Paradise Garage, the Loft, the Haçienda … all that stuff, the gear that was developed, the sound systems… were all done from an audiophile perspective. Recorded audio playback as a special event, a spectacle. That’s one of the reasons that Tony Wilson movie was such a parody… nothing about his involvement renovating the venue and pushing for better sound time and again. And before that, the Jamaican sound systems were the same drive. Prior to this, not even movie theaters had a capability to play anywhere near 30-18,000hz faithfully, let alone mimic what the old underground jazz nightclubs’ sonics had been like. Like it or not, but that’s the pedigree of this stuff and where the motivation for mixing tracks together even comes from. Otherwise, you might as well just be a radio ‘disc jockey’ or get replaced by a juke box in the corner.
Joke Reticuli, joke… 
I went to the Haçienda on more than the odd night out via a bouncy Pacer train. That room had the acoustics of a tiled public restroom. At least my toilet had carpet. And what madman puts a big step on a dance floor and marks it with road bollards? If you didn’t sprain your ankle on your baggeez, the bollard-step would take care of it for you.
That said. Some cracking’ nights eh?
Any picture ?
And the original Paradise Garage location was literally a former parking garage, with the only redeeming acoustic properties of the space being its use of low-vibration cement that allowed the subs to properly do their things but not much else good, and their eventual use of early DSP delays and mid-side processing. You have to start somewhere, and these and Studio 54, another Long system, were massive advances in recorded audio playback for large audiences compared to previously. It’s audio aficionados behind the early major advances in the nightclub scene, with, pardon me for saying, not a hugely different demographic compared to audiophile conventions… if you get my drift.
Space is the best sound system I’ve ever heard, followed by digital in Newcastle. Both Funktion one and both their earliest installs.
Seen the valve sound system live too, lemon d and Dillinger… fantastic
One word. Shindig.
Legendary night:) still think I preferred foundation as a venue but digitals system is something else.
I’d be impressed if I ever hear anything that sounds as good as Twilo’s Phazon system did, it was also a fairly ideal space for that setup, just a big rectangular box with high wooden ceilings. I know that system was famously sold off when the club closed, 25 years on it’s probably not still in use somewhere sadly.
Man, that is Gold! Gave me a good laugh. XD
Having talked to many club owners, most of them tell me that they are very interested in the new Denon DJ equipment but most of them told me that their main hindrance was the fact that it is difficult or impossible to do simple repairs such as replacing a volume fader on the x1850 after the warranty period is over as well as the fact that it is difficult or impossible to find spare parts on the internet. Most of them told me that the equipment was not often treated well by the guest DJs and that it was not so rare to have to replace a fader or a cue play button on the decks and that at Pioneer it was a child’s play to replace these parts without the equipment having to go back to repair for weeks.
So indeed if Denon wants to attract the attention of professionals, they have every interest in facilitating the replacement of spare parts especially if the quality control is not at the level of the competition.
Pioneer has well understood this need from the professionals and that’s why they make it as easy as possible to replace parts that are subject to wear.
I think that Denon has made the strategic choice to reserve the repair of products in order to make margins on the after-sales service to compensate for the margin they do not make on the sale of products themselves. And this seems to me to be a very bad choice on the long term because it could lead to a lot of disappointment and frustration for new users during their first experience and they could quickly go back to the competition only for this point.
Last week my booking agency received a complaint that I used “amateurish equipment” (not Pioneer) on their sound system.
I would really hope Denon gets some better brand recognition within the industry. #sad
Don’t worry too much Ben. A couple of months back I was doing a gig with a Mixtrack Pro (backup unit) and some lad walked over and said the following “ere mate, if you want to be taken seriously as a DJ you need to invest in some better equipment” …. whilst I was literally being paid to DJ.
True, and I’ve said this several times over the last few years on this forum that ease of repairability should be a design factor. However, the upfader thing isn’t a Pioneer vs Denon issue. Plenty of Numarks and Denons have had replaceable upfaders, but the X18xx line for some reason doesn’t. The Pioneer S3/7/9/11 and DJM 2000NXS don’t have individual upfader panels. The upfaders on the X18xx are about as hard to replace as on most Eclers I’ve used, which is obviously more annoying than it should be.
The Prime players are definitely not as easy to repair as the CDJs prior to the 3000, but the 3000 seems more complicated compared to Pioneer’s earlier stuff. I haven’t heard anyone laud the 3000’s ease of repair, and Pioneer’s forum mods have been adamant that even diagnosing most of the problems on them need to be done by an authorized service center, to say nothing of the repair itself.
If this was some audiophile sound bar, they were complaining about the sound quality, and you were playing a bunch of industrial, shoegazer, and tech trance on a Prime front end, then maybe I could understand, but most of these booking agencies and venue owners aren’t very tech savvy. Heck, many of the sound guys are surprisingly clueless in far too many venues.
I had a fellow who owns a big DJ business in Ohio come into the little venue I was sound tech and eventually DeFacto resident-by-attrition prior to the pandemic. He said I needed to buy more professional equipment unless I was planning on doing just weddings. He particularly didn’t like the ‘controller with just knobs’. There was no laptop hooked up, so it was all a bit shocking and then amusing to hear. That night I was using a pair of made in Japan Denon DN-HS5500s (built better and the sonic equal of anything Pioneer’s Malaysia factory has ever put out) and a Rane MP2015 built in Washington state… the latter needs no introduction on the forum. This was before I got Prime(d). If you knew me, you’d know how hard it was for me not to rip into this guy over a gear dispute, but it’s not my venue to be disrespecting patrons. After a few minutes, I actually got a thrill out of just smiling at him, especially considering the hate emails I’ve gotten from DJ companies in Ohio for some of my craigslist and FB ads.
While only a few DJs wanted to play on my old, reliable, dirt cheap, bullet proof, perfectly functional American Audio Radius 3000s I had previously kept in there, no one complained about them looking or sounding wrong. In fact, some with Pioneer XDJ-RX all-in-ones would say the AAs sounded better. There was also a brief period where I just kept my Pioneer CDJs and Gemini MDJs in the venue to use with the venue’s busted up DJM-800. I never got any comments positive or negative about the Pioneer and Gemini players side by side, even though the Geminis were a pain in the butt to use. I mean, the Gemini MDJs have their positives because I had their firmware designed to be tailorable to my preferences, which is why I was using them. Anyway, they look like clones, but function very differently even when operating correctly. If the Gemini were as predictable and reliable as the Pioneers, I’d have just been using the Geminis alone.
I got way more comments on the front end at all, and universally compliments, when I swapped all that out for SC5000s once their firmware was finally stable and quirk-free enough… from the venue owner, his bartenders, patrons, and long-time DJs. They liked the look, the sound, etc. I personally could tell a difference between all the prior players and the Prime players’ Engine OS sound, but I frequently mentioned that to people and asked their opinion on it, and rarely did anyone agree with me that it was noticeable. Granted, the venue’s power was properly grounded, so the touch never got squirely, and we’re talking compression driver with crude waveguide tweeters and a rattling old building. It was all stereo and time-aligned, though, for both the patrons and the DJs.
Put Pioneer stickers over DenonDJ on the unit/s, dumbasses have no idea anyway about dj gear 
This is not totally true for the djm-2000/djm-2000 NXS. These tables do have a front panel to replace the fader. The panel is not individual, because once removed, you have access to the 2 right faders or the 2 left faders. But having replaced one myself after 10 years of use on my djm 2000 it’s a piece of cake. There are 4 screws to remove the panel, remove the fader cap, two screws to remove the fader and a cable to connect the fader to the main board to disconnect. It’s plug & play and there’s no need to open and disassemble the whole unit to get access to the fader. And the DJM 2000 is future-proof, the faders are not cheap faders.
Personally I am not ready to replace my djm 2000 for a Denon prime mixer until the latter have the reliability, build quality and a quick access panel for fader replacement. This is a dealbreaker for me.
I wouldn’t replace the DJM-2000 with any mixer in that sector (non-boutique mixers), it’s still the most advanced DJ mixer on the planet.
it’s so true! This mixer was way too much ahead of its time and its ergonomics different from the other pioneer mixers unfortunately pushed away many users who were too used to the ergonomics of the djm 800/850/900. But this mixer is built like a tank and is totally robust.
There are only two things that are really missing for me in this mixer, it’s the DVS compatibility and the possibility to control the effects, especially the filters from the touch screen on an X/Y axis like on a Kaos pad. Yet the mixer could certainly have done it because on the sidechain remix mode pad you can see that a filter is applied but only on the claps/snare which are quite useless.
It’s true for the NXS version, where you have to remove a third of the faceplate and knobs, and then remove the internal assembly the fader pair’s attached to. There’s no soldering involved and it’s easier than an Ecler or X18xx, but it’s a lot more to deal with than a DJM-800, 900, or the original 2000. I’ve simply soldered in new faders for the 800 before, so the main annoyance on the Denon for me is the Ecler-like disassembly required. I have not needed to do so, though.