|
CDJ-2000's... First impressions (mini-review)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Ryan0751 |
Build quality:
Taking these out of the box, I definitely noticed right away that they feel more sturdy than the 1000's. They are still mostly plastic of course, but everything feels a bit more solid. The screen is excellent, very bright and easy to read with a decent resolution. The LED lights around the platter are cool, and the players all around are well laid out and look great.
The platter is the familiar CDJ platter, with a nice range of tension using the adjustment knob.
User interface:
Anyone who has used a CDJ-1000 will be able to jump right on these without even opening the manual (though you should read it, there are some intricacies as with any device). Playing off a USB stick is dead easy... plug in your USB stick, hit the USB button. On the other play, hit link, select USB and the tracks show up on both decks. Simple.
Rekordbox:
Very simple software to use. It will bridge with your iTunes library, you just setup playlists and such and export them to your USB mass storage device. The interface is laid out very much like the CDJ itself for setting the cue and loop points. One thing I found very neat is that for each storage device, you can setup a variety of preferences such as the background color, what fields are displayed on the screen (key, bpm, etc.)
Soundcard/MIDI:
Once I connected the 2000's up to my Macbook Pro, they immediately showed up as CoreAudio compliant sound cards, as well as MIDI devices. I created an aggregate device in OS X and it worked out fine.
Traktor Pro HID:
My next experiment was to try out the native HID support introduced with the latest Traktor (1.2.3). Now it seems a little silly to use a $1500 deck to control software, but I must say it works amazingly well. And since I like to use Traktor Scratch with my 1210's, it's nice to have the option to work in both environments.
Basically I upgraded my Traktor to 1.2.3, plugged the CDJ's in. You hit the USB button, then the player asks you to select which Traktor deck you want it to control (A, B, C, D). That's it. I didn't have to change any options in Traktor itself (I am still using my Audio 8 for the sound output).
From there the platter illuminates red, and things are automatically mapped out nicely. The hot cue buttons control Traktors cue points, and the looping works as expected. The display shows the current track playing as well as the time, tempo and BPM. It's not quite as nice as the regular display when playing off USB, but you have your big laptop display for looking at artwork and such.
The main selector knob allows you to select your tracks in Traktor and load them onto the deck. It's a very slick workflow...
Caveats/Issues:
Rekordbox still has a sort of incomplete feel to it, though this will undoubtable be corrected by Pioneer in the future. I couldn't get it to read my iTunes library off an external drive, and copying files directly to the deck from the software isn't supported yet.
While playing on Faderwave last night, my friend joined me on the decks. We plugged in his USB drive, but we couldn't get it to load properly. After a few more tries it randomly started to work. A new firmware update was just released yesterday (2.02), which apparently fixes issues with the link functionality. Hopefully I won't see this again.
Summary:
Even after watching all the videos and such, they don't do these CDJ's justice. They are definitely worth a hard look if you can pony up the large sum of cash required to buy them :)
 |
|
|
| Polt |
Sounds like they're a step in the right direction, even with the few flaws.
Awesome setup BTW. |
|
|
| n3lly |
I have to say Ryan your setup really is starting to look a little dated.
Especially with those 2000's sitting there now.
:p
Cheers for the review. Interesting read. |
|
|
|
|
