It seems to me Pioneer DJ just came out with something that has a fit and finish that already surpasses Prime, and they did it completely in secret and in-house.
We’ve also been asking for column selection in the browser from the beginning. That intelligent key matching is something I recommended to the devs WAY back and they dismissed it as being too complicated in favor of useless exact matching. I just do it manually, anyway, but that’s not the point. And the CDJ-3000 has a functioning sound card, Ethernet track offloading from Rekordbox, and on and on. Prime lit a fire under Pioneer DJ’s rears for sure, but Pioneer DJ also looks like they pulled this off.
There are certainly some Prime features the CDJ-3000 is missing and also a couple legacy quirks that persist that Pioneer DJ still haven’t resolved on their line that irks me and prevents me from personally wanting to buy this new model, but I really think you’ve got this flip flopped, man. InMusic dinked around with tons of new hardware models (weirdly chosen and bracketed, at that), some strange firmware priorities, and a lot of, frankly, slowness about it, while neglecting to bring their QA and firmware fully up to snuff in that 3 years, while Pioneer just match-pointed them in a single bound ninja-style – THAT’S the story.
There’s not going to be any wrong buttons, speed glitches, ground problems, or inability to set a new cue point on initial track load on the Pioneers. There will be very few people with units dying shortly after purchase and having to be replaced. Every other person I’ve met with Prime seems to have had to get at least one item swapped at some point; I had to exchange one player and one of my mixers still can’t turn off Sweep FX. My only big paid gig I’ve ever brought Prime out to was New Year’s silent disco in Dayton and they literally froze and rebooted in the middle of the set.
Now, we will certainly see if the reliability and supposedly superior SRC on the CDJ-3000 will be enough to offset the fact that it’s 4X the price per layer compared to Prime. Anyone only wanting ‘standard’ gear and/or wanting to rent their gear out has already probably disqualified Prime regardless of any of the above events. So InMusic’s got to convince those remaining to jump on board and accept the risk for that associated discount. Hopefully the CDJ-3000 lights a comparable fire under InMusic’s rear to put the resources into Prime to rise to the challenge.
Two issues still not resolved on the CDJ-3000 that are long quirks from the whole Pioneer player line. Prime doesn’t have those problems. Same reason I gave the MDJs a shot. Same reason I enjoy the Hanpins as much as I do, among other reasons. Plus I already have older Pioneers if I really want reference sound with keylock off, which it doesn’t look like you’re going to get on the CDJ-3000, anyway.
I also don’t have any issues. I was not even aware of this forum for 2 years from the moment I bought my Primes in 2017. Mixer had a small issue with a fader and they fixed it and resent back in 7 days. I never came here with a problem. And I think many people don’t even know about the denon dj forum like myself. I got here when European Artist Relations Director from Denon asked me to hop on the forum for more hardware fun discussions.
All people that I personally know that own any Prime product also didn’t have any issues yet.
By the way, when I said “every other”, I meant about half of the people I know with Prime, as in alternating, not every person besides me. Not sure if that should have been hyphenated or just worded differently. I’ve had problems and about half of the people I know who’ve had them seem to have had problems… and that’s just the hardware side.
I’ll give you a hint: they’re two things Pioneer DJ knows about, could resolve on their entire line in firmware, and they have no interest in resolving. I’ll give you 20 questions. Go!
Except that literally every other brand of standalone player and every controller/software combo in the world lacks these issues, and I’ve taught scores of DJs and I see every single one of them eventually having to deal with them and think twice about what they’re doing because of these dumb design choices Pioneer DJ is so certain about. So their 15 year old market research or whatever the hell resulted in this can get flushed down the toilet, as far as I’m concerned. At one point, one of these issues they attributed to actual hardware limitations, then at another point they attributed it to something completely different to eliminate another potential problem, but I disproved both of those claims and then proved it was a firmware thing causing it.
I believe the Denon vs Pioneer jargon can be reduced simply to philosophy.
Here’s my case.
Pioneer is now reduced to it’s ecosystem and they will further capitalize on their ecosystem. They released a deck which under the hood is the most advanced system so far. Any facility or anyone who spends $$$$$$ on a sound system will not want any weak link in their chain simply cause they spent so much to do so.
Pioneer can only attract a certain group but Denon can attract anybody and they’ve shown it. They worked towards attracting djs from almost a full spectrum point of views.
I know if Denon can make beatgridding on deck more robust, more people will be willing to give the primes a shot.
I know if denon can have prime mixer fx control liked to a prime players touch screen then there will be a different kind of showmanship and a new way to face police djs.
Want to guess at the 2nd quirk/issue? Two different ways of resolving it, or they can do both. Prime is sort of doing both ways.
Hint: The 3rd thing (the one feature request) is kinda already on the CDJ-3000 and lacking from the legacy models, though done in a different way than they could do easily on all those old models. That’s the key change stuff.
Everything has it’s pros and cons. Denon is going in a better direction. Playing on the Scx000M series is more fun than any piece of gear so far.
From my perspective it seems like the direction of the winds are changing. Denon has now in many ways have become a standard in dj gear and a very big weight to throw around when comparing competing products. Every review video that will come out now for the cdj3000 will be judged by being compared to a Denon.
Seen several of those, but most compare to the previous CDJ. I hope Mojaxx is honest, because all the renowned others seem to repeat the press release but in different words.
The digital dj tips video Phil did try hard not to mention denon and when he did he looked kinda guilty for doing it😆 Mojax did compare he just didn’t say denon. (He was the most disciplined of the bunch) Crossfader compared it.
