I agree. Only one question most Pioneer friends ask themselves is “I know what I have, everyone is using it, so why should I change?”
And rightly so, because when you have something that works well and you don’t feel restricted in some way when working on your equipment, you don’t feel the need to replace what already works and you are accustomed with the way it works. Except the need for bling and new fashion or fear of degrading value. One thing to keep in mind is that Pioneer DJ don’t have the habit of discontinuing a product after only six months or so.
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Cant agree more.
Yep. When they play with the Primes, they are just amazed by it and have a genuine smile, but still the vendor lock-in kicks in.
The fever for new, different and cool don’t affect anyone that easy. We have the pure example in front of us - SC5000, flagship last year, put on sale and, more important, discontinued, this year. On the other hand, the offer for mid range performance, but high quality players is pretty much empty. In my book, the modular setup is always the best, because it offers flexibility and the option to upgrade is always there.
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To me they’re not new. I’ll have them for 3 years in the coming summer.
The hardware may be discontinued, the software is not.
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And the software eligibility is the good thing contributing to their value and potential. Spare parts are available for them also. The players don’t have to wear the flagship badge, but the usability, reliability, performance and serviceability badges. As long as the Engine OS help them to move forward and do their magic, it is all good.
The InMusic assault continues
The S9 is getting competition finally (the 72 didn’t cut it for me, must have been designed by electricians and not DJs)
Now we need like a bunch of platinum colored denon headphones
Pioneer still has a monopoly. If they produce multi platform gear then there will be more to consider for some.
When the xdj xz, not if, gets traktor support then there will be a little tug of war.
Can’t wait to see if they release any mixers.
Not in the battle mixer market, that’s one area that’s still up for grabs.
They just scored big with the S9 (which is a great mixer) with the magvel pro crossfaders.
We will see how the new Rane faders fare, I didn’t like the one on the 72.
On the Rane 72 mixer all three faders are magnetic for the glide and the positional data, which I thought was a nice strong long lasting thing but it’s just plane and simple the wrong mixer for me as I don’t like battle mixers, do t use midi any more, need four channels and don’t beat a week of Tuesdays out of my gear.
In fact Rane hasn’t done much that I would use , as I like 19”rack mixers where possible, linear fader controls, and quite some space between different controls. I’m on an x1800 now, which isn’t 19”rack but it covers my other needs good.
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Not the MP2015? Thats a fantastic bit of kit. The MP2016 is the 19 inch rack mountable mixer, if thats what you are after.
Pioneer is in a real pickle imo. Their market dominance has allowed their lineup to be what it is, with high price points, big feature discrepancies between players, and slow-rolling feature additions and improvements. I think the fact that they make good money on controllers is a problem for them, too.
All of those qualities mean that they are running a cash cow that is nonetheless incredibly susceptible to disruption, as Denon is proving. Twice the features for half the price? Pioneer can’t respond in kind without deeply undercutting their existing product line, and possibly eating into their controller market, too.
My guess is that we’ll see an entirely refreshed line from Pioneer at some point, with much more feature parity between the tiers (ie performance pads on every device) and an improved screen, but at the same price points. They’ll get kudos for improving their kit significantly and everyone who is concerned with “industry-standard” will be happy.
It’s not clear at all whether Pioneer can do what’s necessary, tho. Any company that has enjoyed a monopoly position for such a long time usually loses a lot of the flexibility that makes these kind of pivots and strategy rethinking possible.
Also, in reference to comments above about whether pioneer has the technology to bring their players up to Denon feature parity: as far as I can tell every piece of tech we’re talking about is commodity at this point. That is, can be easily purchased to incorporate into any new hardware. The big question, similar to my previous point, is whether they have the vision, people, and political will to make the hardware and operational changes necessary to push out re-thought players.
The line from tech is: disrupt your own market before someone else does it to you. The question here is whether the market (home users and club installs) will shift to denon faster than Pioneer can respond with similar gear 
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Just searched for Denon on the Pioneer forum - not one single hit for SC5000 or SC6000 - they must be HEAVILY censoring the forums, deleting any reference to the competition.
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Known pioneer issues pointed out… The subject is from 2013…
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Oops - didnt read it properly. When you get to my age, you’ll know what i mean.
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Doesn’t have to be in the battle market, they could refresh the djm 450. Denon decks already have performance pads so the best mixer doesn’t necessarily mean one with pads and software controls. Good fx is a must and in this day and age most I know like external fx and external samplers that can communacte with at least midi.
My predictions for NAMM at Pioneer:
Re-hashes of old equipment with the same exact feature set with less buttons at a higher pricepoint than the previous unit.
Releasing a new version of the XDJ1000 MK2 that is Serato and NI HID ready, but charging $300 more than the stock XDJ1000 MK2.
What software was Craze using with the rane?