Experiences as 'new user'

Legacy Products Controllers
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1

I have used my MCX8000 five times on live gigs now and wanted to share my thoughts in comparison with my former midi controller, Pioneer DDJ SX2. I use the MCX8000 with Traktor Pro 2 (with my personal midi mapping).

First, all assignments went well. No freezes, crashes or hick ups during my multiple hour-sets.

I find the sensitivity of the touch pads a bit to ‘hard’ compared to the Pioneer SX2 pads (= they need less pressure (hard hitting)). When wanting to trigger an effect (mapped to a touch pad), I experienced serval times that the effect wasn’t triggered due to the fact it seemed I didn’t hit the pad hard enough. Also happened when wanting to jump to certain cue-points (hotcues).

Is there a way to adjust the sensitivity of the pads ?

I also experienced something I have to bare in mind when connecting the USB cable to my laptop and starting Traktor. Luckily this happened when I was still at home doing my preparation for a gig. It seems when I connect the cable to my laptop and power-up the MCX8000, I have to wait a few seconds before starting Traktor software. After the first ‘usb has been connected’ windows sound appears when I power-up the MCX8000, after a few seconds a second ‘usb has been connected’ windows sound appears.

A few times I started my Traktor BEFORE the second usb-windows-sound appeared and the usb connection was very unstable. With the slightest touch of the usb cable, the connection was lost and Traktor froze (logical, because the connection with the sound card was lost at that point). I took my some time (sleepless nights :wink: ) before I realized it was probably because I launched Traktor to soon (BEFORE the second windows usb connection-sound appeared). Probably first windows-usb-connection-sound indicates the laptop made connection with the controller (when controller is powered on) and the second windows-usb-connection-sound indicates that the controller-driver is activated.

Since I wait for the second windows-usb-connection to appear (and this takes a few seconds), I have not experienced an unstable usb connection yet (and now I check it every time by fiddling with the usb cable to make sure the connection is stable).

At least, I HOPE that was the reason for the unstable USB connection. That would mean I found the solution for that issue :slight_smile:

Maybe this is helpful is someone has also experienced this issue :slight_smile:

Regards Kristof

2

Good points about the USB connection.

Different lappys and even different operating systems often have a preferred power up sequence. I get the same thing with my printer on windows 10 - if have the printer switched off when I power up the lappy, windows 10 apps don’t always see the printer even if I switch it on later… on Jose occasions I have to log out of my Windows account and then back in again for Windows to notice the printer and print.