Does inMusic really want to bring Denon and Rane back to being industry standards?

General Area
21

Actually, you already pointed out the answer yourself. Why don’t these big-name DJs choose to use Denon gear? It’s not just about marketing — quality definitely plays a big part.

In Europe, many major events still set up Allen & Heath Xone mixers instead of Pioneer ones. And that’s not because A&H paid for placement — it’s because everyone knows about the sound quality and build quality of the Xone mixers.

Yes, you’re absolutely right — the market is in a catch-22 / vicious circle situation right now. But like I said, even though A&H barely does any marketing, their Xone mixers still outsell Pioneer’s.

I just hope inMusic can at least get the quality right first. To put it bluntly, inMusic simply can’t afford to have poor quality.

22

See Catch #22

They really have no choice - because the whoever’s providing the kit likely has nothing else, or because anyone/everyone else on the bill wants Pioneer, because they’re familiar with it. They’re familiar with it because it’s all that’s made available (and around and around).

23

Random bold text doesn’t give your comments any more gravity, in fact as a native English speaker it just makes them annoying.

Also Allen and Heath aren’t some benchmark of quality, their chief designer left and started his own company and now all they do is mass produced factory mixers.

24

AV Rental has never been impressed with new DJ gear. Especially the smaller ones lag one or 2 iterations behind, and when they finally encounter a rider demanding the newest, they go rent it themselves. Or they try to provide the previous generation, if they feel the DJ asking this is not important enough.

honestly, I have not seen a CDJ3000 in the wild yet… And OK, my career has folded back into my residency where I use my own SC6000, and do maybe 4 events per year where gear is provided, but even then I would expect to have seen some CDJ3000s by now…

25

I can imagine, but from what I understood happened until even last year was that delivery of the 3000’s was late. Lots of backorders got fulfilled, while suddenly the 3000X got announced.

26

Bars and nightclubs are struggling to make ends meet and closing at an alarming rate, as reported by pretty much every media outlet going.

Why would they spend a fortune on brand new CDJ-3000s when their CDJ-2000s that are perfectly good and do mainly the same job?

I imagine the same goes for rental companies, a complete waste of money just to massage some basic beatmatch DJs ego.

4 Likes
27

I think you have to be realistic at some point, quality has a cost. And for InMusic to maintain prices 30 to 40% lower than other brands on certain types of products, there is no mystery, arbitrations and compromises must be made somewhere.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this to denigrate the brand or the quality of the products, even if facing reality will not please a certain number of fanboys on this forum, and yet I am myself a Denon DJ fanboy in a way because I love their products. But that doesn’t stop me from being lucid.

Yes, the products when you look at them like that from the outside give a feeling of robustness and solidity, it seems well finished.

Yes, the chassis and the choice of exterior materials are good in most cases, at least on “prime” products. But clearly, small savings are made on the choice and quality of internal components. The buttons are not of high quality, they are thin and cheap plastic, the holding frames of which break easily (or even the problems of CUE/Play buttons which break, and the view buttons which collapse in certain units).

The faders range from mediocre to average at best, if they were replaceable directly and easily from above, well why not but that is unfortunately not the case.

The rest is, in my opinion, rather decent, the potentiometers are very good, the pitch faders are very good, the screens are decent even if the resolution could be better.

The jogwheels are quite good on the “primes” (I love the feeling of the jogwheel on the prime 2), but are not as good on the sc live 4 of a bar in which I play regularly.

I pretty much agree that InMusic needs to improve the quality of the knobs and faders, the rest is pretty decent for the price you spend.

3 Likes
28

I’m with Gaian here. Summarizes my own experiences - overall look and chassis is very pleasant, both on my Prime 4 (brushed metal, feels solid and firm) and Live 4 (brushed plastic, lighter, but not creaking or cheap), with certain parts like the pitch-faders or pods with their metal shafts being a joy to use, and the powercaps / PSU buffer giving extra peace of mind.

Button quality (the infamous ‚view‘ button is the perfect example) and channel faders will hopefully be improved on all successors.

The ‘change of rider’ campaign might not have reached its main target, but still caused some pleasant disruption in the market, especially with their AiO-systems, ranging from small and affordable (Mixstream) to big and beefy (Prime 4). I wouldn’t give up the club/festival market entirely, as the competitor managed to mess up its own reputation even without our help, first the questionable brand name and logo change (which btw looks absolutely fugly) and then the lackluster 3000X release which even makes their die-hard fanboys starting to ponder, what they get for their money. These units still get compared with the SC6000 (=basically a refined SC5000 from 2017) in numerous comments and threads, which is a good sign for whatever successor coming up next.

2 Likes
29

I can add something strange, funny and bizzare from my experience at yesterday’s gig.

We had 4x cdj3000, 1x cdj2000 nxs2 and 2 dj mixers provided.

Set up in a way as follows:

Cdj3000, DJM900 nxs2, Cdj3000, cdj3000, Xone 96, Cdj3000, cdj2000 nxs2.

All cdj’s 3000 except the far right behind the xone 96, were connected via digital cables to djm900 nxs2.

All cdj’s except the far left (before the djm900 nxs2), were plugged in via analog to xone 96.

4 cdjs3000 and cdj2000 nxs2 were connected together. The cdj’s 3000 were reporting limitations of prodj link because of older version of hardware is connected to the network. So 3000’s refused to share usb sticks with 2000 model. In my opinion - this is very poor software back compatibility for this price.

3 Likes
30

As a side note to this another thing that needs to be looked at is availability of spares. I contacted In-Music about a part I needed for my Prime Go+ and was told it was in their German warehouse and and would be put on an order for supply. That was 4th September and I still don’t have the part nearly 6 weeks later. Apparently it has been processed for shipping now but that’s a long time to get a small item from Germany when I can order from China on aliExpress and have most things within a week.

31

Has someone asked James Hype to Test the SC series? :smiley: I would love to know haha

32

It’ll be in his ambassador contract with Alpha that he isn’t allowed to, would be my guess,

1 Like
33

He’d probably claim to have invented them too. :face_with_peeking_eye:

1 Like
34

In short: THE STATIC JOG WHEELS ACT DIFFERENTLY IN DIFFERENT AIR HUMIDITIES WHILE MECHANICAL PLATTERNS DON’T. This is the main reason SC6000 isn’t being taken to the festival stages. Festivals last long time and stay out there. I’ve played nights up to the morning with different air humidities and temperatures and seasons - THIS CAN’T BE CONSIDERED RELIEABLE. Nudging becomes vinyl mode with some wierd exceptions. You’d have to switch between vinyl and nudging mode very often, but YOU CAN’T EVEN TELL WHICH MODE IS ON, because the light indicator behind VINYL button doesn’t differ enough. So please, how does anyone wan’t to consider something like that a festival standard? I still think Denon is the best, because it’s closer to the people price-wise and the innovative features and the best looping etc, but without mechanical platterns and buttons with enough light difference, it’s trying to deliver something, that it actually doesn’t - it’s most basic implementation issue - won’t be taken to main stages.

35

But I will surprise you… it is reliable and works perfectly fine. I did gigs over 16 hours long in different places (renting out and playing my self) onSC series decks. Never no conditions made them perform worse. They worked reliably for years now and never showed slightest problems with vinyl mode or jog bend. What I noticed - dirty hands are making jogs dirty - this affected touch sensing once in a while - but clean towel and a bit of foam cleaner after each event makes it work.

7 Likes
36

Think this through: we moved away some 10 years ago from mechanical data bearers (vinyl, CD, harddrive, tape), in favour of electrostatic data bearers (SSD, USB stick). If I restore old computers or audio hardware, its always the mechanical parts that fail first… So now you tell us that mechanical hardware is superior to electrostatic hardware? Gee, I guess I am going to use a USB moving platter HDD from now, instead of an SSD :wink:

And just as @NoiseRiser I have gigged using my own SC6000 set in a myriad of venues: a concrete well ventilated venue, small bars with overheating amplifiers, basements with a 2m20 ceiling, a 2000-people tent in some remote meadow, and yes, open air… Ofcourse all of these venues where packed with sweating meatbags… On top of that, these meatbags often spill beer on my set, or let condensation drip from their cold drink hovering over my gear. And then there is my own sweat, if the climate really goes sideways… In a packed tent you even have rain or condensation dripping from the tent onto your gear… Never had problems with my jog dials. And I can just take my handkerchief to wipe away any moisture on my jogs, without problems…

I can think of a lot of (small) things where InMusic misses the mark, but the jog ain’t one of them…

4 Likes
37

They don’t need to use a mechanical pressure jog to keep this from happening on future units, though in reality mechanical pressure jogs like the old Pioneer and Vestax units are surprisingly easy to fix when some idiot leaves something on top of it over the weekend at a venue.