See also a live footage clip after the jump and more clips on DJ Orkidea’s YouTube group.
Desert Planet tour video
I’ve had a pair of CDJ-400s now for a couple of days and this is the first hands-on review. Pioneer had some delivery difficulties due to big amount of orders and I had to wait for the players for some weeks.
It’s funny that the change from vinyl to CD took really long and wasn’t an easy step, but leaving CDs behind and going 100% digital feels very comfortable. And the change has been very, very fast.
For now, I haven’t put a single CD inside the CDJ-400s. When I got the package, the first thing to do was to insert the USB sticks and try them out. I tested the players with an old 512mb stick and a new 2gb stick. The device reads the sticks very fast and the playback goes without any problems. You can browse the content of sticks while playing them and easily browse them by ID3 tags (album, artist, trackname).
The screen font size is very big. With a smaller font it would’ve been easier to show longer track names completely. This would be a needed feature especially if you’re having several remixes of one track and you’re seeing only the beginning of the track’s name.
If you’re familiar with Pioneer CDJs, there are not many things for which manual would be needed. However, finding out how to set an automatic loop wasn’t that easy and I ended up browsing the manual. The looping is fast and you can create nice looping effects easily. Entertaining.
The different jog wheel illuminations are a cool feature and I’m definitely going to take the most out of the MIDI features in the near future. The build-in effects feel totally unnecessary, even the much hyped vinyl/scratch effects.
Then, how about the jog wheel feel? I wouldn’t compare the wheel with CDJ-100 (or with CDJ-200, which I deeply hate), but rather with CDJ-800 or CDJ-1000. I would say the feel is closer to CDJ-1000 than CDJ-800. It’s very nice to play and the pitch bending goes without any problems. For scratching the wheel feels a bit too small, at least at first.
All-in-all, I’m very happy of my CDJ-400s. They don’t lack anything which I would have needed and I wouldn’t complain playing gigs with them. If you have any questions concerning the players, feel free to ask.
A couple of CDJ-400 links:
CDJ-400 image
CDJ-400 on Flickr
CDJ-400 on YouTube
CDJ-400 jog wheel illuminations
CDJ-400 review
DJ Orion’s Top Choices 21.03.2008
01. Villalobos – Enfants (Chants)
02. Leftfield – Melt (Cid Inc remix)
03. JS23 – Stomp To My Boot
04. Pryda – Pjanoo
05. DJ Orkidea – Metaverse (Jody Wisternoff remix)
06. Sebastien Leger, Chris Lake – Ghost
07. Cid Inc – I See you
08. Quivver – Surin (Lutzenkirchen remix)
09. Stan Kolev – Breakout (James Harcourt remix)
10. DJ Orkidea & David West – God’s Garden
The official tour mixer of Metaverse Album Release Tour is Korg Zero4. After a couple of gig experiences with the device, here’s a short review including the pros and cons mainly from the DJ’s point of view. DJ Orkidea has been using the mixer on the Tour for live gigs only, I’m sure we can read a full live performance review later on his website.
OK, the pros first.
+ The EQ system is very good. You can adjust the EQs – use them as different filters, isolators or normal EQs. As normal EQ the touch is very similar to Pioneer’s. If you’re used to DJM-600/800, you won’t notice much difference.
+ All the knobs are illuminated. It doesn’t only look cool but it’s big part of the experience. You never need to guess your mixer settings, even when the club is totally dark. Let this become a standard of all DJ mixers.
+ The master effect channel is different from Pioneer’s, but much better. X and Y settings on each effect and channel-like strenght/volume slider is very easy to use and the user interface is fast to learn. Pre-listening of the effect is as easy as it gets and choosing the effect just goes very intuitively. Loop sampling and running FXs on it is a thing you just never get bored with.
+ And all this is just the Master FX. You can still run effects independently for each channel and adjust the effects from the knobs placed next to the EQ. I didn’t try this out too much, but you can really have cool combinations with channel and master FXs together. The real difference with DJM-600/800 is that the effects on those are mainly annoying and add-ons for the played music when the Korg effects are mainly designed for (live) jamming and creating new soundscapes, loops and re-designing your music.
What about the cons, then? There are small things which I found not that attractive, which hopefully will be re-thought in the future.
– Booth volume is next to the Master volume. Same size knob, same colour. I’m happy it never happened to me while playing (even though I’m turning the Booth Vol knob on and off all the time) that I accidentally would boost Master Vol with 70%, but it really annoys me to worry about that when playing.
– Cue level isn’t loud enough, even when it’s max. I’m not deaf, my hearing is still 100% (lucky me:) and on live playing situations the Cue Vol on Pioneer is normally at 9 or 10 o’clock. Last weekend, when playing in Joensuu, the Cue Vol was all the time on max and I still had to boost the channel EQs to hear the track properly.
– I would love to see the places of Pan and Gain knobs changed. All you people used to play with Pioneer know why.
– The mixer has firewire input which works like charm (Orkidea can tell more about this). But when you plug in your firewire cable, it somehow resets the mixer, gives a short black-out and breaks the music for two seconds. You can guess our reactions when we experienced this for the first time on the live situation in Rovaniemi…
Anyway, the mixer is great and has very big potential of becoming a standard device on the clubs. If you have any questions concerning the user experience, feel free to ask.
Here are still a couple of links:
Full-res image of Korg Zero4
Official Korg Zero4 site
Korg Zero4 on Flickr
Korg Zero4 on Youtube
YleX Tiistain Tanssi-ilta 18.03.2008 – Something Good.
01. Atlantis Ita – See You in the Next Life (Beetseekers remix) (CDr)
02. Studio Apartment – I’m In Love (Rasmus Faber Epic Instrumental) (King Street Sounds)
03. DJ Orkidea – Metaverse (Jody Wisternoff remix) (Ava)
04. Quivver – Surin (Lutzenkirchen remix) (BozBoz)
05. Cid Inc – I See You (CDr)
06. Sebastien Leger & Chris Lake – Ghost (Rising Music)
07. Timo Garcia & Ricky Stone – Uncle Fly (Laurent Pepper remix) (Berwick Street)
08. Eric Prydz – Pjanoo (Pryda)
09. Paradise Soul – Wake Up (Redanka’s Wide Awake remix) (Kinky)
10. Dinka – Chemistry (Unreleased Digital)
11. Tempo Giusto vs. Jace – Pure & Sweet (Pasi Korhonen remix) (Finity)
12. DJ Orkidea – Streching Time (Syna remix) (Ava)
13. Utah Saints – Something Good (FFRR)
Tiistain Tanssi-ilta links 18.03.2008
Air to release rarities
Finity Recordings
Syna
Pasi Korhonen
NIN – Ghosts-albumi
Redanka
Something Good 2008
Something Good 1992
Listen Tiistain Tanssi-ilta again on YleX Areena (works in Finland only):
http://areena.yle.fi/hae?pid=195876
Tiistain Tanssi-ilta @ KLUBITUS
Tiistain Tanssi-ilta @ IRC-GALLERIA
Tiistain Tanssi-ilta @ FACEBOOK
Tiistain Tanssi-ilta 18.03.2008 – Something Good.
Tämän viikon TTI:n ekalla tunnilla tuoretta Suomi-soundia: Orkidea, Cid Inc, Pasi Korhonen, Beetseekers, Syna sekä tiukimmat progehouse/trance-poiminnat viime viikoilta parilla klassikkoraidalla maustettuna.
Kiitokset myös parin viikon takaisen shown äänivyörystä – äänestystulokset ovat nähtävillä täällä: http://orion.reaktio.net/mtarchives/001726.html
Tuttuun tapaan ekan tunnin tracklist, biisiäänestys ja linkit näkyvillä heti klo 22:00 täällä.
Stream: http://areena.yle.fi/mediasoitin/ylex/
21:00 DJ Orion
22:00 Leena Lehtinen
23:00 Infekto
Voice blogs only in Finnish, sorry.
Tiettävästi maailman ensimmäinen DJ-keikan aikana äänitetty ääniblogientry ;) sekä läjä muita äänibloggauksia Tampere/Turku-viikonlopulta.
Metaverse hits the road this weekend again and arrives to Klubi, Turku and Hämeensilta, Tampere. I’m waiting for these events a lot, especially seeing the much hyped and little used Hämeensilta as a club venue.
The tour is running very well at the moment. We just got the news that Metaverse record has hit #16 on the official Finnish chart. That’s very good news and on my behalf I deliver the humblest Thank Yous for the support. It’s always awesome to see electronic music hitting the charts.
If you haven’t checked already, take a look at the latest photos and videos of the tour on Orkidea’s site. The photos are under each past event on the main page and videos on the video gallery page.
Here are the event details of the weekend:
DJ Orkidea video interview by Dancefoundation. Orkidea telling about his studio gear and showing what every trance producer in Finland has to have in the studio… ;)
And a radio interview, in Finnish:
YleX:n Mika Niva haastatteli DJ Orkideaa puhelimitse Pop-tehdas-ohjelmaa varten viime tammikuussa. DJ Orkidea (a.k.a. Tapio Hakanen) käy lävitse muun muassa uransa alkuvaiheita, DJ-kulttuuria, valoja sekä omituisimman keikkakokemuksensa Berliinistä.
> Uran alkuvaiheita, haaveet, suomalainen DJ-kulttuuri (MP3) kesto: 8.19
> Omituisin keikkakokemus, valoista, konsertti-kulttuurista (MP3) kesto: 10.28
(thanks, Cascadeus)
Excerpt from Gareth Emery’s latest podcast email:
// Note to labels.
The Gareth Emery Podcast is committed to legitimate dance music sales, which is why we only only play previews of new tracks (typically less than half the running time) – considerably less than would be played in a downloadable DJ mix.
Furthermore, due to our Audiojelly.com affiliation, we ensure that when listeners like what they hear, buying the full track couldn’t be easier.
The question is, why does Gareth’s podcast crew need to write something like that? Have some labels really been stupid enough to threat or even sue a medium which has such an influence on electronic music sales?
I’m waiting for the times when labels and copyright organizations don’t see DJing, podcasting and mixtapes as a threat and loss of income but a HUGE potential for increasing their music sales.
I’m having my 10th anniversary of DJing this year and after all these years of buying and playing the music I really would love to be proud when I’m promoting marginal electronic music rather than being afraid of getting sued because of it.
…This time not mine, though.
See the world’s greatest music collection being sold. If you have some extra cash, place a bid, too ;)
Thanks to Skasi!
The legendary Hype Club in Helsinki reopened their website as it was in 2000. No updates, just the old, untouched files. Winds of nostalgia…
And yes, they are having a reunion party.