Russian DJ Artyom has built his own DJ audio hardware out of wood and electronics, complete with dual cassette playback boxes. The cassettes feature pitch control (fine and coarse), pitch bands, a motor off switch, and more, and he’s custom-built mixers, cross-faders, and EQ.
Then, he hooks these boxes up to his PC and relaxes — wait, no he doesn’t. His PC is packed with custom DJ patches built in Max/MSP.
Full hardware and software details at Artyom’s site, including downloadable Max patches, in English (see also Russian content — I’m sure someone out there speaks Russian):
Self-made DJ equipment
Max/MSP DJ Stuff
Via the rich electronic music blog, Filter27: How to DJ with an old cassette tapes
See also: KDE-Head photo on flickr with specs
Updated: Doh! Tom at Music thing beat me to this in 2005. Slight CDM lag there. 😉 Nonetheless, maybe somebody will have a look at those Max patches and get some new ideas.
Man, these lazy newbie DJs, embracing a new-fangled playback medium like cassettes and Max/MSP patches. They’re nowhere near as authentic as the oldskool DJs playing … erm … CDs … at weddings. 😉
Another gorgeous shot of his brilliant hardware-building work after the jump (so you don’t have to wait through glacial load times):
