There are few things that will perpetually hold InMusic back from ever being any kind of industry standard anything:
Sure, quality control. It’s been pretty bad ever since the late 90s & early 2000s for new Numark, aka InMusic brands. I don’t have their internal numbers, but I assume it’s improved, and at least their service and success rate in solving hardware problems has. The roll out of the Prime line was a disaster from a software perspective, but I haven’t seen that quite repeated by them yet… knock on wood. The VL12 turntable was really not a viable design as anything other than either non-DJ hifi use or DVS from the get-go, but who knows how that came to be or who designed it.
Yes, lack of repairability. I’m not even a certified electronics tech, and I’ve repaired multiple Pioneer DJ kit myself. I’m nervous about just trying to re-lube my SC5000M’s motors or replace an up fader on an X1800.
You already know what I think about InMusic playback sound processing and the proof to back it up. You go through all the trouble of recording a mix for a few hours using lossless tracks you own or using Tidal, and it ends up sounding like MP3s coming out of Prime. Yeah, some music that really doesn’t matter either way, but with some music it definitely matters.
The network link for the players is less stable and more prone to glitches than Pro Link. I don’t know why, but it’s still less reliable than Pioneer DJ’s solution. I still think using a streaming service, even if you’re not getting your money’s worth with the degradation Engine OS is doing to Tidal, is more reliable, especially if you have no drive connected for saving cue points for some reason. Bizarre. Or just put one drive in each player, which seems at least partially the 6000 and other models’ point of having an internal drive bay: get around the not-entirely-reliable link by making it convenient to just keep a drive in each player.
Changes to the entire player HUD interface from the original layout that radically alters and degrades the ability to use the players as they were originally designed and advertised.
Finally, more nonsense like a new database version on the latest player OS firmware and the new desktop analysis software for something as simple as creating a searchable database that turns out isn’t backwards compatible, being told by InMusic that all these Prime players regardless of firmware and database in question will at least read a drive’s file structure and tracks, and literally instead the drives become inaccessible on the players with older firmware using the original HUD interface. Catastrophic. What’s the point of not having a laptop in the booth if you need a laptop in the booth to make sure visiting DJs’ drives are prepped well enough to read?
Instead of finding InMusic stuff in venues, I tend to not only mostly see Pioneer DJ, but even more likely than risking InMusic stuff, them resorting to the worst piece of garbage all-in-one consoles that Pioneer DJ makes. I don’t suspect that will change soon. I hear from some other DJs out occasionally that they own Prime stuff, but you almost never see it out. They’ve got it at home if they don’t need to rely on it, repair it, and/or take it out and expect other DJs to use it in a venue. For someone with 2X prime mixers and 5X prime players, I admit this is a sucky situation. Besides, I’d rather there was more real competition.
