You like cuttin' and scratchin'? Sick of your vinyl wearing out on the tables and warping in your hot car?

Use laserdisks instead of vinyl! These puppies pack 100% pure analogue grooves, read over by a laser. This makes them last longer than a needle running over vinyl. You can still do all your mixing on them too.

Laserdisks are also a more compact format than vinyl.
-- lawpoop, Aug 10 2003

CD DJ Mixer/Scratcher http://www.musicban.../Pioneercdj1000.htm
A similar concept, in digital. [tekym, Oct 04 2004]

For bristolz. DVD capacities: http://www.disctron...tro/dvd_formats.htm
[Amos Kito, Oct 04 2004, last modified Sep 18 2005]

Laser Turntable. Play vinyl records with no phonograph needle. http://www.elpj.com/main.html
If you're feeling really brave, check out the price of that puppy. [Amos Kito, Oct 04 2004, last modified Sep 18 2005]

You'll flip over the laserdisc! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisc
...halfway through the movie. [Amos Kito, Oct 04 2004, last modified Sep 08 2008]

Laser Disk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserdisk
Video track and (optionally) audio track are analog [spidermother, Jul 20 2006]

//Laserdisks are also a more compact format than vinyl.//

They are? I'm pretty sure the last one I saw was the same size, or maybe an inch or so smaller.
-- tekym, Aug 10 2003


[tekym] Laserdisks hold a whole movie; while vinyl records hold an album.

Compare CD storage (700MB) to DVD storage (~9GB).

So even though they are the same size, one holds vastly more data.
-- lawpoop, Aug 10 2003


I know all that; maybe I just misunderstood the purpose of your idea. I thought it was to keep DJs from having to buy new LPs all the time from scratching.

By the last sentence, I thought you meant actual, physical size, not data space efficiency. My mistake. Feel free to delete both of my annos.
-- tekym, Aug 10 2003


I prefer to keep them up.

But, my point was something a little more durable than vinyl, which is affected by heat and usage.

As I understand it, scratching is worse than playing, it's just all the usage which wears vinyl out.

So laserdisks would last longer. And no needle jumping.
-- lawpoop, Aug 10 2003


DVD's are 4.7GB per side, no?
-- bristolz, Aug 10 2003


Um... I don't know.
-- lawpoop, Aug 10 2003


About the whole size thing,

You can fit more songs on a laserdisk than a vinyl record. They're about the same size.
-- lawpoop, Aug 10 2003


How are you going to store analog data on a laserdisc?
-- DeathNinja, Aug 10 2003


DN, believe it or not, laserdiscs had analog tracks. I don't know if that was considered audiophile vinyl quality, but from what I've read, it wasn't. They had separate digital audio, too.
-- Amos Kito, Aug 10 2003


Interesting.
-- DeathNinja, Aug 11 2003


I thought laserdisks had the whole movie on an analogue track...?

Anyways, you can just make 'em with better quality analogue too.
-- lawpoop, Aug 11 2003


[fogfreak] The problem with digital turntable emulators is that if you try to slow down the song, you hear a bunch of digital distortion, because the digitization has thrown information away. The more you slow it down, the more you hear it.

So if you're doing beatmatching, unless the two beats are really close in the first place, it starts to suck. Esp. if you want to play something at like half speed.

Also, you can't really jump tracks that well. The CD turntables can store a set number of bookmarks, but that's it.
-- lawpoop, Aug 11 2003


this refers not to laserdiscs but to pre-LD videodiscs, which used not a laser but a needle which acted (along with the metal disc itself) as part of a capacitor, whose capacitance (changing with the _depth_ of the gap) carried the signal.
-- Random832, Aug 11 2003


Thanks, Random.

So is a laserdisk's information digital?
-- lawpoop, Aug 11 2003


Someone was telling me recently of some Japanese DJ's who had time-code recorded on vinyl, and 'scratched' this -> The time-code was detected, and used to vary the digital signal being played.
-- Dub, Sep 16 2005


//So is a laserdisk's information digital?// Most of it is analog, apparently (link). There are up to two CD quality equivalent digital audio tracks, but the remaining audio tracks (if present) and the video track are pulse-width modulated analog (which makes them discrete time but continuous value, as opposed to tape, which is (sort of) continuous time but discrete value).
-- spidermother, Jul 20 2006



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