The MP3 Mixdown

As a keen vinyl collector, it was going to take a lot to get me to start downloading MP3 rather than buying records, but these two bits of tech have got me knocking down trackitdown.net for my latest electro fixes. Vinyl has been relegated to the albums and special editions for the time being, while I buy 4 MP3s for the price of a 12" to jam on the Virtual decks.

Virtual Vinyl technology is an amazing bit of kit that keeps the traditional DJ techniques but brings them bang up to date. A special box and tracking vinyl plates feed through software in your laptop to which allow you to play MP3s and interact with them physically on your decks. Numark have gone a step better and added video scratching into the mix as well. Check out their demo below, featuring Beardyman and his DJ JFB. Cool scratching aside, it shows that there is no latency issues with the software, making this £250 bit of kit an affordable way to start mixing your digital music collection.



More gadgety and portable, but still interesting is the new Pacemaker, a huge bit of kit that allows you to mix live on a device slightly larger than an iPod classic. Two headphone jacks, pitch shifters and crossfader means that after a bit of practice mixing house and breaks are pretty easy. Trickier stuff like Hip Hop and Drum & Bass are much harder, maybe even impossible, but its a great, if expensive, way to bring a house party to life. It even has an 120GB hard drive, so you won't be filling it up in a hurry. Check the demo below. These types of innovations are the future of interactive music playback.