I was so excited about the prime series last year that I pre-ordered a set of SC5000 and x1800. , I received my gear it looked great. I loaded up engine prime 1.0 and my initial regrets started to kick in. I was so in love with the hardware I convinced myself engine prime will eventually get better. I knew being an early adopter there would be issues but I was very optimistic for the Denon Staff cause I saw via social media how hard they were working to make the product better. In the past year I probably used my gear about a dozen times the way it was intended to be used. Hard drive only. I was able to use my gear for certain sets mainly house sets cause the software had no problem organizing and and analyzing anything from 120-130 BPM. But I found myself going back to Serato for my open format gigs cause the beatgridding capabilities on engine prime are pretty much useless. The beatgrid “function” is so bad it can actually bump up or down your tempo midway through your song if you try to adjust the beat grid.
In the past 6 months we been hearing rumors about an engine prime update coming soon and the forums have been flooded with Beatgridding issues. It’s a known issue, I thought for sure would be addressed with the new update.
June 18th arrives and I get and update “1.2 engine prime is here”. I watched the video with the product manager, jason and I was ready for the part where he gets into beatgriding and he briefly mentions Downbeat detection improvement .”the down Beat analyzed more accurately than ever before” this was the only mention of “beatgrid improvement” he even throws in the the fact that Denon knows how important this is to Dj’s! The mention of beatgrid was so quick , I thought for sure I missed something and watched the whole video again. But it’s been over a year now and they still can’t get it fixed.
Denon Staff, thanks for the updates on the database management side of the software. I appreciate the new features but can’t we get some of the original features fixed first! Although you added “better” downbeat analyzing, The beatgrid feature on engine prime flat out stinks. If the better downbeat detection cant correctly analyze a 100 BPM track, and we Dj’s Can’t manually Adjust it, then why call it a “Feature”
With that said it’s time to sell my gear. I stuck around for over a year and if it hasn’t been addressed by now, it won’t ever get resolved. I find myself using my prime set up with Serato cause I can’t rely on engine prime. No point in using a $6K setup when I can do the same thing with a $1000 controller.
Good luck with your product I hope someday you guys accomplish the global takeover but I can reassure you , a lot of DJs in LA and Las Vegas won’t use your products cause they hate the software for the very same reason I do.
Anyone looking to buy a Pristine Denon prime setup with a lot of extras , I’m in the Los Angeles area hit me up!