Key Of Grey

January 16th, 2009 – A topic I keep getting asked, whether it’s through Youtube, email, or comments to this site, is about using the Vestax Spin/djay combo for making beats. Specifically, people want to know how to use the Spin in conjunction with a MPC or MPC-style controller. These questions stem from a misunderstanding of the Spin itself, that I thought I’d address.

First off, it is technically possible to make beats with the Spin. Because the Spin has a built-in soundcard, you can physically connect the output to your MPC, or into your DAW to be controlled by an MPC-style controller and a sampler. You could also create a beat “live”, by triggering cuepoints set within djay and record the output. Of course, doing so would require precision since the output is live-off-the-floor, making it difficult to fix timing issues.

Now on to why it doesn’t make sense to use them to make beats. The Vestax Spin/djay allows you to play digital files off your computer and get them into the real world. However, since the files are in your computer already, why wouldn’t you just cut them up into your DAW’s sampler, or if you have an old MPC, run directly from your soundcard’s output to the MPC. Unless the Spin is your computer’s only soundcard, which is unlikely, then I would just bypass it in the process completely.

Also, if the MPC is any of the recent models, samples can be loaded from your computer onto memory cards and into the MPC directly. People are caught up with the idea of using the Spin to make beats, because they think of the Spin like a real analog turntable with vinyl. Yes, in the old days, producers took the output of their turntables and input them into the MPC’s because they had to. The sounds were completely analog, and they needed to get them into the MPC’s digital format.

The songs being played through the Spin are already digital, so doesn’t it make more sense to leave them into the digital world until absolutely necessary? If you were to use a Spin to go into an MPC, you are adding an extra unnecessary conversion from digital to analog, and then analog back into digital. That’s not exactly a recipe for audio fidelity.

I understand the thought process behind wanting to use the Spin/djay with an MPC, but it adds both an unnecessary layer of complexity to the setup, and a reduction in audio quality. Unless you have one of the first generation MPC’s that uses floppy disks, I’d recommend cutting up the digital samples on your computer first, and then importing them into the MPC. I hope I explained it well enough. If you need further clarification, please post in the comments.