Without getting into extended detail on everything else I’d like to say about the MCX8000, I have a feature request that would greatly improve my MCX8000 experience:
Needle drop lock when used as a Serato controller
The jog platters are low-profile and the top of them is very close to the needle drop touch strip. I have found myself very frequently accidentally touching the needle drop strip while turning the edge of the jog platter to adjust a playing song. When used standalone, the firmware accounts for this and keeps the needle drop strip from being functional unless the playing track is paused or one lays their palm on the platter (in vinyl mode) and uses a finger to scroll along the strip.
This behaviour does not carry over when the MCX8000 is in PC mode. The needle drop strip is always active even while the deck is playing. I have been forced to go into Serato setup and disable needle search to prevent accidental jumps in the song. It would be extremely great to have the same behaviour in standalone mode as in controller mode: needle drop/search does not function unless the player is paused or stopped by laying your palm on the platter.
Unfortunately my only solution for this so far has been to disable needle search completely in Serato setup.
There is a setting in Serato DJ that allows the Needle Strip to be locked unless you are pressing the “Shift” button too. Sounds like what you were looking for.
Stability and reliability should be the priority, ensuring that a DJ can get through a normal gig without having to worry about screen freezes, audio degradation, unresponsive buttons etc.
More Hardware FX - the current three isn’t enough
independent FX parameters e.g. the number of beats. Its global currently
Pad FX will be nice too. One push for backspin, one push for echo out etc.
Record via USB
Ability to combine hardware FX with Serato FX (Colour FX style)
More compatibility with different files - the current limit on sample rate is a pain. It should just support all the files the sc5000 supports and more
Cue button light to be tweaked - I couldn’t make out if its off/on
The FX could be a shift + twist of the FX knob to change. How easy could it be to port some of the FX over from the Prime mixer? Imagine having around 10+ to play with? The beat breaker, filter and phaser etc on a pad FX too would be epic. This could be on the cards for a MK2 Prime I dare say but if any more could be squeezed out of what we have then it’s a true test of longevity and what can be achieved. Too many companies move to a better revision without actually realising full potential of the current hardware. Obviously it’s money but a few extras are nice.
Record to USB would be amazing as I really need to get my sets recorded and removing that extra step of connecting the MCX to a computer or hardware recorder gets my vote.
The cue button light issue will never again be repeated as it’s not like that on the Prime setup. The error of their ways was rectified on that model!
I’d like a non-mirrored look to the unit. Asymmetrical isn’t user friendly and hate how some of the buttons aren’t consistent, depending if you’re on the left or right deck.
The shift on deck A is perfectly placed yet on deck B it is awkwardly placed as hands are having to swap when shift actions are used. The play and cue buttons are mixed with the loop and sync on deck B. It really is awful and almost two years after owning it I still make mistakes. Make the layout like a small Prime setup. The Pio SX managed to perfectly emulate decks and a mixer.
Centre display like on SC5000. It’s been added to a recent rival controller so can be replicated on a future MCX and will negate the need for the outer LED ring of lights. It can go once a centre screen is in.
I don’t have the controller again so i’m just reflecting on my time with it.
+1 on the non mirrored layout - it solves two issues
keeps everything like a mini prime set up (2 decks and a mixer)
I would prefer the Pitch/Tempo Fader to be higher up than the jog wheel if they want to keep the mirrored layout. The Left one gets knocked when scratching. Non-Mirrored layout solves this as the pitch faders will be on the right side of the jog wheels and won’t get in the way.
If a central screen is coming - Parallel waveforms or a Phase meter/counter for the dual screen. Preferably an active phase counter that works irrespective of active or non active sync.
The DDJ1000 looks nice - - - - - - - - - - -right up until you get to try it which I did at a DJ meeting a few days back. Then it start losing appeal pretty damn quick. The displays in the middle of the jog wheels are tiny - - - they’ve put a hopelessly full amount of info on them likw a little waveform, a little album art picture, a bpm readout, a pitch read out, a time remain/elapsed countup/down timer and more, all in the space which used to be just the rotating petals daisy display on any other pioneer deck.
Putting the full sized nexus2 platter on a medium sized controller was also a bad bad move, although i guess that prime has reduced the orders for nexus so pioneer have got to get rid of all those platters somehow. The platters on this are too big for this size controller. All the buttons feel cramped and catching your fingers on the buttons nearest to the platter edges is way too easy - – - - - and im not even a scratcher. I kept catching my fingers on other buttons just while cueing up a track. Its like installing a steering wheel from a bus or an 18wheeler articulated truck into a smart car.
There are a few things up top on the opening post about “it’s been said” without saying who said them. Me and 100 other people say that its not worth worrying about hearsay. :-) The whole idea about the “Ram processer” (whats a ram processor?) is too small is nothing to worry about. Yeah the SC5000 prime is quad core and the 8000 isnt, but neither is anything else - even the nexus2 doesnt boast even a dual core.
All that said though if a mcx8001 were to have a quad core then yeah thats gotta be better than a single core so maybe its the quad core that gives Primes the ability to anaylse files on-the-fly instantly and read and convert rekordbox files. I’ll have some of that please.
But then I think about the cost coz in therory if you put two SC5000s and a 4 channel mixer in the same casing it should be sold for about £4500 ($3800 USD?) and thats just not going to meet most peoples budgets for what would be ONE bit of equipment. after all the 8000 is cheap when you think about it in what it replaces in terms of separate items coz its 2 decks and a proper usable 4 x channel mixer.
Maybe there should be something in the middle then. But!!! ??? what features to lose from a SC5000 prime to make a mcx8001 cheaper, and what features to lose from a x1800 to make that cheaper.
The other thing i think of now is - - -now that Denon have shown what a player CAN be made to do, is anyone going to accept anything less now ?
I have a back-up controller at home from around 5 years ago and it’s a Stanton SCS4.DJ.
This thing has stacked parallel waveforms four USB ports, the ability to use a keyboard for searching and it’s killer feature? It can scan the tracks within the unit. It’s Linux inside.
So what can Denon do? Easy. This thing retailed at around £500 so it’s more than possible to create a higher quality version of it. Yes it scanned slowly (and I mean slowly!) and yes it isn’t a high quality build but the underlying technology exsisted over 5 years ago yet we are to see it mainstream.
Take the guts out of the SCS4.DJ, refine the internal software experience and place it into an MCX8000 Prime and it’s a killer machine. It could even play MP4 files (but only on its internal display… shame it had no HDMI out!). It can record sets with it’s built in USB ports and the FX was upgradeable with firmware. It also had QuikGrid, it’s own analysis software to take the load off the unit. We’re seeing this in £1500 players but not in £500 controllers.
I still have the Stanton and would use it if I ever needed an emergency back up. It’s funny really… had that been heavy duty build like an MCX8000 then it would be amazing.
So powerful processor inside is the norm now. Samsung are selling Exynos chips to vendors to be built into devices and car internals to drive in-car entertainment or self driving. The technology has progressed since Stanton released their all-in-one controller. The same price would get you amazing tech.
So yes, I’d say £1000 could get you an MCX8000 MK2 Prime with on-board track analysing and still make profit, while making the competition look lame. It’s been done before, admittedly not to the highest of standards when it comes to finish, but it’s been done… and five years ago at that.
I remember that one. It had a clever design idea of a gap under the unit for hiding a hard disk drive which was good, but yeah your right it was built like a kindergarden play thing. the search dial i remember was like a wobbly flat plastic jar lid so bad to use.
I do think though that standalone units will come back so strong, and will feature more and more against laptop or computer requiring setups. With a computer in the mix, there’s just way to much to go wrong.
I don’t think the maths is like that ie 2 SC5000 + 1 X1800 = MCX8000 Prime
It’s not like the all on in one will have two separate Power supply, two separate DAC, 2 boards etc so that’s some savings there already.
If it’s a prime controller and really robust enough to do standalone for 1500 - 1700 it will still be a major hit I’d say.
To even save further they can pass on the cost of Serato support to the end user. E.g. make sure it’s Serato ready but don’t bundle it with a licence. That will bring some clarity to Serato from a business point of view as I’m sure a big chunk of the profit go to Serato NZ
(The SCS 4DJ) is a brilliant bit of kit… just flimsy.
If that was as robust as any Denon DJ gear it would be a pretty solid controller. Oh and that ‘browse’ knob in the middle is like a plastic jar lid… haha!
If Stanton could do that in around 2012-ish I wonder what a company like InMusic could do with it buying power and design? For £1000/$1000 we could have an MCX/RX style all-in-one controller that’s sturdy enough to be trusted on the road with no computer needed.
The design wouldn’t have to change from what it currently is as the size of a mobile phone could be slipped into the unit as even a £250 phone has enough computing power to run an entire controller.
I’m still at a loss as to why all of this isn’t possible on the current internals of the MCX8000. Linux requires VERY little specs to run efficiently and I’m positive that’s what the 8000 is currently running… or would be positive, if I can ever get my hands on a spare to dissect.
Everything you just described on a 5-year old control should be possible with the 8000! So what’s up, InMusic??
Thing is whAt ever Product has ever come out, is out, and will come out, someone, somewhere will always be ready to say that they want it to do more and shout about get rid of pall those features I won’t use and make space and processing powers available for the features I want in it.
People are even asking for more stuff to be added to even the Prime stuff and that’s loaded already.
What’s vital and mega important to some people will be a worthless expensive and il never use it ever option for some other people
If the unit that is out now would be solid and stable that would be awesome!!! I don’t need that stupid extra extra stuff. I
Love the sound quality of the unit. It’s miles ahead of pioneers Xdj-Rx units.
When synchronizing the tracks manually in autonomous mode, I miss a visual reference, as in many players and software. I understand that for that are the LEDs of the jog wheel.
When I position the cue on the grid, the led is positioned at the beginning, but when it turns around it does not coincide with the first compass and so on that makes the LEDs do not have much sense more than for something decorative.
Is there any way to adjust this?
I think it’s something important especially for those of us who want to get rid of PCs and do not want to use sync.
I use a lot the sync feature to change the tempo while two tracks are playing. Here is my two recommendations.
Actually, we must press the “sync button” to the deck that are not actually playing to set the sync function properly. If we have a track playing in the Deck A at 120 BPM and a track loaded at 125 BPM in the Deck B, if we press the sync button on the Deck A, the song currently playing step up to 125 BPM directly and the master deck is on the Deck B. Is it possible to set up the master deck automatically on the deck currently playing? And also, the master deck could switch to the next deck if we hit play/pause or cue to stop it.
Another thing it will be nice to have is a tempo control like Serato where we can hit shift to change the tempo slider position. It’s very useful when we need to decelerate or accelerate a lot to match the bpm of the other deck in sync while keeping a smooth control at a lower BPM range.
I don’t know if these things are possible in Engine, but if yes, it will be two more reasons to use Engine more often!
No offence meant, but why would you load a track on deck B, but then press the sync button on deck A?
I find the way it works now is logical, whichever deck you want to sync to the other, just press that button.
With that said, I do like the idea of having the deck that is playing automatically made to the master.
I also like the “shift + pitch slide = disable pitch” to enable pitch slide movement (from top to bottom etc) without affecting actual pitch.
bonjour en mode autonome de la mcx8000 sa serai super que les point cue qu-on fait soit enregistré par le moteur engine car a chaque fois que je fait le point cue sur une chanson fichier mp3 il y a un décalage après quand on reste avec le même fichier sava du moment quand je passe a un autre fichier et si je souhaite de remettre le même fichier bin les point cue que j’ai faite son décaler
donc mon souhait si possible sa serait bien que le moteur engine mémorise mes point cue pour que a chaque fois je n-est pas a refaire les point cue merci denon dj
hello in the standalone mode of the mcx8000 it will be super that the point cue what is done is recorded by the engine engine because every time I made the point cue on a song mp3 file there is a lag after when we stay with the same file sava of the moment when I pass to another file and if I wish to give the same bin file the point cue that I made his shift so my wish if possible it would be nice if the engine engine memorizes my point cue for that every time I do not have to redo the point cue thank you denon dj
The whole idea about the “Ram processer” (whats a ram processor?) is too small is nothing to worry about. Yeah the SC5000 prime is quad core and the 8000 isnt, but neither is anything else - even the nexus2 doesnt boast even a dual core.