj cd player. Also, you can hear tiny little clicks and static like noise as it tries to interpret movement - regardless of any buffer settings. I confirmed this through manipulating a 1Khz sine wave. What I did come across was a massive difference in scratch quality between sessions. Here are two comparison files using a 1Khz sine wave at either end of the spectrum. I think this was possibly due to excessive dirt and dust on the needle.
So, although we are in the digital realm, we suffer the same
problems as with normal vinyl. Definitely something to keep
an eye on. If in doubt, it can be worth checking out the
calibration screen to ensure you have nice clear circles still.
Tracking was pretty good all in all but there were repeated
instances where the software would kind of slip the sample
out at normal playback speed regardless of what I was doing
with the vinyl. In absolute mode this meant the sample then
jumped back and corrected itself. In relative mode it meant
the sample was something like a 1/3 rotation displaced. I couldn't
rememdy this through any settings or calibration that I tried.
The Digiscratch
box itself seemed totally happy running at a latency of 1.5ms
(64 samples) with manipulation of both turntables simultaneously.
However, everything went mad when I tried to use the software
key correction feature. The extra processing this presumably
incurrs does not make for a happy Digiscratch box. Playback
became very unpredictable and even started shifting in speed
randomly. Dropping to 3ms latency seemed to cure this, which
is not a sacrifice you would ever feel in real terms - and
is still a very low latency time. A word of warning though,
I'd recommend you not to alter ASIO buffer settings whilst
Digiscratch is running. It didn't seem to like direct changes
from within the program itself. It also became a bit unpredictable
if you toggled the key correction feature on and off for
the players. In the same way, calibration of the time-code
signal sometimes resulted in a total drop of audio from one
of the players. There seemed to be a lot of small software
quirks. But to it's credit, once you have it up and running
how you want - provided you don't try and change any of the
core settings, it appeared stable!
The key correction (locks pitch at 0%) sounds
easily as good as any of the dj cd players on the market
for mixing. It obviously has a mad effect if you are scratching,
though I came to quite like the sounds I could get out
of it. With key correction enabled and latency at 3ms, CPU
usage hit around 30% and memory usage was about 250mb.
Extras
Although I have touched on the key areas of interest, there is actually a lot more contained within Digiscratch itself aside from the two core players. The extra functions of the players themselves include 6 cue points and a loop facility. Again, these necessitate being switched to relative mode, but are useful extras. There is a snap to beat option available meaning your timing doesn't need to be perfect. This worked fairly well for looping though sometimes the auto positioning of the markers around the transients gave a small click noise. Also, you can specify a number of beats for the loop facility if the software knows the BPM of the track - as well as a pair of arrows which can nudge the loop forward or back by the same amount.
There
is a 9 bank sampler in the middle of the two players which
comes pre-loaded with some sounds for covering up dodgy mixes!
Or you can put your own cheesey name-drops and explosion sounds
if you feel the need. You can edit the samples directly and
adjust pitch, volume and fade in/out - as well as looping.
Maximum sample time of 4mins per bank, which is plenty to be
getting on with!
There is a whole mixer panel which includes all the relevant level controls and a recording panel. It seems a bit strange to me though that the Digiscratch box itself hasn't got another auxiliary set of inputs for capturing whole mixes. The two stereo outputs also means the cd-player and sampler audio has to go on top of the regular player channels if you want to use them. But, Digiscratch has it's own audio editor built in - so you can capture vinyl or other sources direct into the program instead of using an external program. In the same way, Digiscratch has facilities for ripping cd audio and retrieving CDDB server info built in (not working yet!). Personally, I have my own favourite tools for these jobs and would be unlikely to use anything else - but you could conceivably manage everything internally, which could be very attractive for some. You can record directly into the main players themselves - the most obvious use being able to capture the microphone channel and then manipulate it.
ASIO Soundcard Compatibility
Digiscratch is meant to be compatible with other soundcards and isn't specifically tied to the Digiscratch box. However, I had no joy getting my Emu1820 to work with Digiscratch. Something was going wrong with the control signal - causing super fast playback. My Emu was locked at a 44.1Khz clock but something was obviously amiss somewhere else. The same routing was working with DjDecks and MixVibes. It's a shame because I would have liked to see what sort of latency values were possible in comparison. It's worth noting that Alcatech do a demo version with timecode vinyl for a measly 10Euros, so if you are worried it would be a wise investment to give that a whirl and see how it fares. You also shouldn't need a hardware phono pre-amp with your soundcard as Digiscratch has a built in RIAA adjustment and software pre-amp.
Final Thoughts
The
Digiscratch box and drivers are superb, allowing super low
latency use and the ability to fully harness the hardware outside
of the bundled software. However, I get the feeling that the
actual Digiscratch software needs a bit of time to mature -
there is certainly room for improvement in terms of general
stability and tracking/response for scratching. We do push
the scratch side as hard as physically possible here at Skratchworx,
so it's maybe not representative of your average user. However,
the quirky nature of the software and sometimes odd behaviour
is not something anyone would want mid-set. When you look at
the quality of the hardware and the amount of features and
extras with the software itself (once they are all available!),
you do get pretty good value for your 700 Euros. Alcatech are
certainly aware of some of the issues we have flagged and are
working to ensure all features are working correctly as soon
as possible. If they can realise these improvements then Digiscratch
will become a very strong competitor in what is now a fairly
crowded area of the market.
Rating - 72%
Big thanks to Eike and Olaf at Alcatech for supplying the review equipment.