Answers...

1) There's a very slight latancy, but I've found that just hitting the Cue button on the player to feel where it is, I can drop the beat on time when it's time to hit Play. This is a software issue and it has actually improved dramatically since they first released it. Updates are making it better all the time.

2) Darn tootin! It works for both virtual decks.

3) Unfortunately no. Here's a quick breakdown... when you're using the unit as a standalone (no PC), you can play 2 sources at once - an audio CD and an MP3 from the SD. If you want to play an MP3 CD, you can no longer play an MP3 from the SD at the same time, it's one or the other. When you switch to PC control mode, the standard player functions of the 555 are stopped and you can only play MP3s from the PC. If you had another stand alone deck you could make the change from standalone mode to PC mode on the 555 because when you mix to the other source, you can then change the mode. (Follow that?)

4) Yeah, it's great! I can't wait for them to implement skins for the virtual decks!

5) Not right now, but you only need 1 to do the job anyhow - you can switch back and forth on the virtual decks with one hardware controller.

6) Yes, dual soundcards are the way to go. Your best bet for quality is to have a multiple-output external soundcard, reason being that internal soundcards on laptops have notoriously sh!tty quality - a lot of noise.

If you have any other questions, just ask ... I've been beating the tar out of my 555 learning all it can do.

I haven't used all these features on my DMP yet, but I'll do my best to answer.

1)Dunno
2)Yes?
3)Unfortunately no this is not possible
4)I found it to be relatively user friendly. It's very simple, which is probably a good thing. I had some things I wanted to do with it that I couldn't figure out how to do, but that's because it was a more advanced feature
5)Currently no. I don't know if there are plans to add this.
6)Yes it does, although I have not done this myself.

ah... crazy... I posted a reply and this huge thing from Pulse showed up.

Thanks Pulse

BAM! Spice weasel!

The toggle between virtual decks is simple, as you just hit either the "CD" or "CARD" buttons on the 555 to switch. Another "rapid" feature is the playlists; you can preload them with a "virtual CD" (put all the tracks you want on virtual deck one into a "VCD1" playlist - user created - and the same for deck two to "VCD2", presto - quick loads and alternating decks!).

I have used a variety of other PCDJ software... the best thing I can say for the DJ Booth software is that I have yet to crash it - either on Win98 / 2000 / XP. I saw Digital SL1200 crash during a demo at the DJ Expo in 1999. There's no beatmatching (thank god), but it's really easy to do manually because the BPM is automatically calculated and displayed. There's a few features that I personally would like to see, and I've made those suggestions for possible future upgrades.

If you have the chance to get to a store and check it out, it would help you learn more about the 555. (I'd suggest where you could go, but you left your location blank in your profile.)

That's right - sorta.

With the DMP playing audio from the PC, you need at least one soundcard (but I reccomend two, or a multi-output single unit).

When you're playing the audio from the SD, you can either use the "Card Monitor" output, or the blended "Main Audio" output... which, as I implied, blends the CD audio with the SD audio and the SD audio level is 'mixable' via a level control knob on the face of the 555.

The PC software is designed for multiple configurations, with or without an external mixer:

1) You can have each virtual deck output to its own channel on a mixer, but that requires a soundcard with multiple outs, or 2 soundcards

2) You could use a multi-out soundcard to send the master signal out on one, and the headphone cueing on another. You can use this with or without a mixer.

3) You could use just 1 soundcard and have the master audio output on one channel, using the xfader in the software (or "channel" faders). Most likely, there will be no mixer in this config.

Overall, your best bet is the first, where you have the most control for playback and cueing.

As for dealers, you're most likely going to find that very few have the software setup for testing, but the hardware is available. Check the dealer list by going thru the main site -> http://www.pioneerprodj.com

Perhaps there's someone out there in NY who has one who could demo it?