#vci-300

[uniquesquared]

Numark Mixtrack Edge DJ controller

It is funny how trends in the DJ industry seem to reverse themselves – and it mirrors the rest of our culture as well.  For example, remember when web pages in the early 90’s were first being produced and created?  I remember that many liked to use ultra small fonts, which seemed so much more professional than the bubbly playful fonts that we marked most amateur webpages.  Ten years later, people got tired of having to squint their eyes in order to read the damn page.  So now, you are more likely to see web pages with huge lettering. This same ebb and flow is seen in equipment as well, especially in controllers.  On one side you have ultra small and portable controllers like the Vestax VCI series, but you also have some pretty huge controllers like the NS7.  Both have their purposes and are designed for a different audience in mind.  Numark has taken it one step further in an attempt to flatten an existing controller into something the width of an iPad.  While the form factor is nice, it may be difficult to play with flattened faders and buttons that are hardly raised from their surface. http://djworx.com/exclusive-musikmesse-2013-numark-mixtrack-edge-dj-controller/

[uniquesquared]

The Controller That Started It All

I recently talked about how the controller industry was given a push in the right direction.  Vestax had come out with the VCI-100, and this lead to massive speculation over the future of DJing and what it would look like in the next decade.  Well, it has been over seven years and we can rightfully say that controllers and controllerism is here to stay.  While we can credit Vestax for taking the bold leap and creating an instrument that few were willing to make – it would be wrong to talk about it without mentioning all the hackers, modders, and DJs who made it what it was. Before controllers were built for DJs, they were built for mother musicians, mostly in the form of a MIDI piano or a MIDI button pad.  Both of these had their uses, but were limited in terms of what the DJ actually needed to spin sets.  Once the VCI-100 made it into the hands of DJs, they began experimenting and modding the device to make it what they though it should have been like out of the factory.  Vestax is celebrating their controller along with all the people who made it into the competent device that started it all. http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2013/06/vestax-vci-100-the-controller-that-started-it-all/

[drpokoly]

I’m still waiting for the Serato team to release the VCI-300 update..to move from Itch to Serato DJ.  

DJ looks tasty…

[digitaldjtech-blog]

Vestax VCI-300 & VFX-1

[questionablesource-blog]

Where music is created, and often destroyed. 

[djsinclair]

Controller madness

Well Namm has certainly thrown up some fresh goodies for us all to revel at... Ive been most interested in the latest offerings from Pioneer and Numark. I was a bit surprised that Pioneers first venture into a dedicated controller for serato is a 2 channel mixer, I was pretty excited at first, but really, apart from the effects, it's not much of an upgrade from the VCI-300. Their traktor version is certainly more what I'm looking for, but with no vu meter for track volumes, and without a few of the other bells and whistles, even though it is a 4 channel mixer, doesn't fit the bill either.

Que Numark... I've never been a fan of Numark mixers, or any of their equipment to be honest, but they did do rather well with their NS7, lots of great features, but with motorized platters, and massive footprint, it didn't really catch my fancy. What has caught my eye is their latest digital dedicated controller, the NS6. From what I can see from the few videos, and reviews that are out, I'm reasonably impressed. Notably none of these new controllers say anything about midi, which says to me a real push away from the laborious task of assignment, which can go so horribly wrong.

I've been wanting a Serato itch controller with effects, ability to plug in other devices such as CD players, or another controller. Big on my hit list is having 4 itch decks, making sampling and layering much easier. It's also got 24bit processing, and balanced output, which I really like. Build quality, well, it's a controller that retails for 1000USD, so I guess you get what you pay for, but from what I can see it looks pretty good. I really like the strip search, the vci has a scroll button used in conjunction with the platter to skip thru tracks, but I usually end up using the trackpad.... 

In all it looks like this will be what I'll upgrade too, I'll be interested to see what the landed price of this will be in NZD, I suspect it will probably sit around 2k, but then, that's nearly what I paid for my VCI when it first came out....

This sector of DJing is certainly the most active, and I'm sure we haven't seen anything yet. My gut feeling is that Pioneer didn't want to show all it's cards, and has purposely held back on a lot of features they could have crammed into their controller offerings so that they don't take away too much focus on their core products professional products, the DJM2000, and CDJ2000's.