Thus UK retailer despatched one for my on personal pleasure.It certainly looks like nothing out there, unless you discount the Vestax Warlord concept piece of course. Favorite this post Aug 20 DJHaving seen this at PLASA this year, I was gagging for a longer go on one in my own safe and warm environment. Ion Discover DJ Computer DJ System 20 (nyc > Bayside queens ) pic hide this posting restore restore this posting. 19.5' x 21' x 23'Gemini roady case cdx2400 DUAL DJ cd player 100 (freehold ) pic hide this posting restore restore this posting. To find your software version, touch the Setup button on your wall control, then touch the Version button at the bottom right o the Basic. Note the difference in the literature downloads for different wall control software versions.

But we're talking bare bones here.Discover DJ is dominated by the 6' jog wheels. The mixer section is decidedly thin on controls, but does have just enough to give you the minimum of features for party rocking with only brief recourse to the screen. This won't withstand the rigours of punishing club use, but that isn't the intended market anyway.Despite the size, the emphasis is all on the jog wheels. Thankfully, the lightness of Discover DJ doesn't seem to reflect the sturdy feel. As far I can see, the only visible piece of metal is the single solitary fader stem. That's not meant as an insult, and perhaps 'extremely cost effective MIDI controller' is more flattering.

You could scale down a full product proportionally, or strip out controls and reduce the feature set. The overall performance and response of the jog wheels is outstanding for a cheap controller, and certainly more than good enough for casual play and for beginners too.Here's a clip to show how well Discover DJ's jog wheels perform:When squishing big DJ products down into a small metaphor, something has to give. But at this price, this is an observation rather than a criticism. I'm guessing it's a MIDI resolution thing, but when you drag or push the sound with the wheel, it takes on a warbling feel. The one downside is the quality of the scratch sound. The on/off touch method takes a little time to get used to, especially for juggling (which is easy to do on Discover DJ).

While this plugs into your computer with a single USB cable, Discover DJ needs an audio interface. Not happy about missing this fundamental of DJing off at all.One final gripe - why is the USB cable hardwired?Oh.one last thing for the beginners reading this. You can of course do this on-screen, but it detracts a little from using the controller entirely hands on. Instead, you're lumbered with simple buttons to adjust the pitch in a pretty inexact way. And to aid the use of the supplied MixVibes Cross software, and to reduce reliance on your laptop, there is also a very simple track navigation and loading control.The one compromise to far for me is the lack of pitch fader. No line faders here I'm afraid, but I'm quite able to live without them.

And it'll only run with Discover DJ plugged in.But this version does offer more than the hardware displays. This is the Discover DJ edition though - cut down a little to suit the limited needs of the average buyer and tailored to work seamlessly with the hardware. Cross is the offspring of the original MixVibes DVS software - cross platform and reworked using the years market intelligence to make Cross as good as it can be. And that software comes in the shape of MixVibes Cross. The simplest will do - I used Native Instruments' Audio 2 DJ.As Discover DJ is just a MIDI controller, it needs something to control.

Mixing and creativity is the order of the day here, with a huge amount of screen real estate given over to waveforms. More on that later.The screen is broadly split in half - deck and mixer controls at the top and library at the bottom, but you can switch this is you like. For example, the lack of pitch control is made up for with full pitch sliders for both decks.

It worked OK for me, and can be manually tweaked if you like, but it's hard to beat your hands and ears. Assuming that the BPM counting is accurate inside Cross, hitting sync should automagically lock beats together for you. Put it this way - if you can't mix with all this visual assistance, then you never will.But if you still struggle to beatmatch 2 tracks, there is also the magic sync button.

There are 3 pitch modes:Speed: Just like every other pitch control - changes the speed.Tempo: Fixes the key but changes the speed. The resolution is a ridiculously small 0.01% with a single mouse click - across ALL ranges. Firstly, the pitch ranges are 4, 6, 8, 16, 32 and 100% and selectable per deck (that's unusual).

Setting them is very simple - either while playing or fine tuned setting on the waveforms. The ability to click in these measures rather than turn a physical knob makes for some nice creativity.While there are no controller on Discover DJ itself, Cross gives you 3 hot cues per track. This loop is also saved for use next time, and can be broken down from 1/8 to 16 beats. This is generally done pretty accurately, and is vital to the success of the looping function.This works in 2 ways - you can manually define a loop, or assuming that the BPM has been calculated accurately you can make instant loops at the press of a single onscreen button. ☓0% still sounds good.Hybrid: This keylocks to around 30% (the comfortable and safe range) and then ups the key proportionally.When you load a track into Cross, it analyses it to create the waveforms and to set the BPM.

This gives you a head start on speed as all analysed waveform and BPM data is saved internally. Cross gives you a number of options for using your music - iTunes integration is good and means that you use it as your way of organising your music.But if you don't like using iTunes, you can call in your music by file, whole directories or by playlists (pls or m3u format). Preparation is key, so you should make sure all your files are correctly tagged. A nice touch.The key to any good DJ software is how well it handles your music.

But considering that Discover DJ costs just £99 and the target market is likely to be less fussy than your average 25 year DJ with prior experience of other units. Being able to assign just about everything via keyboard control gives you a highly customisable experience too.Some things took a little getting used to - the way the jog wheel works on a touch basis, and the lack of pitch slider are the main ones. But this old hack was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to install, the simplicity of use and overall performance. This method lacks the frills of iTunes of Cross sessions, but it is effective for instant loading of supplied disks or USB media.I could go into the nitty gritty of library functionality, but for a £99 controller, you can take it as read that Cross gives you more control over your music than you could ever need.You might reasonably expect a controller of the price range to perform less well than more expensive offerings. And searching is easy - you can filter out across your entire music collection, or selectively search within popular tags.Should you prefer a more ad hoc approach, you can also work with your drive and files directly.

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