DJ’ing is an expensive hobby.

The industry-standard 1200′s are a $400 investment and vinyl can be prohibitively expensive and inconvenient. CDJ’s, nevertheless being a source of free music, can cost upwards of $1000 and are the equivalent of choosing an automatic over a manual transmission in a sports car. A recent alternative is a Final Scratch/Serato Scratch Live system to allow you to incorporate a laptop into your setup, providing the complexity favored by Sasha while retaining the coolness of vinyl. While many may have an adequate laptop, finding an additional $500 to upgrade your vinyl isn’t always easy. After all, there is a limit to the amount of fluids you can legally sell per day.

A Serato Scratch Live setup will cost you around $480. The latest Final Scratch weighs in at $100 less on a good day. Final Scratch 1.0, which many purists prefer for its Linux-based software, can be had for less than $200. However, a Behringer BCD2000 can be had on eBay for only $100.

There is no sense in paying twice or three times as much for a USB sound card which does not offer a fraction of the functionality of the BCD2000. The BCD2000 is not only a USB sound card (channels: 2 input, 1 output, 1 headphone, 1 microphone,) but also a mixer and a MIDI controller. By itself, the BCD2000 is a powerful tool for use with Traktor, Ableton Live, or other software of your choice. Remember to add two $10 Serato Scratch Live vinyls and $50 for a license for the unpirateable djDecks software. Rounding upwards to include shipping, you have a powerful digital vinyl setup for $200 that puts the competition to shame.

Other reviews of the BCD2000 will tell you that its plastic build and light weight may be discouraging. It does feel like a quality-made product, but it is not particularly sturdy. Though it will accept being carted from a mate’s tag session to the occasional house party and back to your studio, it is not a DJM-600 and it should not be treated like one. The crossfader has little weight behind it and should not be slammed. It is often hard to tell when the knobs are zeroed, as there is only a slight click at zero and they are a plain plastic black with no highlights in the middle of the knob. These nitpicks are nullified by the laptop you will be using for track selection, as it will be displaying your equalizer as well. It is possible to connect any analog mixer to the BCD2000 so you can play rough, though you will have to creatively route the left channel to the master output and the right channel to the headphone output before inputting them into your analog mixer. Keep in mind that this will limit your desk real estate and increase cabling entanglement.

The aforementioned djDecks software is excellent. It allows MP3 transcoding using Final Scratch, MsPinky, VirtualDJ, Serato Scratch Live and Traktor Scratch records. All the features of the Serato software are available, plus much more: 3-band equalizer, echos and loops, and 2 simultaneous VST effects per deck. The BCD2000 has enough spare buttons to properly control the djDecks software without touching your laptop. Buttons can be assigned to control a simultaneous session of Ableton Live or Traktor, though I’d recommend a hefty laptop with a 2 ghz CPU and 1 gig of RAM.

Recent updates have made the software essentially bulletproof. Install Windows, install BCD2000 drivers, install djDecks, play. The BCD2000 drivers have a history of instability on lower-end laptops, which may require disabling the WiFi card, DVD drive, and further tweaking.  Behringer may not be best known for the quality and reliability of their entry-level analog mixers, but this product has been out for over a year and is considered solid, as is the rest of their BCD line.

The BCD3000 is now available, though it is essentially a Mac-friendly BCD2000 in an oreo color scheme and not worth paying twice as much.