In this article, we will be giving you a comprehensive review of the Pioneer DDJ 1000 controller, recommended by industry professionals. The Pioneer DDJ-1000 controller for Rekordbox DJ is a four-channel gadget that has two full-size jog wheels with high-resolution display screens constructed into their centers. The screens are stunning, and the jog wheels are mechanical and responsive, comparable to what you'd discover on a CDJ-2000NXS2.

It's an essential controller for Pioneer DJ and is one of its finest recently. It's great for innovative and intermediate gigging DJs who desire the closest approximation to a club set-up in a laptop computer DJ controller—highly recommended.

Hard Facts

The Pioneer DDJ-1000 controller for Rekordbox DJ is a four-channel gadget that has two full-size jogwheels with high-resolution display screens constructed into their centres. The screens are stunning and the jogwheels are mechanical and responsive, comparable to what you ‘d discover on a CDJ-2000NXS2. It's an essential controller for Pioneer DJ and is one of its finest recently. It's great for innovative and intermediate gigging DJs who desire the closest approximation to a club set-up in a laptop computer DJ controller. Highly recommended.

IMPRESSION/ SETTING UP

The DDJ-1000 has 4 channels with trim pots, three-band EQs, Color FX knobs, and an assignable Magvel crossfader. It's got 2 decks, and each deck has a jogwheel with a built-in display, performance pads, a pitch control, transport controls, deck select buttons for changing to decks 3 and 4, and loop buttons that resemble what you ‘d find on a CDJ. There are no FX section controls here like what you ‘d discover on a DDJ-RX, DDJ-RZ, and so on, and the reason for that is since it's already got a Beat FX area in the mixer.

The rear of the system has XLR and RCA Master outputs, 1/4″ Booth outputs, RCA phono/ line input jacks and 2 combination Microphone inputs. It's also got a power jack, power button and twin USB sockets for linking up to two laptop computers for DJ switchovers. The front of the unit has 1/4″ and 1/8″ headphone outputs.

I plugged the DDJ-1000's wall wart power supply, hooked it up to my laptop computer, fired up Rekordbox DJ, switched the unit on and got going.

Jogwheels and screens

The jogs on the DDJ-1000 have got to be some of the finest that Pioneer DJ has put out. This is surprising, considering that this controller comes in at under US$ 1200– that's “affordable” by Pioneer DJ requirements (the DDJ-RZ with full-size jogs and no onboard screens expenses double).

The next thing we've got to speak about are the screens: they are beautiful. Not iPhone X or Samsung S9 beautiful, but they look great– definitely a generation apart from screens discovered on Pioneer DJ's media gamers. They're high resolution and they likewise have a high frame rate, 2 things which Pioneer DJ was dragged in compared to its existing rival Denon DJ. The DDJ-1000 puts Pioneer DJ directly in 2018 territory as far as displays go, and it does not take much of a stretch to envision this kind of screen to appear on an upcoming variation of its CDJ/ XDJ media player (CDJ-3000NXS, anybody?).

The screen reveals the album waveform, time, and art. It also reveals a stage meter that has an indication for every single four bars, which is cool since when it concerns dance music, essential developments in a tune happen after counting 4 bars. Pioneer DJ just made it much easier for you to tell where you are in a 4 bar expression thanks to this phrase meter.

You also get 2 ways of seeing your position in the track: very first is by means of a playhead that goes from left to right in the track, and the second is through a bar that goes around the screen, type of like a clock's hand.

Some aspects of the display screen are customizable: you can change the color of the waveform, you can pick to conceal album art, and you can select whether you want to see the track's remaining time or elapsed time.

Sound Color & Beat FX

The DDJ-1000 is the very first DJ controller from Pioneer DJ to have two hardware effects areas onboard, and these are impacts that are pulled directly from the DJM-900NXS2, together with a few that are exclusive to the system (more on them later). This indicates that these results are constructed into the controller itself instead of simply being controls for Rekordbox DJ's results, and that lets you include impacts to any audio that travels through the DDJ-1000's mixer area.

There are 4 Sound Color FX: Dub Echo, Pitch, Noise and Filter. These are controlled by the Color FX knob on each channel. There are also 14 Beat FX which are picked via the rotary switch in the Beat FX area: Low Cut Echo, Echo, Delay, Spiral, Reverb, Transformer, Engima Jet, Flanger, Phaser, Pitch, Slip Roll, Roll, and 2 Mobius Effects. The Mobius Effects let you produce intriguing looping results that loop into each other, and are a hardware special on the DDJ-1000 (it's included in the most recent Rekordbox DJ software upgrade, too). You can see which impact you've got picked through the Beat FX OLED display screen.

The results sound excellent, however more significantly the method they work is precisely the way you ‘d utilize impacts when you're spinning at the club with a DJM mixer. That indicates you can practice using those impacts in the house on your controller, which can be puzzling for new club and bar DJs who haven't spent much time blending with a CDJ/DJM set-up. This offers you more confidence to “step up” to the effects tweaking plate when you're at the club.

Loop controls

The DDJ-1000 has a looping area that's similar to what you ‘d discover on a CDJ or XDJ media gamer: there are Loop In and Loop Out buttons for developing your loop manually, and you can develop 4 beat Auto Loops utilizing a single button. Again, this works to familiarise yourself with the way looping deal with CDJs/ XDJs, which new club DJs might find complicated since the loop control design for its previous DDJ controllers relied on using efficiency pads

Performance pads

The DDJ-1000 has eight efficiency pads per deck with eight pad modes: Hot Cue, Pad FX1, Beat Jump, Sampler, Keyboard, Pad FX2, Beat Loop and Key Shift. The latter 4 pad modes are accessible via a Shift layer.

The pads themselves are smaller than what you ‘d discover on the DDJ-RZ, DDJ-RZX, DDJ-SZ2 and are closer to the size of the DDJ-RX. They're responsive and springy, and are built to be used and abused, which is great because having the Keyboard pad mode means that you can play melodic hint juggles on them, type of like what you ‘d have the ability to do on the DDJ-XP1 pad controller.

CONCLUSION

What you're getting is quickly the most effective and advanced DJ controller that Pioneer DJ has actually made for Rekordbox DJ, and one that might extremely much be at the very peak of its present technological powers. It's hard to believe of what other innovation Pioneer DJ could add to this gadget moving forward without introducing a paradigm shift in what DJing is or what DJ controllers need to have onboard.

The jogwheels are also mechanical as opposed to touch-sensitive, meaning they are comparable to what you ‘d find on a club basic CDJ or XDJ media player. Will we see more DJ controllers with built-in display screens, mechanical jogs, or both?

Apart from the displays and jogs, you also get 2 sets of hardware impacts: Sound Color FX (managed by the Color FX knob on each channel) and Beat FX. These are the results that you would typically find on a DJM club mixer (eg DJM-900NXS2, DJM-750MK2, DJM-450 and so on). So yes, you're basically getting something that's extremely, very close to a CDJ/DJM design and set-up in controller type, with the exception being that you still need to link it to your laptop running Rekordbox DJ.

If you're a DJ trying to find a major controller for practice and gig use, the DDJ-1000 ticks that box. If you're a club DJ who spins with a laptop computer and you're trying to find something that bridges the gap in between a house and a club set-up, the DDJ-1000 ticks that box too. The onboard mic inputs and variety of Master and Booth outputs likewise suggest that it's got your connectivity choices covered if you're a professional or mobile DJ. In fact, the only DJ sections that the DDJ-1000 does not service are absolute newbie DJs who are still getting to grips with spinning, and DJs who spin specifically without a laptop (ie thumb drives or vinyl).

This is by far the very best controller Pioneer DJ has put out recently, and we can't think of a much better device for expert, gigging laptop DJs. Extremely suggested.