Computer and Turntablism Paper

[Paul Bell]

For the non-developer I guess it always comes down to how much one is willing to pay for something that does a better, if somewhat similar, job. The 2 kHz control signal that ships with TSPro promises the perfect emulation of real vinyl, though it was already pretty good when I was using the old control vinyl with the old Traktor Scratch. Pinky vinyl was tight however would run into problems when playing slowly, the control signal wasn't strong enough so the audio didn't playback how it should do. I noticed no such issue with Traktor so, like you say, the algorithm has got to be a lot better.

Can you explain to me how Traktor and Pinky do very different things? They are both vinyl emulation systems, no?

[Kassen]

Yes, I should explain as that's my point.

Suppose that you wanted to scratch and mix your MP3 collection and I wanted to manipulate the playback of a drumcomputer-style program. Let's say we'd both like to use vinyl for this. A lot of our desires are the same there, we want to go from vinyl, to some sort of input on the computer, to a analysis of the signal to extract features. Up to that point our desires are the exact same and include things like error-resistance, latency, etc.

I'm suggesting that if we can figure out how to best do that all systems could use this one way. You'd get the same records that I would get and this library would be embedded in a commercial program for you, while I might use hooks to it in a programming language. MsPinky provides more or less this, though it can be used to mix in a straightforward way it could also be used to control anything else. They are both vinyl emulation but Traktor has a single specific goal.

I'm not suggesting everyone should be a developer; in fact I'm suggesting that nobody would need to re-implement the bits that we all need anyway. MsPinky strives to be just this but apparently falls short in how it behaves.

Still, of course it's not just in the algorithm; perhaps tracking is every bit as good as with Traktor but Traktor might just be smarter about how to deal with the signals that we do get. With extremely slow playback the system will at some point break down and Traktor might simply be breaking down in a more elegant way. That would be a issue that individual tinkerers would need to address and that people buying a ready made system will pay for. It would be interesting to try to figure out what goes wrong there. The systems seem reasonably similar, if we are to believe this; http://www.mspinky.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=250

[Paul Bell]

Thing is Traktor doesn't sound like it's breaking down at all, it sounds just like real vinyl when it slows to a stop. I'm wondering if Eoin has encountered a similar issue with Pinky and whether he was able to resolve it with a tinker? It would be interesting to figure out this discrepancy between the two apps.

I like the sound of the bigger project too.

[Kassen]

That really sounds to me like Traktor has better interpolation for playback. I think that's a separate issue from tracking the controller record. With this kind of thing you very quickly end up smoothing the controlling signal to avoid jumps, but as smoothing adds a bit of latency you will likely want to vary the smoothing. If you cut corners there it will sound bad with extreme inputs.

Some of the major apps do some really clever stuff there, but they don't write about what they are doing or how. I suppose that's fair as they did the research