Most people tend to think that the noise and scratches of vinyl is an artifact and that a good, high-quality recording has to have absolutely nothing but purity. Oh just how sadly mistaken they are. But that’s not the point.

    Luckily, there exists another kind of people – those who understand that the true sound is in the vinyl. Not only do they realize that, but they have also created a device to turn any digital recording into a vinyl one. This device is called Final Scratch, and is oriented for DJs – not the DJs that sit their asses off in the warm radio station offices, but for authentic ones, club residents, who spin from dusk till dawn with the hope that one day they would do it with same ease as Paul Van Dyk or Sandra Collins.

    As you can see, Final Scratch is a round box that gets connected to two turntables and a computer via USB. Two vinyls are put on turntables – but instead of music, the vinyls contain special code, which lets the device know which way and with what speed the turntables are spinning. Sound card is not required since all the processing is done via the USB interface.

    After everything is connected, DJ has an ability to control the digital sound stream as if it was recorded onto vinyl – plus all the advantages of a personal computer. You can stream the beat down one channel and assign an MP3 track to each turntable. For the realism of the sound, Final Scratch can enrich the sound by adding what was mentioned in the beginning of this article – the vinyl noise. If you wish, the system can be shut down and real vinyls can be put in place of the special ones – in this case you wont have to alter any wiring.

    The most interesting thing about this is that Final Scratch runs only under Linux and half-dead BeOS. In close future a MacOS version is scheduled to come out. No Windows versions whatsoever! The whole kit and caboodle will set you back $2300.