Vinyl mode of the Pioneer CDJ-800mk2

0:00 In this one we're going to be looking at something called vinyl mode

Alright folks, it's Jonathan here and a lot of people have asked me to demo this guy here which is the Pioneer CDJ-800M2. It would be impossible for me to demo this guy in just one video so I'm going to do a whole bunch of videos during the course of my other tutorials and my rather nutty videos over the next couple of weeks. In this one we're going to be looking at something called vinyl mode. Before I even touch the thing I'm going to give you a bit of history here. Right. Vinyl mode. I mean, what on earth does that mean? Okay, if we go back quite a considerable amount of years when the DJ started playing music so hopefully people would dance, all he or she had was basically vinyl. That was about it. Not even 12-inch singles. All he had was LPs and those small dinky things called 7-inch singles. Then we had cassettes. And then we had a breakthrough. Mid-80s we had CDs.

But even then, the CD players you could buy had start, stop, rewind, fast forward, track 1, 2, 3, 4. That was it. Nothing else. And then of course people realised, well why don't we bung a pitch control on them? So the original sort of CD players, not just Pioneer but in general, the original sort of CD player, what they had then, they had pitch bend, plus and minus, and they had a pitch control. That was it. Now, excuse me, hay fever, penalty eyes. Right, now then, what's happened is basically this. These guys here and the other CD players have got better and better over a period of time. Now then, the modern day DJ who uses CDs, really it's a nice way of giving them something from the old school. In other words, giving them the opportunity to be able to use vinyl, let's say because they can't afford to buy it or it's not readily available, but in a sense show them what it was like and also give them...

1:51 What's the first thing you'd do?

The choice of either being able to use the CD player as a CD player or use it almost like a real vinyl turntable. Now then, let's imagine now, right, yes this is a CD player, but let's imagine this is a vinyl turntable. Now what's the first thing you'd do? You'd put your record on there. This here now is the platter, okay? Platter's rather a lot bigger, alright? Now let's say, right, you get the needle, you put the needle on the platter. And what's the first thing you do? You need to find the beginning of that tune. So, you find the beginning and there it is. That's where it is. Now then, straight away, I hope you get the general idea here because that is exactly the same as say a vinyl turntable. In other words, headphones on and you're trying to find the beginning. That's the beginning. Now then, what this guy does is simply this. When you're doing that and you've got your finger there, if you press play

Off it goes. Let's cue it up and start it off again. So really, that is exactly the same principle as a vinyl turntable. And also, for turntablists, let's say you're into CDs and you've got some CD players and you like the idea of scratching. Well, the beauty about the vinyl mode is this. You get it ready and you can use it as a turntablist would, but with scratching.

3:35 You know, you imagine you're going to do 1, 2, 3, break

So, you know, you imagine you're going to do 1, 2, 3, break. You could really do 1, 2, 3, break. No difference, OK? Well, not much. The only difference, of course, is that you're actually touching a piece of vinyl as opposed to here where you're touching a metal disc. But to be quite honest, the actual sound is not dissimilar to a normal vinyl turntable. Now, on this guy here, there is, like I said, there's a button which says vinyl mode. Now then, you've got a dial here and the dial can either be set. Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor. To about, say, 11 o'clock. Now have a listen. Now did you hear a rip and an ooh? Basically there was not a pause, but it was almost as though the DJ was just, if it was vinyl, was just slowly creeping that vinyl forward and then slowly dragging it back before it just stopped perfectly. Now we're going to move that dial to about 1 o'clock. Let's have a listen. Alright, can you see now, much more of a slow start.

And much more of a slow finish. And then if we put it all the way to 5 o'clock, let's have a listen. And we'll stop it. Now that is near enough exactly what a lot of the modern day vinyl turntables will do. There's a few buttons on there and they will... So, pretty good piece of kit this. I mean, that is vinyl mode. A small insight into vinyl mode. I'm sure there's a few bits and pieces, extra things that it actually does. But I'm only just getting used to these guys as well. As I get used to them, hopefully I will tell you as well. But this is the Pioneer. It's a CDJ-800 Mark II. We're talking about here the vinyl mode with it. I hope you like the videos. Practice and enjoy!

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.