I bought my Denon gear back in 2020 but still use rekordbox to create my sets/ create cue points and beatgrid. Only if engine would step up I would use it, it’s just way to time consuming for me to create sets and analyze my streaming tracks on my players. Rekordbox saves me hours, days, and maybe even weeks by easily beat griding all my streaming tracks, allowing me to arrange them with filters and auto adding cue points. The only problem is when trying to transfer my sets to be compatible with engine is more time consuming and makes me wish I bought another type of gear compatible with rekordbox. I have to first rearrange the streaming playlist to be the correct order in rekordbox, then go into by players and set grids and cue points individually for each track in the set by looking at my rekordbox cues on my laptop. This is just crazy to think this is what I have to do to create a streaming set on my denons in 2025.
Let’s face it, it could be a lot better and it’s, most likely, the main reason Denon doesn’t get more love. Their hardware, for the most part, has always been solid and pushed the boundaries. Sadly, they’ve always been 2 steps or more behind in the software department.
I actually like the interface and everything worked perfectly for over 4 years. Then, all of a sudden sync started failing to send over certain of my playlists. It did copy over all of the music. I struggled to fix it to no avail. Not having the playlists is untenable. So, I’ve moved over to Lexicon. It solved the issue and is working great (so far).
You can prepare Streaming playlist with Tidal, Soundcloud, BeatSource, Amazon Music, Apple Music and so on and use this playlist with an RX3? CDJ2000 NXS2? XDJ XZ? etc.?
Without using a Laptop at the gig?
It’s really time to look into RB again I guess. That sounds really cool.
Well did they get beat gridding right finally?`With RB5/6 it was way worse then Engine actually
Yeah, I’ve been looking at saving up for a XDJ-XZ or XDJ-AZ.
I’d have On-Device Color, On-Device Play Count and On-Device Rating, as well as the ability to save my track lists for sets alongside the recording, instead of having to hook up to Engine DJ Desktop to extract history. The Rekordbox history shows when you played the track, which means I can auto-CUE my sets as well, which is important when labels are giving me tracks and want to know exactly when theirs are coming into the mix.
It also means I can take advantage of Intelligent Playlists, which are leaps and bounds more customizable, partly because they can include Color, Play Count and Rating.
I’d also be 100% Club Compatible, as any USB I use would work in any Rekordbox-compatible hardware (ie: Pioneer), and if I was ever asked to play on Denon, I can just have the device convert to Engine DJ on the fly for me on the off-chance that ever happens.
The only advantage the Prime 4+ gave me was I didn’t have to purchase four CDJs and a Mixer, which each cost about 3,000$. However, now that Pioneer is building similar standalone, all-in-one devices, and Rekordbox contains all the features I need, compounded by the fact we’ve been asking Denon for YEARS for these basic features… I am losing a lot of confidence.
I really have zero interest in Apple Music and wish they’d have gone with real features and polish and not this marketing maneuver of a release.
Great to hear that you found a solution for your needs. Please be careful assuming the grass is truly greener on the other side. Loads of people have issues with Rekordbox too.
Thank you, I’ll definitely take a look. I know no software or company is perfect, but I do know both Denon and Pioneer users and every issue I seem to have with Denon is solved for by Pioneer and my friends can clearly articulate how Rekordbox solves the issues.
And while some of this is my opinion and things I wish to see, some of this is starting to get in the way of me being able to form relationships with labels, deliver on what they expect and promote their artists.
So, while I’ve had a decent time with the Prime 4+, it just simply doesn’t do things I’m starting to really need. I’ve gotten absolutely no commitment from Denon on when or even IF they intend on shipping these features, and while fanboys in the past have said “Not even Pioneer has this feature”, Pioneer has been listening and implementing the features people want and need and now all of these features are available within Rekordbox without even a clue of them being implemented within Engine DJ.
And everyone has their own ideas on how to finish that sentence. InMusic could release 20 firmware releases packages, each with 10 user requests within, and still people would say “they missed off my feature”, “My feature should have been in the machine since launch” , “all (yawn) the other machines have this feature already”, “why did they add that feature instead of my feature”, “no one wants that new feature “
Beat grids are good in rekordbox for house music but still off for dubstep and broken beat tracks but easily fixable. Truly being able to filter and rearrange streaming tracks freely is the biggest benefit.
You have to be connected to WiFi or Ethernet cable. Yes this is possible with cdj 3000, the AZ, opus quad and ominous duo. Maybe not all the streaming platforms but yes beatsource, title, soundcloud, and beat port. And you can organize all these on your laptop then put to usb and plug n play.
