People have always found it strange — Denon’s gear has such powerful features, yet it never manages to replace Pioneer as the market standard.
In my opinion, the biggest problem lies in quality.
Ever since inMusic took over Denon,
they released the MCX-8000 — yes, it did create buzz for its price-to-performance ratio, and the sales were decent.
But at its core, the build quality was poor.
If you’ve followed discussions about the MCX-8000 on forums, you’ll know that many users had their screens fail over time.
Then came the Prime 4 and Prime 2 — again, great excitement and innovation,
but users constantly report issues like jog wheels not responding or playback suddenly stopping.
With reliability like this, how can people trust the brand?
Naturally, professional DJs won’t use it in major events.
Some say, “Pioneer just has better marketing.”
I don’t think so.
Even Allen & Heath has far less marketing presence than inMusic,
but its Xone series mixers — like the Xone:96 or Xone:92 — are more expensive than Denon’s X1850,
and yet they outsell the X1850, also even Pioneer’s mixers too.
Honestly, I just wish inMusic would focus more on refinement and quality.
Look at European and Japanese brands — their design alone already wins half the battle,
and their quality wins the other half.
sigh…
I still have two MCX8000 units. The first one I got in June 2017 did have the screen failure IC issue, but it was repaired free of charge and I’ve been using it pretty much every weekend since with no issues. I had to put some switch cleaner in the play buttons at one point but apart from that it’s been rock solid. The second one I got in 2019 still works great too as a spare.
The other issue they have is the play pause plastic housing disintegrates causing the play button to become slack but it doesn’t affect the use of the controller.
Quality issues can affect any piece of tech but as far as I’m concerned the MCX8000 is absolutely rock solid and ultimately the best and most flexible VDJ controller by miles and I have no hesitation using it for my gigs in 2025. It’s super reliable and built like a tank.
In comparison I got a new FLX10 for club gigs and the 12v power input failed in a matter of weeks causing me to dismantle the whole unit and solder a new one in. Probably still easier than going through the return process.
Nah, I think the main problem is brand perception. This belief people have that Pioneer is the best simply because they’ve seen the kit being used by [name of superstar DJ here] or at [big event here]. Rather than make their own decision via research or trying things, they default to Pioneer.
They’re ubiquitous though because of a catch 22 / vicious circle of DJs requesting them on riders because hire companies have stock, and hire companies stock them because DJs request them.
They did try with the “change your rider” and hiring celeb DJs to demonstrate the gear, but it didn’t last long. It’s as though they’ve accepted their position and just put up with it now.
Hardware release has been completely stale for a while now with the “plus” models being just a token update if that so that doesn’t help brand perception either to be fair.
Personally I’d rather stick with a 9 year old controller than get the Prime 4+ as I feel it’s more reliable and has better features for me.
There’s nothing wrong with InMusic catering to a different market. They tried to break into the ‘club’ space, people weren’t interested for whatever reason (change aversion and lack of ability to try new things as a general human mindset) so they can just focus on people who want an alternative better value system, particularly the mobile/events DJ market, of which there are plenty of people to aim for.
If you look at the DJ space overall, the club/bar/festival scene is only a small portion of the market, dance music is only a tiny tiny portion of the music market. People put far too much weight on this ‘club/festival DJ’ BS, as if its some kind of end game for DJing.
As far as im concerned, InMusic can forget about what Alphatheta are doing and just focus on their own product line, the only ‘war’ between the brands is the one created by gear nerds on social media.
Those rental companies btw; they are seriously not impressed by the 3000X and really ask themselves if they should keep on buying them (when having 3000’s already on the shelve). They probably will because of riders…
Tbf, judging by the general feel on the socials, the relationship between fanboys and that brand is dwindling…. the ‘look at me i use Pioneer’ fashionistas heads have completely gone, now they only have a small logo to replace their once phallic symbol of superiorty. And now the others are questioning their life choices with the apparent £500 increase to have a cloud feature nobody wants to pay for.
Their mixer range is outstanding but the media players and effects units (or lack of) are essentially a meme at this point.
One of my mates has the full A9 and 3000 setup he uses for mobile gigs. It is a superiority thing but the only person who cares is him. In reality nobody gives a hoot about the gear you use as long as the sound comes out of the speakers and you’re playing decent tunes.
Some people make their setups unnessecarily complex too, he takes two hours to set up and almost the same to dismantle, I’m 40 minutes setup and 20 minutes down at the end of the night.
Yeah thats the number one most important thing, music being played and sounding right. That just sounds like a massive ballache to wire up and unwire, even if its in a single coffin case it sounds horrific to carry around, i used to have a CDJ-1000/DJM-600 setup in a coffin case years ago, it was brutal. I don’t miss the days of lumping that around, we’ve never had it so good for portable gear/lighting/sound systems.
Funny thing is people see Vinyl rigs as a nightmare to transport around, but an A9/CDJ 3000 rig isnt that much better.
Change Your Rider was an unwise slogan. Denon DJ and Rane were never industry standards. They existed early on during a time when they coexisted with Biamp, Numark, Tascam, and others. Rane, Biamp, and Numark back then were Made in the USA. InMusic should have instead demeaned people’s inclusion of specific DJ equipment in their riders as prima donnas. But yes, then they have to back it up with quality and reliability, which certainly taking a dump at Stonehenge while Oakenfold is using your gear and then trying to cover up your brand names and logos should have been their first indication both the slogan and priorities needed reassessment.
