Sunday, October 23, 2016

Beatcroft Social, 22 October - Mixcloud audio & Facebook Live with video

Here's last night's very slightly slicker analogue-meets-digital collision - no Spotify playlist as much of the material was played from vinyl album and cassette.

Still up on Facebook if you scroll down my timeline: here.

For the interest of anyone, ah, interested, the tape deck is an old Sony Walkman Pro portable, the legendary WM-D6C which is built solidly from metal and was standard issue to broadcast hacks at the BBC. I took one around South Africa on a motorbike and also used one for the radio series Hell's Golfer, riding around Scotland on a Kawasaki Z650 with a set of golf clubs. It is reputed to be the equal of top-end Nakamichi hi-fi decks in terms of sound and good used ones can sell on eBay for up to £500.

The record deck is brand new - an Audio Technica ATLP120USB USB turntable. Don't know what the cartridge is but it's a professional one you can reverse/backtrack for cueing up the track. Something I admit to never having done until now. When I was playing in my own tracks on the afternoon Tom Morton Show, it was all CDs and Minidiscs.

The software being used (last night for the first time) for playing out digital material is Algoriddim's DJay Pro running on a Mac Mini, which is really, really good - you can create playlists from any digital source including iTunes and Spotify. It is far, far better (at least for me, in terms of ease of use) than the playout system used at the BBC.

All of this runs through a host of digital gubbins I don't understand, masterminded by Andy Steven, Iain Waddell and Bo Anderson, who are the three folk you see in the background on the studio webcam.

Next week's show is pre-recorded so WON'T go out on Facebook Live - it will be available at 60north.com.

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