Ravin’ with Intimidation Touch DVS2
By Paul Dakeyne
| Posted in DJ
Rounding off a Christmas week of Digital DJ chatter from yours truly, today I’m bringing a heads up on a product from that arena that’s really caught the imagination of some renowned rave, hardcore, drum ‘n bass and breaks DJ’s. Intimidation Touch DVS is now available in its version 2 incarnation, featuring a significantly improved GUI and some much improved features.
This classic combo of DJ mix software, hardware interface and time-coded vinyl/CD control certainly slipped under my radar but having checked out its almost understated power, capability and computer compatibility strengths, I would have liked to being on this from version 1.
There’s no snobbery about what computer system you have from Touch DVS, happily playing with most Windows based OS’s (yes, even ’7′) and not ignoring Mac users on older G4′s right up to those lucky Snow Leopard’ers. The software installation and hardware setup is beyond simplicity itself, almost like Touch DVS is saying “look, let’s just play some tunes, right!”
So the fun starts as the user enters the totally re-written, new and gloriously straightforward GUI. The system can be set up with two or four decks and configured to support an external DJ mixer or a virtual version. For those with only 1 deck (vinyl or CD) in their home studio set-up, the software can also use just this single unit to address any or all of the virtual decks- which is pretty darn useful if you think about it.
When at the hands of a real scratch DJ, Touch DVS2‘s software and hardware work at incredibly fast and sensitive levels which really translate the cuts and phrases accurately. Mixes can be ‘sync’ locked or left ‘old skool’ and un-touched, loops are quick and easy to set up, trigger and change note lengths and an array of bpm sync’d onboard effects add that final gloss to the performance. And on the subject of effects, Touch also can utilise any VSTi’s or AU plug-in fx present on the users computer – the bonuses just keep comin’ eh?
The return to popularity of the term and promotional tool that is the ‘mixtape’ is recognised by Intimidation with their inclusion of a ‘mix record’ feature. A DJ can record his set from top to bottom straight to an audio drive at full .wav format for review later on, or editing and encoding to MP3 for social media promo networking.
One of the UK’s most renowned old school DJ’s, often credited as the ‘Godfather of Rave’, is DJ Slipmatt. An avid user and supporter of the Touch DVS system, Slipmatt can be seen on the You Tube video below showing the ease of set-up and usage of ‘Touch’ and here at ‘Musical Notes’, we’re hoping to post up an interview with this deck wizard and total legend very soon. Keep your eyes (and RSS feeds) peeled and at the ready for that – Not ‘arf!
Tags: digital DJ, Intimidation, Slipmatt, Touch DVS2