For those that avoid acronyms like Perez Hilton’s blog, DVS stands for Digital Vinyl System. Aka Final Scratch, Serato Scratch, Traktor Scratch, Butt Scratch, Back Scratch and anything else that ends in Scratch that may interface with a computer. Mr. Kirn of CDM has unearthed this very interesting story about our friends at NI who apparently settled a law suit in favor of the reported owners of one type of digital scratch technology. Wait a moment, I thought Riz invented that? Well apparently not according to this article in Create Digital Music:
Native Instruments acknowledges the validity of patents held by N2IT, and has now fully licensed their usage worldwide for its TRAKTOR SCRATCH digital DJ system and related products.
The patents held by N2IT relate to general principles of digital music playback using time-code records, which are being utilized in TRAKTOR SCRATCH as well as in other manufacturers’ digital DJ systems with time-code control
In response to the question posed by the subject of this article, the answer appears to be a team behind the original Final Scratch. They later joined forces up with Stanton who supplied the hardware and then NI which delivered the software side of the Final Scratch 1.1 release. Its that relationship that has apparently gotten Native Instruments into hot water, as they have been accused of using insider information to build their own DVS platform after they parted ways with Stanton in 2006. What does this mean for the other DVS manufactures? Well, it certainly appears they may be infringing on the original patent but it remains to be seen if the patent holders will go after these other companies as well. Midi controllers might start looking a lot more attractive to the big boys in the near future, good news for Dj Tech Tools.
Dream on Mr Diggs
“James Russell” is the name of the inventor of the CD in 1965. I would like to see this 1996 paper too as I’m not completely convinced it exists.
the user Steve West is the founder of serato. He, along with James Russell made the original time-encoded vinyl system along with the software component at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I would like to see this paper as I have searched and was unable to find it.
[quote comment="5664"]
The basic DVS idea is not even that new. I have a copy of a paper published in 1996 by James Russell on using vinyl to control digital audio playback. It thoroughly explores the pros and cons of the different approaches to tracking vinyl movement, eg optical sensor with striped vinyl, magnetic pickup, sitting a "wheel" on the vinyl, and of course a quadrature tone pressed onto vinyl. He even built a prototype and did a public DJ mixing demonstration with it that year.[/quote]
Steve, we are you from? I'm a history collector (as a good freak) and I'm very interested on this paper.
Could you share any more info?
Thanks.
David
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Very Interesting, thanks for that background Steve. if anyone is an expert about DVS it should be you!
The basic DVS idea is not even that new. I have a copy of a paper published in 1996 by James Russell on using vinyl to control digital audio playback. It thoroughly explores the pros and cons of the different approaches to tracking vinyl movement, eg optical sensor with striped vinyl, magnetic pickup, sitting a "wheel" on the vinyl, and of course a quadrature tone pressed onto vinyl. He even built a prototype and did a public DJ mixing demonstration with it that year.
I have seen the first version run on BeOs at a camp of the ChaosComputerClub in 1999…and the guy woh programmed it was dutch…so I suppose that was N2IT
The N2IT FS beta kits came with the Sony VAIO laptop and ran on BeOS, and the scratch amp wasn't the UFO/Hockey Puck we all know today.
i will have to check that out. always interested in how this stuff begins.
<blockquote cite="#comment-4643">skratchworx dropped this story a couple of days ago…check it for a little more info.
Just noticed it now, technically CDM got the story out first. They wrote it on the 28th, when we wrote our article as well after seeing the CDM post. But since we publish on Mon and wed it got posted on the 30th. There is a lot of interesting info about the history of DVS in the original CDM post.
I had the first available version of N2IT's Final Scratch- Simple and brilliant for it's time. Itran on a stripped Debian Kernal and ony supported a very limited number of laptops. (At first, optimized for and only officially supported on the Sony VAIO.) There were two seperate applications, one for live performance and one for organizing you music collection and playlists (Crates). No bells or whistles, just straight up vinyl emulation and rock solid for a 1.0 version of a brand new concept. Drive partitioning and dealing with the Linux install was difficult at best for the average consumer- I think it alone prevented the concept from catching on for quite some time. After every gig I played with it for the 1st year I had a small crowd that would stay after the club had closed asking questions and wanting a demo of how DVS worked. Stanton's first version followed by NI 1st attempt at a windows version were disasters by comparison to N2ITs. I ended up always going back to my original install for live performance until the 3rd maintenance release of NI FS1.5. Provided you got the system up and running with your hardware- it never failed. In my book N2IT gets all the credit for breaking ground this market.
RZA had NOTHING to do with the invention of DVS. If you look at the patent for the thing he's talking about, you can see that it's more akin to the Tascam TTM1 (except it's optical). That and he only says he INVESTED in it (after following the bullsh*t rainbow to the DVS leprechaun at it's end).
Cocaine is a helluva drug…
heres the link lol this dood is either been smoking to much crack, or hes telling the truth
http://crrrg.com/rza-invented-final-scratch/
lol i read that article on how rza invented this technology
my money's still on RZA.
“Midi controllers might start looking a lot more attractive to the big boys in the near future, good news for Dj Tech Tools.” That music to my ears, pardon the pun.