VCI-100...is now HD!

eeloe

http://www.djtechtools.com/2010/09/19/brand-new-vci-100-firmware-1-4-hd-updat/#more-7984

Excellent.....no need to upgrade now!

Zascar

Interesting, but is it actually worth upgrading do you think?

eeloe

Well to be honest, i got a loan of the firmware kit earlier this year off Milltown(sorry about the delay in getting it back to you) and i jumped from 1.2-1.3 and i say a massive boost in performance!

The main thing that pissed me off was the pitch sliders, 0.04 was the smallest movement you could make, which always led to the odd pitch shift(rubbing the jog wheel from left to right) to keep the beats in time(this info is useless to the sync button users) and the jog wheels not being highly responsive when doing little crab scratches and stuff.

At the higher resolution the pitch movement can be as fine as .0014, which is pretty damn impressive(finer than a cdj1000 if memory serves me) and the jog wheels are of a similar resolution.

I'd love to ask milltown again could i borrow his adaptor kit again, but i think i'll just invest the few dollars and buy my own to do it!

I'm definately going to do it once i have some money put on my creditcard to buy the kit!

milltown

Good stuff!

I was just sitting down to start messing with some tunes and checked in here on the desktop while the laptop was booting up and saw this. I think I'll update the f/w now instead. Sadly, I probably don't get enough time on my VCI to give a proper, objective opinion on the improvements but I will let you know about the pitch improvements.

Once I've mine done, the updater doohickey is available for loan to any of the regulars again, including lazy Lee

eeloe

Ah...Mr town, you really are a legend!

Oh, OF TOPIC: Attn: Milltown, that charity, raised over 11grand for crumlin hospital

milltown

That's great work Lee. Bualadh bos to all involved, the hospital do unbelievable work.

Well I got this updated earlier so my offer stands.
Gave it about half an hour of a workout with a couple of new tracks that I haven't beatgridded yet and didn't touch the synch button once. Pitch control is definitely a great improvement. When time allows I'll try a bit of (ham-fisted) scratching but my suspicion is that it's the audio latency, not the resolution of the encoders, that is the big problem with scratching on a midi controller. Although there are plenty of youtube vids that would seem to suggest good results were already possible.

Somewhat off-topic, and I'm tempted to post this in one of the other threads, the finer pitch control and ability to beat match manually was a bit of a buzz for the first 5 or 10 minutes. Then it occurred to me that it's not at all difficult once the equipment is decent. It's always the first argument from the luddites in the vinyl/CD vs. MIDI debates that pop up on a weekly basis but it's a load of balls really. I started with a pair of belt drive decks and although I could beat match well enough I couldn't ride a mix for more than 20 seconds or so without needing to give one of the records a nudge. I presumed it was down to me. A few years after I had to sell my turntables a mate gave me a lend of his 1210s. I dug out my old records and had a ball but in spite of the few years off I was a mixing GOD! Once I had the beats matched I could nearly go and make a cup of tea and not worry about coming back to a "shoes in the tumble dryer" racket.

Maybe it's like a badge of honour to some people. Maybe it's snobbery, or a clique thing. I don't know. What I do know (what I've re-learnt today) is that it's not that big a deal and is one of the easiest parts of mixing to learn. If somebody can get the tune selection right and get the mix to flow then that's a hell of a lot more important than what equipment they used, or whether they pressed a button or pitched and nudged to get the beats matched.

eeloe

Nice one Milltown! any chance i could jump in-line first to get the firmware kit back off ya again?