Grant Matthews
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I’ll jump in with my experiences as I got to use mine for the first time in public this weekend.
I have to say I loved it, and all the ‘issues’ that have been highlighted, I can see where they are coming from, but non of the con’s are deal breakers, and the things this controller brings to the party, far out weigh it’s negatives.
Personally I have been DJing a long time (15 years professionally) and I have always (until recently) been a modular guy- starting with turntables then CDJ’s and always with a mixer. I have always seen controllers as expensive for what they are, because I though they were essentially a big dedicated ‘keyboard’ for DJ software. and when you stick the price of a decent laptop into the bundle, suddenly they aren’t he bargain they once were compared to CDJ’s.
But when I saw the MCX8000, it dawned on me that playing on this with a usb stick, is essentially no different to using a usb stick in a linked CDJ (I am starting to struggle to see the actual relevance of the CD slot in CDJ’s nowadays as when was the last time you bought a CD?), but being a mobile guy these days, speed of setup/takedown is quite a consideration for me, and this is where the MCX outshines CDJ setups and regular controller setups. When I was setting up lights/laptop etc, I just plugged in a usb stick for background/early doors music, and when taking stuff down I did the same while laptop, lights and venue dressing was being packed away
The mirrored design, is (and I’ll echo comments here) not one I would personally choose- again coming from CDJ’s, but is something that really took no time to get used to. The biggest gripe I had was about the cue lights being too bright when not switched on, and hopefully this can be changed in a firmware update, but coming from my old DJM600, which had red led lights to indicate cue’d channels, I was always leaving the wrong channel cue on from my previous mix but I would find it fairly quickly when i had my headphones on, but with this I found I had a similar experience, but I would use my ears to make sure the cue was on the right channel- not a major problem, and hopefully an easy fix for Denon, but it really wasn’t too big a problem. But having the screens, which display what is playing or cued on that channel makes the unit soon much more usable than a regular controller- I felt very comfortable cueing up 3 channels while one was playing and I could choose the next channel on a moments notice, without having to refer to the laptop screen.
I think the platters are really well weighted and felt great for pitch bending or cueing up, but for scratching, whilst I’m sure with practice they will work I’ll stick to my regular turntables, generally I don’t do that much scratch sets, and this is the only advantage I can see a DDJ SZ has, but the price difference is eye watering.
I also think the unit looks great, even my wife, and venue manager commented on it being appearing to be a serious piece of kit and how good it looks (I think the size and screens alone stops it looking like a toy), and whilst I do think it’s a bit crazy, it does matter to clients if you turn up with something that looks toyish, and whilst it may not carry the pioneer name, that matters more to other DJ’s- I think most of the general public hold the Denon name in quite a high regard (although I know DenonDJ and Denon are separate)
I also found that my laptop (2015 13″ MBP) had no issues with CPU usage, it appeared no different to my SL2 box setup (I have heard the screens could lead to USB data or CPU problems- I did not find this at all. I found the sound quality excellent and can’t wait to use it again.
One thing I have noticed- not sure if anyone else has, but the price has gone up £50 since release- does anyone know why?
Hope this helps
