DJmixerTech

Cast your minds back a few years, to a time when people began to lose their minds and thought that the revolution was starting with the iPod. From with the belly of the Numark R&D lab came the original iDJ, which on the face of it had some merit but when you scratch just beneath the thin veneer of wow factor, was sadly flawed from a DJ perspective. Needing 2 iPods and having no pitch control really wasn’t a great start for the supposedly DJ oriented product.

So off back to the labs for Numark. Smarting from the wounds of the scornful masses, work started on a successor, the first fruits of which were seen at MusikMesse 2006. It took them long enough to get it out there, but now the iDJ2 (not squared anymore apparently) is ready and out in the wild - and receiving much critical acclaim.

About the review: I had written the best part of this review back in November, but was informed that a new firmware upgrade (v1.09) was due and that it might be better to wait until it was out there. Well it's February 2008 and now it is out there, and from what I can see it was very much worth the wait.

Hell yes. The iDJ2 has been seriously remodelled from the original lack lustre edition and embraces all that is good and proper in the professional DJ scene. Stakes have been seriously raised in all areas and great lengths appear to have been taken to make sure that the iDJ2 shakes off the lightweight image.

In a nutshell, the iDJ2 takes the Numark D2 Director, flattens it out with a rolling pin and adds a mixer, a stunning colour screen and a shedload of ins and outs. What you end up with is a complete (and I don’t use the word unadvisedly) DJ solution that fits in a large laptop bag.

The original had a distinct toy like feel, worthy of not much more than a students pad where yoofmans would turn up with their iPods, plug in and pump out random chooons but some feel that they were DJs while knocking back blue drinks. But this is a whole different kettle of fish. This IS for DJs of all style and levels.

You’re certainly on familiar Numark ground with a well developed look and feel permeating through the iDJ2. having got used to a stream of small iPod consoles, it actually feels bigger than you might expect. I suspect that Numark really wanted this to work properly as a professional level DJ tool and adjusted the layout accordingly.

Broadly speaking, the iDJ2 is a conventional DJ metaphor (as adopted by the slew of MIDI controllers) with decks, mixer and EQ sat around the big colour screen. Everything is where you would expect it to be and nothing is really out of place either. I’m sure some would argue that the pitch controls should be at the side of the jog wheel but it really doesn’t matter.

Quality wise, this is the usual Numark mix of solid and slightly flimsy. The case is a really tough plastic - one for a change not prone to scratches or fingerprints a la Total Control. The knobs are confusing - the main knobs on the top have just too much give for me, whereas the front controls are absolutely rock solid. The buttons are the now familiar squidgy rubber ones used on every Numark device every and do give solid feedback. The pitch faders work but like the knobs have too much side to side movement. Consistency Numark.

One of the obvious key selling point of the iDJ2 is the iPodability (yes a new word). Sat right at the top of the unit is a universal dock. It’s adjustable so even your tiny Nano should fit snugly. Provided you’ve taken the time to prep your iPod properly, you’ll get a seamless integration between the iDJ2 and your music.

The key is in the preparation of the your iPod because once it’s plugged in to the dock, it’s simply a vessel for your music, with the iDJ2 grabbing music and feeding it to channel A or B. But the iDJ2 can act as a very large and expensive dock for you to not only play your music but also to watch video as well. Entering “direct mode” turns channel A into a big iPod controller that plays your music just like you were using your scroll wheel. Not only that, you can also watch videos from your suitably equipped iPod via the S-Video port on the back of the iDJ2. Neat and nifty, but not nearly enough to make you buy it on its own - just a nice side effect really.

But it's not just iPods that are catered for - being the digital age, a serious volume of music is being kept on external devices. This can be simple USB keys or Flash media storage, all the way up to huge terabyte disk holding all the music ever made ever. And the iDJ2, via the USB ports can handle the best part of these USB devices as well. On the back are 2 USB ports, but you can also daisy chain USN hubs if you so wish. And with the advent of the v1.09 firmware, you can also use external CD and DVS drives and have the files operate in almost the same way as digital data files. The release notes do state that using tracks from the same CD at the same time isn’t a great idea though.

Each device appears as “USB#” on screen if plugged in directly and as “USB#-#” if plugged into a hub. It entirely depends on how you want to manage your music - you could keep one huge music collection that goes everywhere with you (and run the risk of losing all your music in one go), or keep a selection smaller devices to spread the load and have some sort of fail safe should the worst happen.

In the digital file format wars, there were winners and losers but overall some firm favourites emerged with those people wanting to spin 1s and 0s and the 1s and 2s. It does seem that the mixture of compression and quality has won out with lossless falling by the wayside with DJs. So it's no surprise that the iDJ2 handles MP3, WAV and AAC only. In the previously discussed iPod direct mode, you can also play DRM protected i.e. iTunes Store music as well.

Perhaps other formats will be supported in further firmware upgrades but working with MP3 will keep just about every potential customer happy.

Source DJWise