So, I played out with the MCX-8000 for the first time this Friday for 4.5 hours at my usual spot. I’ve got to say that overall, I was really happy with the performance and features of the unit. I’ve put a few thoughts below:
Good:
Sound quality - Just WOW. It really is fantastic sounding bit of kit. Big, fat basslines sounded amazing over the venue’s system. I used to own several high end mixers including a Urei rotary, so I’ve heard good sound before, and I was really impressed with the Denon for the money.
Mixing The layout and feel of the mixer controls are really great to mix on.
Could be better:
Layout - I knew the layout was mirrored before I bought it, but… the mirrored buttons caused me to make a few mistakes in the dark. I think it’s muscle memory from using other gear (e.g. using shift with the left hand and hitting a cue button with the right). I guess I’ll get used to the layout after a while, but if I was Denon, I’d dump this layout for core buttons: (play, cue, shift, loops etc) for next time.
Pitch resolution - Moving the pitch fader gives me really inconsistent BPMs in Serato. I never had a problem matching BPM to the nearest .03/.02 with my NS6, but I couldn’t get the pitch as close as I’d like on some tracks. This meant I had to make a lot more manual adjustments with the jog wheels when doing long mixes. Not sure if this can be fixed in firmware or If I’ll need to start using synch more?
used to rock a SX in one of my spots, the MCX8000 sounds way better.
and the mic too.
Soon after I bought the 8000 and played out twice or so with it, I sold the Pioneer DDJ SX, thus I had no choice but to adapt to the mirror layout. I’m used to it now.
With regard to pitch resolution, and apologies if you know this already, is much more sensitive/accurate at lower pitch ranges. Eg: a pitch range of +-4% will give very fine, very accurate and tiny “steps” up or down that pitch range.
A pitch range of say +-50% in contrast, will give quite coarse steps up or down in pitch.
If using auto-sync on some DJ software, the pitch range might get changed automatically to a wider pitch range than you’d prefer to be on for fine, deep resolution mixing.
Yeah, I have, more than once, found myself suddenly being in higher pitch ranges AFTER a synced transition with the mentioned results.
Perhaps an OPTION to choose pitch range and location behavior could be nice? Say you could have four modes upon track load: leave as is/was, reset range but leave position as/is was, the other way around and finally reset range and position to default (where luxury would be if you could set the default range rather than it being fixed).
Obviously that would be up to Denon only for standalone/Engine mode, we’d need to look at DJ software manufacturers for the PC mode solutions.