Does the SC6000M truly work 100% Autonomously ?

Engine DJ Hardware Media Players
1

I’m new to the group, so please be gentle. I am an old school performance DJ. I play house music, I would prefer to always use vinyl, however today, more often than not, it just isn’t practical. Until recently I have been hooked on Pioneer. Except, Denon, is making some very good arguments, particuarly because Pioneer’s quality going down as the prices soar and everything is conditional on “Rekordbox” which I cannot stand. I just want to plug in a USB with wav files and play tunes.

So, I am considering a pair of SC6000M, probably at first to hook up to my RX3 (later I’ll look at a mixer), Do they work 100% without computers and software? If you load up a brand new tune, how long does it before everything is shown on the screen? (obviously the firmware will need a occasional update, but apart from that).

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Yes you are right! You can put a USB in, choose a track and play instantly.

From the moment u load the track it will be analysed in the backround and the waveform builds up. When its analysed once the waveform data and bpm etc will be safed to the database on your USB.

If you analyse your music in Engine before playing, the waveform, tempo, key etc. will be saved and no more analyze will be done on the player itself.

:v:

3

So, like with my Pioneer I can just leave it in autoplay over night and then all the tracks with display the info. I have no intention of using “engine”, how long does it typically take to analyse a new track(eg. 7minutes, length) ?

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It takes a few seconds only. Yes it would work when u play all songs over night.

But i have to say that you will also get wrong analyzed tracks, depending on genre, tracks with variable speed like 80’s music etc.

Those tracks you would have to reanalyze and that is not possible on the unit so far…

5

The player analyzes the songs very quickly, I would guess something around 10seconds.

6

The music is 90, 00, 10, 20 House. Pretty steady BPM in general, although drops and bridges might confuse it. Honestly I don’t rneed the analysis, looks pretty though. What’s got me very stoked is that direct drive motor in the middle. And key reset, why oh why, don’t Pioneers have that. And the pitch adj buttons, such a simple thing, but very very useful. Thinking I might treat myself and get a xone 92 at the same time. (although I would prefer a 62)

7

wow, that’s like lightening. Even on wavs?

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I also play mainly house and technomusic but yes also there you have misanalyses…

But i come from vinyl and before the P4 i didnt have waveforms and stuff, so it also doesn’t bite me :innocent:

As the kids need automix on the main out today, i just can give a asking smile… :woozy_face:

Can’t say anything about pioneers but most people i know loved the Prime from the start. Some say Pioneer is far behimd now.

I would also love to put my hands on 6000 m’s one day to get that spinning back! But my Technics are still there for the black gold… :grin:

9

That’s a good question. Never tried wav‘s. But should be similar.

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Yes it’s pretty fast, including on WAVs. I fail to see why you’d even bother to leave the units on autoplay/continuous to analyze anything. Seems like a waste of electricity. As an old school performance DJ playing house who would prefer to be on vinyl, you shouldn’t even need the moving waveform, BPM, or key, but you’re going to get them without even trying. Prime players will analyze each rapidly when you load each track, but it’s pretty extraneous for the sort of DJ you are. And what do you care what the BPM or key is of each track ahead of time when you can change both at-will soon after loading the track? There’s no point in you using that information to choose which track you play next. Anyway, your prior Rekordbox or Pioneer player database will get converted over when you first plug the drive in.

Oh. Just thought of something. Using Engine to generate a search-able database or strangely leaving your players on overnight for 8 hrs playing tracks to do it the slow way ahead of time would allow you to use the search function on the players later. But as an old school vinyl DJ who plans to use digital stuff and considering leaving the players on overnight playing tracks seems capable of analyzing all your relevant tracks, I’d say it would seem you won’t have enough tracks necessarily to even warrant using search at all. If you do plan to use search on the players, you have a bigger drive than you are letting on, and you do not have a Rekordbox or Pioneer-players-generated database already on said drive, then I’d recommend you just download Engine and use it to create the search-able database for the drive without analyzing the tracks. That’s all I use Engine for.

As for where I’m coming from, I’m still waiting for InMusic to let us hide the BPM and moving waveforms, though, as an old school vinyl DJ who could care less about that distracting stuff. Knowing the key is useful after I start cueing/playing the track, but not ahead of time and I don’t need it influencing my choice of tracks even in the browser. I believe we still do not have the ability to change the key of the tracks until it is analyzed, even if the latter is pretty quick, which is weird since hypothetically it shouldn’t need to know the key to change it.

My ownership experience of digital DJ media players (let’s call it a quest for fun): Numark Axis 8 → Vestax CDX-05 & Tascam TT-M1 → American Audio Radius 3000 & VersaDeck & Stanton CMP-800 & DJ Tech Usolo FX (all Hanpins and pretty neat) → Gemini MDJ-1000 (high defect rates, fragile, firmware still glitchy) → Pioneer CDJ-900 → Denon DN-HS5500 → Denon Prime SC5000 → SC5000M

Originally, the Prime players were nearly as problematic as the Gemini, but InMusic has brought them a long way. You will have the least hassle with the Prime Ms for playing on moving platters as the link, layers, and platter nudging all works better than old Denons, it is sufficiently good-sounding for house with keylock off (though all the others technically measure a little better even for non-demanding house with keylock off or at zero pitch), and you will get the best at-will extreme key change sound quality of any player I’ve used with going Prime. If you have the money and want vinyl-like mixing without having to use a computer or lug records around, take the leap. Other DJs will also be more interested in playing on your Primes than older or off-brand stuff if you take them to gigs if that’s something important to you. Then you can start participating in public betas and helping make it better, too. We have cookies.

11

Thanks for the explanation

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I think you’ll enjoy the the 6000m. You’ll probably end up fine tuning some of your tracks with the engine dj software to take advantage of all the features the deck has to offer. Since you play house the deck should be able to get the bpm right but not the grid position which can be adjusted on the deck. I would take key analysis with a grain of salt though but if you can imagine what tracks will blend together in your head then that’s all you need for good mixing.

1 Like
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Your like me and it’s like reading my own thoughts lol.

I mix on the 6kms same as real vinyl decks and I’m happy with my decision to sell off my old vestax as replacements.

With analysis it’s very quick even on 12min trance wav tracks. I’m not one for beat grids, key or hot cues etc and I was using the onboard analysis for a few months and again very happy with how it was all working. If BPM grid is wrong I mix regardless.

But with the engine software it really helped, not for BPM etc but for tune searching mainly. I had the freedom to type in my desired track over scrolling through the entire list. It also introduced me into making playlists as I’ve never bothered before and this also helped.

I kinda miss flicking through my vinyl collection and knowing where each tune sat on the shelf, but it’s now replaced by endless lists which is a major help with digital files.

I’d say keep using just the players and if you don’t want to use engine it’s all good. Engine is there when you are ready, it’s not a must.

Folks who need their 1,000,000 track collection analysed in 30 mins are all fools. Yeah my tune collection is about 5000ish but I use beatport pro now and that’s much cheaper.

14

Thanks for that answer, it was quite helpful. 95% of the music is recorded from the original vinyl. Most new stuff is got on vinyl too and copy, always looking for really cool tastemaker stuff and find vinyl is the best way to get unusual gems (that nobody else has or has noticed). Not big on having millions of tracks, think in total carrying around 1000, it’s all sorted into folders on the PC, so I always know where everything is (some stuff is duplicated, but with a 512Gb USB, space is no issue), wrote a little programme to sinc the PC with the USB (so the analysis info. isn’t lost and only copy the new stuff) Typically there is a framework that we are playing too, probably around new releases, and we never play requests (might pull out an old surprise sometimes, to make em scream, like express2’s remix of Milkshake :joy:) - so searches aren’t so useful. Beat grids and hot cues are of no use what-so-ever, if we want to jazz something up, it’s just a moment in the studio and we make a new version (and pretend :shushing_face:). We have to play some of our own stuff (or the label manager gets all spicy) that comes straight out from SoundForge as wav 16 44. Play a lot of big clubs and festivals, where typically there is a pair of SL12s and Pioneers ready setup, so these aren’t really for that. But get asked to do a lot of private parties (here nearly everyone has a second country house, miles from anywhere) great for not so little all night shindigs. But, not really good enviroments for setting up the Technics.

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Currently, if I need to reset or change the key of a track I do it in the studio. Celemony Melodyne, is great for transposing keys and samples. I’m sort of saying that we cheat :shushing_face: But trying to do everything live just guarrantees something will go wrong, like walking into a club and discovering that it’s going to be CD or plastic tonight because somebody spilt beer over the decks yesterday and the loan decks are older than Joe Biden. For this reason, we get vinyl copies made of our remixes and productions, everything can be done on a pair of Technics and a Xone62 if we have to. Don’t really like to pitch stuff up or down too much either and often play deep vs house (120 /128 bpm), I was brought up on decks without pitch controls, so am adept at bending the incoming track into the mix. I think that this is one aspect of the 6km that has me really excited, being able to truely play digital exactly as I do with plastic. This aspect is what has really turned us off of Pioneer, the over reliance on beat grids and quantising the hell out of everything. Even the jogs on my RX3 are virually impossible to use like that. It’s like whomever designed it had never actually mixed two records togther before. Anyway, must have supper and get ready for work :drooling_face:

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You may change your mind about not touching the hot cues. I didn’t even bother with the play/pause button except to stop the track. I exclusively used the hot cues on Prime to set the main cue and start the track, though I believe users are still waiting to have the hot cues automatically start the track upon setting one. Now you have to hit a hot cue twice in order to set and then play.

Pioneer jogs are weird for reasons I won’t get into here. Functional, but clumsy compared to any controller, vinyl, Prime non-Ms on the later firmwares, or the Prime Ms. Probably the best jog outside of controllers was on the Gemini because we spent a long time perfecting that thing’s feel and adjustability, which made it all the more a shame that the hardware and firmware on those still never was reliable for live professional use. I could DJ with them at home for a few hours at a time because I knew them inside and out and there’s a certain joy and intuitiveness to them, not to mention nice near-zero-pitch or keylock off sound, but never were ready for prime time… hah hah.

17

Out of edits.

Actually, I don’t even use the play/pause to stop the track. I use Cue for that. Anyway, while I only use one or two of the hot cue buttons per track, the inability to just push cue with your hand on the touch platter (non-M) or holding the M record means the hot cue is just easier to set a cue. That’s another thing that needs fixing. And motor-off pitch bend on the Ms is still way too fast and not adjustable, but I don’t ever use that, anyway. Just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s for InMusic.

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Funny, my old XDJ R1, in many ways worked better than the RX3. As for start positions, I edit all the tracks, so the moment I press play, I get the downbeat. If the track starts offbeat (like, Magic carpet ride) I just stick something in there to mark it. If the track annoyingly doesn’t start with a half decent rhythm we stick one in. Or for example, certainly tracks with horrible endings or fade-outs (like Shinny disco balls) we just re-edit it, so that it flows out properly.

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By the way, I’m also not referring to hammering the hot cues like a newb to the beat instead of beat matching by riding the pitch by-ear. You’ll see when you get them what the advantage is for cue setting and jumping back to it later after you’ve perfected your beat match for the coming transition. Shift cue is an awkward shortcut to set the main cue, shift play/pause is an awkward way to stutter back, the current non-shift method of setting the main cue is more the Numark/Denon style, and you’ll also spread out the wear and tear of the main cue and play/pause to other tact switches. On Pioneer CDJ-1000 & 2000 I rarely bothered with the hot cues, and on the CDJ-900 I never missed them. Try the Prime hot cues at least a few times to see what I’m talking about. For that matter, the beat jumping mode on them is pretty cool, too, as you can immediately turn a four to the floor momentarily into a breakbeat or glitch step. I never imagined I’d ever use such a seemingly ridiculous thing.

21

I have ordered a pair. I got an amazing price for 2, they should arrive tomorrow. Silly question, do these come with RCAs in the box? I cannot find out anywhere, what the box contents are.