Itching for a VCi-300?

Written by Ean Golden on June 18th, 2008 32 Comments

Perhaps you decided to hold off buying a new controller in hopes of waiting for the Vestax VCI-300? While not exactly a “better” controller than the VCI-100 it did have a few specific upgrades that could mean big performance gains. Namely, high resolution faders and jog wheels. Well, sorry to be the first bearer of bad news but you should not wait around any longer.

When we asked Vestax about using the vci-300 as a standard MIDI controller after NAMM they were strangely evasive in their official answer: “yes- it will be a standard midi device but it is only officially supported with Itch”. It sounded promising but all things, like the weather, change with time.

The Current Situation:

Sure all of the controls are sending out midi data but there is not a single dj program out there other than Itch that can support the kind of midi data the vci is sending from the pitch faders and jog wheels. The high resolution dual messages cause 2 distinct problems for anyone that may try and use the vci-300 with any of the standard dj programs.

1) They are sending multiple messages which can be impossible to assign if midi learn is your only tool.

2) the data is in a format that does not fit within any of the standards presently used by software manufactures to express things like scratching, pitch bending and fading.

Well how does it work?

Really damn good- with Itch. The software/hardware integration is spot on and these new high resolution controls really make a big difference in those crucial fine tuning areas. For a full review you will have to wait on my article in Remix Magazine but I felt it important to fill you in on the the details of the midi controller in case you might be holding out for one.

The Inside Scoop

Today Dj Tech Tools spoke with Charles Ono at Vestax Japan about their plans to make this new product available to users of other software. He confirmed that the vci-300 is an Itch only product at this point but mentioned “He may have something special up his sleeve” in a few months. What that means exactly is up to interpretation but for the foreseeable future I would not plan on using the 300 with anything other than Itch.

Problem Fixed

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Filed Under | DJ Controllers, Editorials and Opinions, VCI-300 Articles
Tags | itch, News, VCI-300 Articles

DC

Wow, thanx for the heads up… Looks like I will be holding off for now. I'll check the review in Remix Magazine.
earwax

i am very interested in the vci-300. i am using ssl and would probably like itch cause i am just playing at home now. the hard part is that new stuff is coming out so frequently that it makes it hard to commit. if it were up to me, i would have the vci-100 with native support of ssl…that would be awesome. otherwise, i am just going to be patient and see how this all plays out. too many kewl things to get and not enough time and money to deal with it all.
sgb

From what I've heard/read, Deckadance 1.3 release candidate 1 added 14-bit MIDI support. Like nem0nic has said, its a constant chicken and egg problem, but I'm glad to see that the movement to 14 bit MIDI data has begun.
sgb

From what I've heard/read, Deckadance 1.3 release candidate 1 added 14-bit MIDI support. Like nem0nic has said, its a constant chicken and egg problem, but I'm glad to see that the movement to 14 bit MIDI data has begun.
lewdelesion

Thanks for the info Ean. I was really interested in the 300 during February and March, but I became impatient, so I went for the 100. This article just make me feel all the better for that decision.
Darcy

I can't wait for Itch…This is exactly the combo I was waiting for!!!
http://tosmts.spaces.live.com DJ ToS

Traktor-specific: Traktor supports OSC. I woder what is the resolution of OSC CC values (surely not as MIDI). It is possible to write a simple "proxy" that converts HighRes MIDI in OSC. It may even be done in Max/msp or CPS as a proof concept.
http://www.thebeatworx.com TheBeatWorx

That's really disappointing… But unfortunately, that has been the track record for the VCI controller support hasn't it? (i.e. Vestax hasn't shown support to fix the jog wheels on the VCI 100 and they now abandon all other software with this upgrade?)

What is up their sleeve?

I can just see it now…

The Vestax VCI-3000!!! Hi Res Universal Controller that supports all software and OS types with upgradable (and downloadable!) firmware to accomodate future MIDI standards…

But like with everything else, there will be a major caveat…

…Like the device will only work on the third Wednesday of every month between the hours of 2:30 and 3:45 pm. :P
groovemixer

glad i didnt wait and bought my denon 5500 and korg zero 4. now i can mix the night away!!!!
tobamai

What kind of "high resolution midi"? There's already 14-bit midi, and if the software is written poorly it might recognize that as two different midi cc's.

Shouldn't be too much trouble to run this through a script to get useable midi in another application (although, lower resolution).
lofi

what wasn’t said is if it was truly written for 14 bit midi or was it a totally different set of instructions all together. it may have been designed only for whatever language the itch is using. easy to adapt, but what would you gain? definately not functionality.
http://tos.network.in.rs DJ ToS

Does nothing else support OSC?! Why loosing resolution, maybe loosing resolution of faders but not for jog wheels, jogs, can benefit from any resolution. When you say "high res. jog wheel" it means that for the same angle (comaperd to "normal jog") this one outputs more messages.

Those MIDI messages are still INC. or DEC. so there is no change. Totaly another story is with CC messages, or pots/faders, that midi has to be filtered or something.

(What?! I had to write someting in order to update cookie with a new homepage url.)
http://oxygenkiosk.com/clients/djtechtools/?p=525 VCI-300 Fix = HELLYEAH! IT WORKS!

[...] week we reported in this article that the VCI-300 would not be working with programs other than Itch. Good news, it didn’t [...]
GILS!

So when is exactly i can buy the final product..and do you have any idea when it will reach asian market(i'm staying in malaysia)
http://freemusic.org.il Tomer Vered

[quote comment=""][...] week we reported in this article that the VCI-300 would not be working with programs other than Itch. Good news, it didn’t [...][/quote]

Hellow,
My name is Tomer and i’m a d.j from ISRAEL.
I’ll be glad if you could send me the link so i could use the VCI 300 to controll my TRACTOR.
Thanks for all,
Tomer.
yuriy

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sergio

hey guys i need some help
I have a vci-300 i’m a beginner DJ and i got called to play at a club. The club has pioneers mk3, i was wondering is it possible for me to connect my vci-300 with the djm800 like in one of the 4 chanels? Do you know if it works?
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[...] the anticipated mini.Translator program and its first patch which allows the VCI-300 to work with programs other than Serato Itch. Even after converting to midi we were able to keep the jog wheels and pitch faders high resolution [...]
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[...] by Ean Golden on June 25th, 2008 48 Comments Last week we reported in this article that the VCI-300 would not be working with programs other than Itch. Good news, it didn’t [...]
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