Moin @dave93cab,
phps this applies to you:
Brgds BeatMaster
Nothing in digital world is going to give you the same feel of the pitch fader on a 1210 with an analogue fader, and id also probably argue you’ll struggle to even replicate the digital faders of the newer model 1210s (from my experience of using all manner of gear over the years, including the above mentioned). SO in that sense you’ll be chasing unicorns.
My advice, just buy the deck if you want to play digital music and learn the nuances of using it in comparison to the 1210.
I happily run an LC-6000 alongside my own decks, see below.
Then I use a Prime 2 for gigs and a Numark Mixtrack for messing around on, im able to beat match with the same level of accuracy on all of them.
Think of it this way: Prime’s big units require a deliberate interaction on the pitch faders and some attention to the pitch readout to get the most out of them, but this isn’t any more deliberate than Pioneer’s awful jogs… probably still more intuitive than the Pioneer jogs. You might be fine with the big Primes, or you might be happier with the short faders on the GO that will apparently respond to even the slightest of inputs. If you’re used to good controllers, though, the Pioneers will generally seem as unintuitive (or worse) than any Prime.
As for replicating analog pitch faders, the Pioneers at 16% range are analog-like. There was an old model of CDJ-1000 that off RedBook CDs or MP3 (I forget which) actually did 0.1 at 100% range, but then reverted to 0.5 increments for other formats. Strange that they eventually dropped 0.1 at 100% entirely.
Even full 10 bit will do the trick sufficiently and sometimes is even superior to analog. All the Hanpins with 0.05 increments at 16% range and 0.1 increments at 100% are effectively analog or better on a long 100mm pitch fader. If they stayed at 0.05 increments at lower ranges than 16%, that’s not taking full advantage of a 10 bit fader playing off a thumb drive.
The multipurpose all-in-one Hanpins only used a 10 bit fader. The flagship player separates that had built-in 14 bit pitch faders branded as Akiyama, American Audio, Citronic, DJ Tech, Omnitronic, Stanton, Reloop, etc, were coded for their internal playback to just, at best, only 10 bit resolution (though often just 0.1 increments throughout on some of the brandings), but with MIDI they all will do full 14 bit. You can easily see this with custom VDJ skins that show two decimal places or especially in DeckaDance V1 that has 3 decimal places. Three decimals is mostly overkill, and past that to the right the digits are effectively random number generators. I presume these are similar to the Alps faders used on the Kontrol kdj-500 that was hand-built by Luis Serrano and his friends & family. Louis also designed some of the DJ Tech stuff, worked for Image-Line, and is now apparently at InMusic after the DD acquisition.