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DVS: mixing digital on vinyl

4 min readL'équipe Fox Rider
A DJ in a checkered shirt plays on two turntables whose platters bear blue monitor vinyls, on either side of a mixing desk marked Serato.
Photo: Daniel Larsen — Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 2.0

You like the gesture: the hand that brakes the plate, the disc that is reset, the weight of the arm. But you don't have three hundred records, and the pieces that the room demands often only exist in file. DVS, for digital vinyl system, exists precisely for this situation. This is not a workaround gimmick: it's the way a good number of club DJs have been playing for twenty years.

Know before you plan: DJ equipment cannot be shipped. He withdraws and goes in person to Lyon 3 (2 Impasse du Lutin, 69003 Lyon), by appointment. The excess of €200 is paid on site at the drop-off and returned to you on return.

The principle: a disc that does not contain music

On the turntable, you place a control vinyl. It does not carry any music: it carries a signal, a code, which the software constantly reads. From this signal, the program deduces three pieces of information — the direction of rotation, the speed, and the exact position of the tip on the disc. It then applies these three data to the file loaded in the virtual deck.

The result is astonishingly natural: you slow down the set, the piece slows down; you move the record back, the song moves back; you lift your arm and put it back a third of the way through the record, the song skips a third of the way. At Serato, these discs and CDs are called NoiseMap control media.

The four pieces to put together

A DVS edit is never just a deck plus software. You need four, and forgetting one of them is enough for nothing to work.

  • Direct drive turntables, with enough torque for the record to return to speed instantly.
  • Control vinyls, one per turntable, in the format of the chosen software.
  • An interface or table certified DVS by the software publisher. It’s the part that we forget, and it’s what decides everything: a DVS edit is not done with just any mixer.
  • A software license. At Serato, the DVS is part of the Serato DJ Suite, offered by subscription at $14.99 per month or as a permanent purchase at $499. On the AlphaTheta side, several tables serve as hardware keys and unlock the software: the DJM-S7, for example, gives free access to Serato DJ Pro.

Pair of black direct drive turntables, platter, S-arm and tempo slider

Turntables: the SL-1210 MK2 remains the reference

The DVS is demanding with the board. Each hesitation in speed becomes a hesitation in the song, each flutter at the start can be heard. That's why the Technics SL-1210 MK2 has stood the test of time: quartz-controlled direct drive, brushless DC motor, starting torque of 1.5 kg·cm, and a 33.2 cm molded platter weighing 2 kg which reaches 33 and a third revolutions in 0.7 seconds from standstill.

Add in a whine and flutter measured at 0.025% WRMS and a tempo slider of plus or minus 8%, and you have a platter that never betrays the code burned on the control disc. Its 12.5 kg has a lot to do with it: the mass absorbs the vibrations of the track and avoids tip jumps.

Modern shortcuts, and what they cost

Two recent machines propose to remove the fragile link of the assembly, namely the cell and the arm.

The Pioneer DJ PLX-CRSS12 is the first turntable to provide both real record playback and DVS control without a tonearm. Its MAGVEL CLAMP system holds the disc and transmits movement directly to the file; a wheel even allows you to adjust the feeling of weight of the disc. It is Serato DJ Pro and rekordbox compatible, and adds four MIDI assignable pads, an OLED display and a USB port.

The Rane Twelve MKII takes the logic further: a twelve-inch motorized platter, but no cartridge or arm at all. It is a MIDI controller that imitates vinyl, designed to control Serato DJ, Traktor or Virtual DJ. You place a disk as a surface, and it is the rotation that controls the software. No more tips to replace, no more jumping when someone jostles the table.

These two machines solve a real problem. They also cost significantly more than a pair of classic turntables, and they are only useful if you already play DVS regularly.

What we rent, and what you should bring

Let's put it simply. Neither the PLX-CRSS12, nor the Rane Twelve MKII, nor the DVS interfaces appear in our catalog. What you can rent from us is the heaviest and most expensive brick to own: the Technics SL-1210 MK2 , the very ones on which this assembly was invented.

You therefore bring: your control vinyls, your interface or your DVS certified table, your computer and your license. And if you first want to check that DVS is right for you before investing in a three-figure license, a good way to start is to rent a pair of turntables and Pioneer XDJ-RX3 : you mix your vinyls on the phono inputs, your files on a USB key, and you will very quickly know which of the two gestures you are really missing.

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