Post-Fader FX & Other Thoughts

Engine DJ Hardware Mixers
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Detroiter here – just received my X1800 last night! Just want to share my thoughts as a drum and bass head who likes his effects.

Loving this mixer so far. I do believe everything simply sounds better than my 900NXS, and the options are impressive. There are a couple let-downs for me, though.

It would a big improvement IMHO, if the “BPM FX on/off” button would allow the post-fader effects (reverb, echo…) continue over the track when I turn it off. Currently, when I’ve activated reverb, for instance, my options are to kill the track fader and let it trail or deactivate the effect (BPM FX toggle or dry/wet knob) in which case the effect will end immediately without the trail. I much prefer the ability of the other mixer where I can press the effect toggle button and let the trail-off happen OVER the active tune. Of course, if if I do want to end it immediately, I can use the dry/wet knob. It’s almost as if reverb/echo are meant only for the moment you want to end the tune OR a particular technique where you toggle the effect on and off completely. There is no ability to let it trail out over the affected tune!

Second, it would be great if I could get the echo BPM effect to last longer. It seems that I can stretch it to a few measures with the maximum 8 beats as the timing, but if I wanted a 1-beat or 1/2-beat echo, it ends very quickly.

Interestingly, unlike as I described above about the BPM effects, the dub echo on the sweep effects side DOES trail out over the active tune when I press the button to deactivate it…

The gate effects on both sides sound not very good. I’m not sure quite the reasons and algorithms, but I feel there is room for improvement on these.

Finally, and now I’m getting greedy, it would be killer if I could somehow in the future replace the noise sweep effect with something like a space/reverb. I love that the dub echo is beat timed on here, but giving up space is unfortunate – I loved using it in combo with the beat timed effects.

There is a whole lot of good stuff going on in this mixer and I’m hopeful that these things can be addressed. I hope that Denon can prove itself to be a capable player in this pro industry and improve them via firmware for many years to come. Overall, I have to give big-time props to Denon & the development team on this one.

Cheers!

Adam

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Hey there :smile:

Thanks for the suggestions and great comments on the x1800 - it’s pretty awesome!

It’s unlikely that any of the four hardware labelled (on the front panel) effects will ever be swapped out for completely different effects - eg: pressing a button marked “Dub Echo” in fact engages “Hyper Zipper Flanger” due to the confusion aspect.

However, no such confusion concerns exist on the effects bank to the right of the x1800 as all the effects are shown on the screen, rather than on hardware printing on the panel. The potential for removing and adding effects, including the order in which they’re presented to the DJ is very much active functionality.

Post fader functionality is one of those perception things and potentially subjective. Some DJs may want an effect to perform one way in response to fader adjustments, where other DJs may want, or expect different behaviour.

Your entire post, therefore has been passed to our development team for consideration.

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+1 for not cutting off the effect tail!

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Gee_DenonDJ, can you or somebody share with us what the official word is about these things?

One is how toggling off the BPM FX button ends the effect immediately when it should continue & fade naturally over the affected and still playing track? This strikes me as a bug.

The other thing that I’m particularly curious about, as I also mentioned originally, is the possibility of having some way to extend the effects, independent of the timing selection. If I use a 1/2 or 1-beat timing on the echo, I don’t want it to end inside one measure, necessarily.

Another note I haven’t mentioned yet: It wouldn’t bother me if the crossfader allowed me to cut the BPM FX as on the other mixer where I can actually cut the effect and bring it back in as it decays. It just means more options. With this setup, the only way to kill the effect completely is to use the dry/wet knob where you can’t bring it back. Also, for me, it is natural to fade out the effect with the crossfader where I already am, as opposed to worrying about the dry/wet knob in addition. And again, this would seem more useful if you can lengthen the effects as I mentioned. Not the end of the world, but it could be an improvement opportunity.

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Yes! I am also missing this feature! It would be great if you could add it as an option, so ppl can activate it in the utility menu if wanted.

+1, maybe you could add like another parameter to choose with the FC Time knob to make it last longer.

Yup, to me it is the only useless sweep FX. It would be much better if you could improve it (maybe kinda like on a Pioneer DJM).

other than that I do love this mixer! Good job Denon! :slight_smile: I hope to see some improvments on the FX sections because I don’t want to use the X1800 and buy an external Pioneer RMX1000 to go with it- just because of the feeling. :smiley:

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I can confirm the previous generations of Denon mixers (X600, X1600, X1700) leave a trail when you deactivate the echo and reverb using the on/off button (which you can control using the dry/wet knob).

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Sorry Kevin, I’m not [replying] as such to just your post but just this whole conversation rather than your post only.

I’m confused. bit. In this one conversation, it seems that half the people are asking FOR the effect to STAY after the fader is dropped or the EFX ON/OFF button is switched OFF. But half the people are asking for the effect to STOP after the fader is dropped or the EFX ON/OFF button is switched OFF.

Or am I not reading it correctly. I can’t see how both halves of the requests can be met at the same time.

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From what I read so far (and what would perfectly match my wishlist):

Switching off the BPM effect with the on/off button leaves an effect tail (a reverb, echo, etc. gradually fading out over the dry signal).

Moving down a channel fader while the BPM effect is active on the same channel will cut out the dry signal except for the effect tail (wet signal - original sound) - so called post fader effects - which is possible right now on the X1800.

The crossfader effect cut described by thread is new to me. too, but it’s not contradictory to the above.

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So if both those things are possible right now on the x1800, why are people asking for them?. Is it simply they want the features available on a more convenient (for themselves) button to whats already available?

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Jetsound, when the BPM FX button is toggled off, the effect should indeed stop, but be allowed to trail out over the tune it was activated on. Currently, the only way to hear this trail is to kill the track with the channel fader. What if I wanted to activate echo for one beat and let it fade out over the tune? I can’t.

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Ok so…would an example be, the track Party Rockers from LMFAO (as a over played, known by almost everyone, example) … its got that accapella bit in it, where all the music stops and the vocals just say “Every day I’m Shuff-er-ling”.

You want a way of catching the beats leading up to that accapella part, and having the beats echo over the accapella, until the beat/music resumes on the dry track? Is that it?

course, the above aint everyones taste in music, but its just something most will know.

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I think there are many instances where you might want to allow the effect to trail out over the affected tune. Why would you want to enforce that the entire effect to go out at once 100% of the time?

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Sadly, only post fader effects are possible right now. Switching off the effect with the on/off button does not leave an effects tail (in contrast to the “club standard”).

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In such a creative world, with a community of so many different types of DJing and DJs, it’s probably safe to say that there are times where both an instant “All Off” is needed, AND there’ll be times where some sort of tail off, post fader effect, could be needed.

Indeed, I’m reminded of the Echo Loop functionality of the DN-X1500, DN-S1000, DN-S6000, DN-HD2500 family, where if the WET/DRY knob was set anywhere from 0 to 75%, then echo worked exactly how you’d expect, but once turned up above 75%, then the echo turned into a loop…not taking in any new input from the dry track, not decaying the loop in terms of clarity or volume, until the wet/dry was lowered below 75%. The playing track could even be stopped (ejected), and a whole new track loaded and cued etc all while the echo/loop continued.

Still, as mentioned above …

So… let’s see what happens on future firmware updates.

1 Like
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Remember, if I want to kill the tail, the dry/web knob can (and currently does) do that. Also, if things were to work as the other mixer, the crossfader would also do that job.

The BPM FX toggle button should end the generation of the effect but let the already generated wet signal trail off. Again, this is so awkward and limiting to me that it seems to be a bug.

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The new firmware update is just such a big improvement concerning the effects! How do you guys like it so far?

They only thing I still dislike a lot is the Gate Sweep Effect. I wish it would be more like the Traktor Pro Gate Effect. That’d be awesome. At this time, I don’t use the Gate Sweep Effect at all since I don’t like the timing&sound of it :confused: Hopefully they work on this one in the next firmware update.

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So the Gater effect is still off on the timing. I can open my DJ808 and run Serato & hit the button and get the exact effect I want. I can repeat this on my Traktor Z2 with their software running… Denon’s gate is off by just a pinch and it makes me not want to use the feature at all.

ALSO, while we’re on the topic - the manual says I can override the tempo-based FX BPM input by just selecting the channel with the proper BPM (126 on channel 3), holding the auto/tap button for one second, and now the input BPM will lock to the data on channel 3 (126 BPM).

This does not work. I hit the button for one second and a different BPM actually shows up on that display, not the BPM playing on the current track. Additionally, when I move the knob to change the fx to a different channel, the BPM still moves with each click. My vocal / scratch sample record shows at 103BPM. My set is running at 124. I cannot flip FX assignments freely without losing the tempo data and therefore rendering the FX useless in realtime.

Help!

To be fair, and honest, after many hours of playing around on this setup - the FX on the mixer are my biggest complaint. We need a very simple and reliable way to LOCK BPM of the FX, regardless of the channel we select to apply said FX. The gate also needs some attention immediately, and it would be nice if the other suggestions were applied - like the ability to use tails in the way that most of our other DJ mixers allow… It seems a bit awkward on this unit and I’ve found myself three times lately connecting the DJ808 to my rig just for the ability to use Serato’s FX. I don’t even like Serato that much, but the FX are locked to the tempo and they allow the familiar behavior many of us have come to love. I agree, aside from fading out the track completely, some of the sweep FX are not useful to me at all. Given my lack of ability to lock the tempo on the mixer, I almost never use those FX either.

Sure, if all of my trance records were locked at 126 by auto-sync we wouldn’t have this problem, but I’m not playing an Oakenfold style set on my rig. I’m using mixed formats on different channels (some analog, some line inputs, some turntable samples, some bizarre sample files that aren’t to any real grid).

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Doesn’t the X1800 work this way? Is it possible to hear the tail of the echo for a long time (with feedback set to a high value), even if I already changed the song on the same channel? I use that a lot in Serato. A video explaining all the features of the echo effect in the X1800 would be great.

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The X1800’s main effects array are post-fader, so any delays and reverbs for example would tail off accordingly. Good call on a help video to show this - although this is shown in the X1800 Overview video, we’ll add it to our list of ‘top tips’ videos coming soon for you - thanks

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Thanks @paul_denondj for your response. I already watched this video ( a number of times btw :slight_smile: ).

I was referring to a more “in depth” review video of all the echo effect parameters, to see for example how the x1800 behaves when the feedback and wet knobs are at maximum position, how the tail of the echo is cutted when the effects channel is changed, etc.

But no worries, tomorrow I will meet with a distributor and I will test the X1800 by myself, I’m excited!