PrimeGo 
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I will once more elaborate the thought behind this suggestionā¦ Just once moreā¦
The idea is a tiny unit that you can have next to your keyboard, laptop etc on your desktop. This was the initial idea.
A unit that lets you control Engine Prime quicker than using a mouse and keyboard and so you dont need to drag out the flightcase turn on your Prime 4, Prime 2 or SCās.
A small computer midi interface, only powered by usb.
And as Reese says, you could bring it on the go as wellā¦ To mange your tracks in Engine Prime.
Its NOT ment as a unit to do shows from. Strictly a Engine Prime management unit.
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Engine prime will need to be at decent feature and functionality level first,
Apart from using a jog to scroll through tracks fast what else will the surface add?
Thatās the euro/dollar thought that I think denon / inmusic will obviously look at and the custom mini, but not too mini, engine prime control surface will never see the light of day.
All the research and production costs of this, and it will be something up of ā¬100 in shops. With only a few people buying it. Pictures of these filling out bargain bin tubs in a mall near you, springs into minds eye. Whatās ergonomically perfect, with perfect layout, logical control placement and offers anatomically natural finger flow will be an awkward lump of buttons to someone else. Even the right handed ones.
The best outcome, for those unhappy to use a mouse and keyboard with engine prime, would be to hook up a prime as a control surface or look into the computer industry offered solutions of programmable mice or gamer-geek programmable mini keyboards
It probably wont see any light anytime, but I still like the idea 
Itās not just a good idea, for some, it would be an amazing idea. My ātakeā on it is from the ROI point of view. Would there be enough interest, at the right price to research it, design it, perform the retailer surveys of āif this came out, how many would you see yourself selling in a year?ā, swapping out a factory line to build it, market it, distribute it etc.
I go through a similar process with my daytime career - designing and presenting training courses on computer software, to those who need to use that software in their jobs. If the course software is off the shelf like Microsoft Word or Excel or PowerPoint, I know I can write the training courses once and use them over and over again at different companies - I can sell those courses cheap because Iāll sell them over and over again. If I have to build a course for bespoke software that only one company uses in their 5 offices worldwide, with 120 people in each office, that would have to be an expensive course as no one else outside that company is ever going to ask me to train them on that bespoke software.
Back to engine prime - For me, I tend to set my cue points when I load the track to a deck. Iāll rarely play the same track in the same place between two other same songs just because those three songs went well together last week, or last year whenever. There are a few songs which have a certain lick or notable riff etc which is a great mix in-point to other tracks but not enough that I canāt set them up using mouse and keyboard or a deck. I donāt think Iād ever be on engine prime on a pc for more than a couple of hours at a time, and most of that is just loading new music to the database. Out of those 2 hours, maybe 90 mins is just letting it auto analyse and export whatever it exports - the other 39 mins might be me setting a few start cue points and lining up the first beat to beatgrid.
Even during lockdown I donāt see myself ever sitting down at Engine prime with a sleeping bag, thermos flask of coffee, crate of beers, and 20 tubes of pringles thinking āYeah! Track one of 100,000ā¦ come to daddy. Letās get you cued, looped, tagged, custom beatgridded, and pad colors uniformed. Lol okā¦doneā¦ track 2, come to daddyā¦ etc - if I did work that way, Iād want either a deck or a control surface. But what happens when I reach the end of the bulk collection? Iāll be back down to just loading in the 20 tracks per week that make it out of my record pool into my collection, and 20 tracks a week is only going to take me minutes to tag, cue, loop etc all just mouse and keyboard method.
It worries me, from a ācloned nightsā Point of view that some DJs say that they will always set hot point 1 for the intro, hot point 2 for the chorus, hot point 3 for the riser, hot point 4 for the instrumental breakdown and so, so they can DJ without headphones, mixing any track to any track just by knowing any track thatās playing from hot point 2 will just mix by pressing hot point 3 on a different track.
It might work, but it gets like painting by numbers if someone mixes that song to that song because the hot point is right, the keys match, the bpm sync and beatgrids are aligned - fire! Thatās mixing by numbers rather than much to do with the music.
So, bulk collection tagging/cueing aside. 39 mins of engine prime a week, how much would I spend on a control surface? Certainly not a luxury price. ā¬100 ? Too much! ā¬25 too cheap, Iād worry on durability, ā¬50 to ā¬75 ? maybe.
I donāt know what margins denon work to. But the cheaper the item At retail , the less Money their is to make the ROI viable. But if they up the retail price to increase profit, then fewer will sell and thatās zero return on the unsold manufacturers units.
So maybe the programmable Mini keyboards might be your best option. Some have removable key caps which take paper printed inserts, so you can print your own labels for each key like āzoom inā āplace beat makerā at all
Gotcha, I was imagining it in the studio and didnāt see the point. For travel, that makes perfect sense.
Whatās really funny is Beatport even has a dj web based browser that can allow you to midi map prime gear to control volume, tempo , cues (wellā¦. Everything). No idea why Denon couldnāt simply add some midi mapping functionality to the prime and add some extra bells and whistles not on there now. It would make working in engine dj so much more enjoyable prepping tracks. Is this a vote subject? I would use all my votes for it if they let me. I donāt even use engine dj half the time because itās still all computer based for prep.
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