The problem with some Japanese brands, is that they needed to conform to, for instance, European law.
In the case of Toyota, to sell cars in Europe, they needed to have a certain percentage “made in Europe” parts. That resulted in many reliability problems…
Excellent point, @Reese, and despite everything, Toyota is still the world’s leading manufacturer in terms of vehicle sales (including Lexus).
Lexus models are probably less subject to these directives; I don’t think any Lexus is manufactured in Europe. It’s a brand that primarily targets the US market. Few Lexus models are sold in Europe.
How does that work for the dodgy Fujis with the broken shutter buttons, the Nikons with the strap lugs that fall off their flagship camera, or the oil on the sensor, the Sony shutter mech failures or the Canon overheating?
All on high end cameras designed and manufactured in Japan.
Not sure we can blame Europe for that.
Regarding X1700…
Rumor is that firmware was done by an outside team so when Denon DJ brand was sold by D&M Holding to inMusic, rights for the continued development were not included. inMusic wanted to switch everything in-house due to having AirMusic so they went with X1800 as a fully inMusic model.
X600, X1600 and X1700 owners got shafted, all we needed was that one firmware upgrade to restore El Capitan CoreAudio incompatibility…
They could have also open sourced their firmware to give the devices longer lives. But that doesn’t help sales. Not saying it’s a conspiracy or anything like that, it’s just life with software enabled stuff.
Just coz yours did something in 2024 or whenever doesn’t give that quote any validity. Especially the forever bit lol
I’ve had Denon products since the early nineties smartarse.
My brother works at Toyota engine factory on engine block QC… 10% don’t pass the QC. These are not very much reliable. So far many brands outlive the Japanese cars here… At the moment nothing beat million Km reliability like Volvo cars.
As for Denon products - it also a lot goes to how you treat the gear. Before covid I toured in west Europe with my SC5000 / 5000M 4 deck setup. It was super reliable. Only downside I had - was the X1800 channel faders had to be replaced after 2 months of use. Except that - rock solid. Sold my SC5000’s during covid, they work till this day with the new happy owner.
Fast google search and… The Tesla Model Y was the best-selling car model globally in 2024. It sold over 1.09 million units worldwide, surpassing the Toyota Corolla and RAV4.
You could write a phonebook thick list of these issues…
Sadly, I was one of them. Had to sell my X1600 and X1700 because of that…
There is a German company (REVIVAL - USB audio protocol converter) that revived the Xone DB2/4 series USB connectivity, with their USB Translator PCB, they developed. They presented it at Superbooth 2024. Maybe they could add X1600/1700/600 to the programming too…?
When name-calling is required to try and push a point of view, it’s a lost cause.
Perhaps you’d prefer to quantify your statement with a year or model where, you feel, that quality control started to become an issue. Denon DJ products were often referred to as “Built like a tank” and “solid” - quite different from the hollow plastic offerings made by some other manufacturers.
I’m not disputing that some parts on some current units could be built with quadruple priced components to further improve their already high quality and robustness - built to stand up to gorillas or even the unmusical antics of James Hype style copy-cats - but those those who treat their electrical gear with due respect, the current sourced and priced components seem to have been chosen with considerable care and the correct price point to performance/longevity ratio …. For most
There’s no point. We know you’re an obsessed fanboy who has had numerous accounts here over the years and just constantly pushes Denon whilst berating others comments. Sadly you’re a lost cause too.
Not a very mature-sounding argument, sorry. Obsessive brand-defending and downplaying others who have legitimate issues won’t help anybody. I am a passionate Denon DJ / Numark / SoundSwtich / (Akai) user myself and enjoy the gear and ecosystem a lot, and yet, we have to remain honest. inMusic had undergone some challenging transformations, which resulted in some worse (ditching firmware support or spare parts) and some better (keeping the MCX8000 alive with updates as long as possible, much better discussion forums without censoring, Engine DJ itself) effects for the userbase. Right now we are on a good path, and just had been unlucky with some issues (faulty OLED screen batch from that manufacturer). But others are, put mildly, at least questionable engineering decisions, especially the fragile and soldered channel faders on several products, and subpar micro-switches (Play, Cue, View…) which cause more pain than necessary. Support with spare parts is also (regionally) worse than with that other brand, as often discussed here, on Facebook or Reddit. I can’t comment on the motorized devices, though.
No reason for either overdramatization or excessive defense. Let just acknowledge these given issues, and work together with the team, to improve the products in the next iterations. We have a robust foundation, overall.
Denon DJ products were often referred to as “Built like a tank” and “solid” - quite different from the hollow plastic offerings made by some other manufacturers.
One thing we should clarify here, I certainly agree to that in regard of the used materials and chassis, especially when we compare the SC5000/6000 with their CDJ-2000(xxx) plastic bomber line, or the Prime 4 with many of their offerings. MC6000, their X1600/1700 and most older DN-S decks were also regarded as tanks (and so was the CDJ-1000Mk3, to be fair). We are talking about individual, yet crucial components, though. And in that regard, reliability, while not bad, isn’t fantastic either. Lots of negative comments on Reddit in that regard - not all justified, but just playing to your “often referred to as” - it goes both ways. And we haven’t covered Engine DJ (desktop) vs Rekordbox yet. Though Rekordbox does everything to become Windows Vista or whatever, lol.
Reliability is also the result of quality control. It’s normal for any company to have a certain percentage of defective products. But that’s what quality control should be used for, allowing only reliable products to pass through and discarding those deemed defective or unreliable.
In the case of Denon DJ products, most of the recurring problems users encounter are often (not always) primarily due to design issues. The thin and fragile plastic frame that ends up breaking cue/play buttons is a design issue, either because the part was poorly designed, the type of plastic chosen was poorly chosen, or there was insufficient durability testing to ensure that the part as designed could withstand a sufficiently high duty cycle by simulating intensive use to be acceptable.
But I could say the same thing about the P4/P4+'s View button, or the lack of a heat sink on the SC6000M’s motor voltage converter, which overheats.
All these problems are not due to quality control issues, but to design and development problems upstream.
You can have the best quality control in the world, but if certain parts of your product are poorly designed upstream, the problems will reach to the end customer.
Great summary
Quite possible. Loads of super smart people can dump firmware, reverse engineer and then patch. Sadly, it’s illegal in many places to do that, even if a product is discontinued 
Yeah, that is illegal, but only for certain time. If the patents and copyrights expire, you can do what you want eventually.
Im sure ive read somewhere before that there are people using cracked versions of Engine… the concept of that is just wild to me.
Modded, not cracked. They don’t open any new things in engine, just mod to their own idea. Same goes for Hakai (hacked Akai) - the software for MPC’s. It does not contain any plugin unlocks, but adds functionality, that is normally locked or not implemented. These coders are much more exploring and testing what is possible, not sell anything or open any access to paid parts of the software.
I am not encouraging this behaviour, but I am not against it.
Cracked means that software has been modified to circumvent piracy protection or enable features someone has not paid for. TLDR; Cracked == Pirated
As @NoiseRiser sates, the folks you mention use modified versions of the OS.
For the modifications, there are plenty of reasons why people do this:
Sorry im not up on the official lingo, in my head ‘cracked’ just meant modified outside of the vendors control.
Deadmau5 is using Controller mode on CDJ3000 that is connected to a computer via usb, that is running Touch designer. This translates the midi signals to keyboard and mouse button presses and XY movement - no hacks needed - same can be done with SC5000/6000 in controller mode.
James hype? Naaa this guy is overhyped, not inventing.