The Bad Plus, a jazz trio of piano, double bass & drums, playing Aphex Twin’s Flim.
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
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)
…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.
YouTube has started to support better quality videos. I’ve been very dissatisfied of the quality for a long time already and the situation wasn’t any better with the latest Metaverse videos.
Anyway, if you add “&fmt=18” to the end of the YouTube video url, you will get a better quality video. This works – of course – if the original video has a better quality and resolution. Unfortunately embedded videos do not support this yet.
Check the examples:
Normal quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zMdIGqy7yg
Better quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zMdIGqy7yg&fmt=18