- Today, I have a first
look review for you
of the new second generation
of Prime Pro Media Players
and Mixer from Denon DJ.
Now I'm here in the Denon DJ,
demonstration rooms, headquarters
so this is not our full
review of these units,
this is after an hour of
messing around with them
and looking firsthand at the differences
because of course you
need to see these things.
to really start seeing what's changed.
So if you're thinking of buying
the new Denon DJ units as
opposed to the older ones,
this will hopefully help
you make that decision
of course, the older ones
a little bit cheaper now.
But also, if you're new to this system
I'll give you a brief overview of it.
I'm not gonna do a full talk through
of everything that's going on here
because we've done a reasonably good job
of that on our X1800 review and
our SC5000 and 5000M reviews
so you can go and look at those
as a bit of background material
if you are completely new to this system.
We're gonna concentrate on what's changed.
So let's start off by
looking at the players.
So we've got both of the new players here.
This is the SC6000M, the motorized version
which is signified by the big M here
and this is the standard
if you like, version.
There's slight price
difference between these two
but really, which one you go for
is going to be depending
upon your DJ style of course.
So what are the big
things that have changed?
Well the first big thing that's changed,
is of course this screen.
I mean you look at both of these players
and we've got an old battle-weary,
three years on still
going strong, SC5000 here.
You can see the difference in screen.
It's exactly the difference between
an iPad mini and an iPad.
So you've got this huge change
in screen real estate there
which is really nice.
Now, a couple of the things
that they've done on this
in order to make use of
that are well clearly,
it's bigger anyway right?
So you've just got more room.
But if you pick over to your library
and then click the button at the top,
you get a choice of the
old view but just bigger.
Great for lazy eyes or older eyes.
But if you are someone
who would rather have more
of your tracks showing
because one of the big things
about DJing without a laptop of course is,
on a laptop you get to see
a lot more of your playlists
on the bigger screens that laptops have.
Well, you can do that as well.
So we look in there, a view
where you're seeing 10 tracks
instead of six or seven which you see
when it's set up that way.
So that choice is yours.
One thing I would like to see,
is more use of this screen real estate
because apart from that switch
into seeing more of your library,
they haven't really added too much else
that you couldn't do on the old screen
so it's just bigger.
So I would hope over time that,
as they upgrade the firmware,
they'll make more use
of the bigger screen.
We're used to apps kind of resizing
to make use of the real estate
on our iPhones and iPads.
Aren't we?
So to see more use made of that
would be good in the future.
All right, so the big
screens are really nice.
They're still..
Let's go on to this one.
You can still pinch and zoom
and it's glass, it's not plastic,
it doesn't kind of like
bend when you touch it.
So all that good stuff is
still there from the originals.
All right then,
so, as well as the
bigger 10.1 inch screens,
another thing that's immediately apparent
when you actually play with these things
is the changes or the
undoubted improvements
to the jog wheels.
So over here, the jog wheel
on the standard non-motorized version.
I'm now talking in a
little bit of detail now
about the field because of course,
jog wheels are very
very important to DJ's.
The feel of the old job wheel,
well, there was nothing wrong with it
and there is nothing wrong with it.
It feels like a big
version of the jog wheels
that you get on pretty much
all DJ controllers to date.
In other words,
it's smooth, very silent
and that's kind of it.
It's not really got much weight to it.
Not got much inertia or you
know when you clunk the door
and a really nice car, it's got weight
but it also feels quality.
There's none of that on here.
It's just kind of light.
Now on the new one,
(jog wheel playing)
it's different.
On the new one, it feels
like there's more weight to.
It's smoother and when you
add in the wheel adjust
which has been improved.
The wheel adjust is a bit
clunky on the old one,
the wheel adjust is a lot smoother here.
When you're adding that,
you really can set this
(jog wheel playing)
to how you want it.
And the best way of describing is,
it just feels like closing
an expensive car door
frankly, compared to this one,
that's the best analogy
I could come up with.
It's really nice.
Now while the jog wheel, while the whole,
it's the same size more or less.
The jog wheel itself, the
top surface is a lot bigger.
So you've got more to head for
when you're going into to control it
from the top surface there as well.
The central display hasn't changed,
it's the same information there.
One thing that has changed is that,
there's a bit more subtlety
on the LED ring around the outside.
So one bit of feedback from a lot of DJ's
on the old versions was that,
there was a lot of garishness
going on in the lights.
That's kind of been toned down a bit here
and while we're talking about that,
it's also visible on the buttons.
The buttons have been improved,
they're a bit more tactile
but the LEDs are just in a small area
as opposed to be in the whole light.
And also, the lighting on
all these individual buttons,
it's just the word and
it's not bleeding out
from the outside as well.
Again, it's subtle.
You'll notice that the
Chrome has gone here.
The whole thing just feels a
little bit more sophisticated,
a little bit more understated.
I mean these are small things
but that is something that's changed.
All right, so we've talked
about the jog wheel on this.
What about over here?
Well it's still really nice to use,
it's motorized jog wheel,
it's still,
(jog wheel playing)
It feels immediately like
you're using slipmats and vinyl
which is of course what
it's meant to feel like.
One thing that has changed is that,
hey, this comes off really easily now.
So there's no need to
grab your little allen key
to get this off, it's simple enough.
But also, when you click it back on
by pressing the little button there,
you can kind of choose
whether you have it very loose
or push it down a bit harder.
So you've got a bit control
over how that feels as well
which is a nice improvement
for scratch DJs here.
So just subtle improvements here on this
and again, the ring around the outside,
a little bit more understated
compared to how it was on the last one.
All right then,
so, we've covered what you can see.
What's changed that you can't see?
Well, to start with and a
really big change actually,
that nearly slipped under
the radar for me is that,
these have got a HDD
drive bay underneath them
which is like the Prime 4
but it hasn't been in
these players until now.
So that means that, you can
put a really massive hard drive
into one of your players.
Of course, you network them up,
and you don't need it in the other one
and have all your music
collection on them.
So for Mobile DJs and DJs that
maybe resident DJs in clubs
who play there every week and
the club has its own music,
look, you can have the
music built into the player
which is really cool.
So there's no need to
have USBs and SD cards.
If you are in that situation,
just have all your music on
the player which is awesome.
So that's the changes that you can see
and that you can't see underneath,
the new hard drive.
What about the changes in the
way it works with software?
Well this is constant evolution.
There is a new improved
CPU in these things
which means that, stuff
becomes more and more smooth,
it becomes faster.
For instance, plugging in
a library from rekordbox
worked on the old ones,
it works even more smoothly and
even quicker on the new ones
which means it'll analyze
for your cue points, for
your loops, your playlists,
they just all appear.
That's really cool.
You can plug this in
immediately to a laptop
with Serato not at launch
but very soon afterwards,
and it will just work
like one really big
expensive awesome controller
with Serato screens and all.
Right, so you've got that
compatibility as well.
It won't do that with
Traktor at the moment.
Hopefully, that could
be added in the future
and are presumably getting
that to work with rekordbox,
is a pipe dream for
obvious commercial reasons.
But you can plug it in with
the most popular software
that people are likely to want to plug in
namely, Scratch DJ's of course,
laptop software Serato, off you go.
Now, when it comes to
analyzing an Engine Prime,
it's a different story
and it's a good story
because Engine Prime software again,
talking to the guys from
Denon DJ here this weekend,
it's clear that software
is a really big focus
and there's a lot of work
going into Engine Prime.
You can plug in and import from Serato,
from Traktor and from ReKordbox
and of course, from iTunes
straight into Engine Prime,
output to a USB or an
SD and plug into these
and it will all work of course.
So, it's certainly getting there
with universality and with compatibility
not harmed in any way at all
by the improvements in the
CPUs inside these things.
So a solid piece of evolution,
if you're thinking about whether
to spend a little bit more
for these and they're not
actually hugely expensive
in the big scheme of things
compared to some rivals,
these are 1499 and 1699
for the motorized version in dollars.
If you're thinking of
whether to go for this
or to go for the no doubt,
slightly cheaper nowadays, 5000s
well, I think it's more a case of
how much are you gonna feel disadvantaged
having a smaller screen and
having the old-style jog wheels
which you feel lovely by the way.
It's probably a good idea
to just have a play with them
and see whether your budgets
gonna go to the newer ones.
Now I wanna move on and
talk about the Mixer.
This is the X1850
and frankly, it's a new-look
Mixer for that reason.
It's a new-look Mixer.
It looks nicer, subtle
between these two things.
These have had the subtle changes
to the way they look and
the way the lights work
and the way they feel and so has this.
They've got slightly more
visible EQs for instance,
so they're easy to throw your hand out
and hit first time
because of the white rings
underneath the bottom of them.
But really, it's a cosmetic thing.
But there are two changes I
wanna bring your attention to
which I think are really nice
and I think DJ's are gonna appreciate.
The first one is that,
the effects are now quantized.
So you can easily head into the settings
and say look, I don't want you to listen,
I don't want this mixer
to listen to the music
and work out the BPM and work from there,
I want you to take you from the beatgrids
and if you do that, then what you get
is the effects starting
bow on the one beat
when you kick them in
which is just nice and tight
and you can set the quantize level
inside the unit as well there.
So quantize effects is one
thing that they've added here.
Another thing that they've added here is,
a limiter on the overall
volume of the effect.
So if you've got an
effect kicking in there
that's really loud and it's
just pushing the volume
into the red and into the red,
it will limit it for you and
make sure it all sounds nice.
So, there's two new effects as well
and the new effects are
Echohold and Pumper.
Now, I'll be playing with these effects.
Let's have a little look at them.
So Echohold I'll try and
describe this one to you.
It's like a cross between
an echo and a loop roll.
In that it'll actually sample the length
that you want to echo, sample it
rather than just layer it
over the top of the track.
It's easy for me just to show you.
I will turn it on.
(music playing)
So, what you're hearing there
is the sample looping, right.
I can turn that off, there's my sample,
but how long it will carry on for,
the decay in other words is determined
by where you have the effects amount set.
(music playing)
It's hard to explain,
it's easy when you use it.
You could kind of work out
what's going on with it
and it's nice.
The nice new little effect.
And again, you've got the
ability to choose quarter beat,
half a beat, two beats or
whatever on how you use that.
The other one is Pumper.
This is like a sidechain
which is like a a live sidechain effect.
So again, easy for me just to show you.
(music playing)
So kind of like dips down on that one beat
and comes back in between
the peaks on the waveform.
Really nice for mixing.
Give you a bit of space when
you're mixing two tracks.
(music playing)
The producers used to using
sidechaining will like that.
So let me use these headphones
to show you another new
feature, which is track preview.
By hitting the (mumbles), you
can jump through the track.
(music playing)
I'll hold those near my microphone.
(music playing)
And here where you are in the track,
if you put the fader up by accident,
it stops immediately so the audience
is never gonna hear that.
One thing I wanted to show you
actually while we're
playing a bit of music is,
we've got a scratch track on here
and it's just a classic scratch set
that's got four or five,
it's got in fact eight
scratch samples here.
(music playing)
Look at the screen here.
(music playing)
You see how easy it is with DJ to see,
they're all labeled up and it's so big.
♪ Beat beat beat ♪
♪ Lets lets lets go ♪
♪ Wow wow wow ♪
- It's really nice
and I can see scratch
DJ's really loving that
because she basically got a
chunk for each of your samples
and you can just hit the cue point
and they're gonna trigger there.
On the old screen you had all that
but it was just small and it was like,
if you're me, you'd be like,
which one is it?
Now there's none of that.
You can kind of sit back
that's the one I'm going for.
(music playing)
So an advantage of the
bigger screen there.
Okay, I think we've covered everything
that I wanted to do on the first look,
that we have full review
coming of these units
of course when we've had time
to play with them properly.
Let's talk a little bit
about what this means.
This is now second generation
and second generation
means a lot of commitment
and a lot of R&D around these products
and so you can invest in this system now
knowing that there's going
to be a third generation
and a fourth generation
that this is part of a bigger roadmap
and I think that's one of the
more exciting things here.
We can see this developing
but at the same time,
we can also see that the older
stuff is part of the family
and it's not just this year's model,
the old ones obsolete now.
This is developing into a new ecosystem
of which these are the
latest incarnations.
All the screens gonna keep getting bigger?
Who knows, maybe we'll
have a 15 inch screen
on them in the future.
It certainly feels very very
nice having a big screen.
Life's all about screens nowadays right.
You get a new car
and the screens are
getting bigger and bigger
and then the phones are getting bigger.
Everyone likes to have big
interactive touchscreens.
It's the way the world's going
and to see them on DJ gear
of this size like this,
does feel quite revolutionary.
Everything else I'd say is evolution.
The jog wheels just feel nicer,
the overall feel is more streamlined
and more refined and
some of the garishness,
is probably the word,
of the the colors and the lights flashing
at you on the old stuff has
been toned down on these.
A little bit more
professional feeling overall.
So that's our first look
at the new Denon DJ X1850,
the SC6000 and the SC6000M now.
I've got it all out in the end.
Here, a Digital DJ tips.
If you've got any questions,
if you've got any feedback,
underneath it's a place to leave that
and we'll get back to you.
There's a full review of this over
on the Digital DJ tips website
so go and read what I've just
been talking about over there.
Meanwhile people, get good, get out there
and make the moments
and we'll see you again soon.
(upbeat music)
