"decks"

[Dave Beep]

Twice in the last 48 hours I have seen somebody calling a MIDI DJ Controller as "decks" (once on this forum, and a chap I was talking to at a gig last night).

Is this a common term now? Decks too me must mean turntables or CD players. A controller is just one thing, "decks" is plural. If they called it a "deck" then it would be more logical.

Not that it matters... but if we fastforward a couple of years will this be the common term for controllers?

[Rek_Aviles]

I'm sure someone made the same argument when CDJs started becoming the standard
Times are changing and that word is now synonymous with anything that loads and controls the audio file, least in the DJ world. Just look Traktor software - they label all the modules as "deck".


wait.. your issue was more about the plural of the word. A controller is usually split to control 2 "decks" if not more, so decks makes more sense but you're still just using 1 device. I say just get used to it. If not already, it will be the common term for controllers.

[light-o-matic]

If you search for photos of vintage radio stations and recording studios, you will see that the turntables were not portable tabletop units, not at all. They were mounted in the sturdy top surface of the top of a metal cabinet. And tape recorders much the same. The top surface is the deck.. so you had you tape deck, your record deck...

I was not alive then, but I got interested and searched a bunch of years ago and this is the best info I have found on the subject. Before I searched, I kind of assumed that the whole "deck" thing came from baseball.. because your next batter is "on deck" and so is your next record.... But I haven't found any references to that. And also, it makes no sense for tapes because generally radio stations did not DJ from tapes in the early days. Later on some stations would DJ from Broadcast Carts but that's different....