Hello Everybody.

I received my MEP 7000 and I think its time to post a short review. First of all, while using Pioneer in most of the clubs I play, I personally own only Denon Hardware. So I can give you some thoughst about the HD 2500 vs the MEP 7000.
To make this short: Does anybody wants to buy a HD 2500- you can have mine!

While playing around with the MEP at three gigs now, I couldnt really find a mistake. I really tried hard to make it fail but no luck with that. I hooked up a 80gb Ipod, a keyboard an a 8gb USB stick through the internal (non powered) HUB in the keyboard. In addition to this I used regular and mp3 CDs. I used all of the sources at the same time without any breakup -well done pioneer. The display is outstanding and the the machine works fast and without any problems even with foreign characters liek ä ü ö etc.

Pros
-easy to use
-great display
-playlist feature is perfect
-fast regocnition of the harddisc from the 2nd time on

Cons /questions
- the Automix feature doesnt make any sense to me. It starts 30 seconds before the end of the track, that means that you lose 15-20% of the track! Is it possible to change that?

- I cant see the Albumcovers (I can see them in Itunes...)
- I cant see any BPM Information from the MP3 Tags
How can you make these vissible?
- Can you search through the songs without a keyboard? I mean you can scroll through it using the knob, but to get to the letter "T" for example would take ages if you have some thousand tracks...

And: If there would be a chance to get the controller only with a usb connection, I would by this one as well. Its really a shame that you cant do that. This is so far the only advantage of the HD2500 over the MEP.

quote:

the Automix feature doesnt make any sense to me. It starts 30 seconds before the end of the track, that means that you lose 15-20% of the track! Is it possible to change that?

Not currently - think of that as "autopilot" mode. It's designed really for the mobile jock who leaves the mix unattended during ****tail hour. If you want to use the beatmix transitions or any of the other manual transitions, you can trigger them at your leisure without the automix mode engaged.

quote:

- I cant see the Albumcovers (I can see them in Itunes...)

iTunes doesn't store the artwork within the ID3 tags, it has a JPG file separate of all the songs, so no, it won't show. You need to have the image embedded in each track's ID3.

quote:

- I cant see any BPM Information from the MP3 Tags How can you make these vissible?

You mean it doesn't show up with the artist / track title information on the side? Is it set within your ID3 info for that track?

quote:

- Can you search through the songs without a keyboard? I mean you can scroll through it using the knob, but to get to the letter "T" for example would take ages if you have some thousand tracks...

You can use the keyboard for a first-letter-search within the current firmware. This allows you to find any track whose tag (or if you are in library mode, whatever mode you are searching within) BEGINS with that letter. For example, if you have a file saved as "Eternal Love - Bob Smith.mp3", when searching for the track, you can't type "L-O-V-E" to find it but typing "E" will narrow all the results down to anything starting with the letter E.

A full proper keyword search is coming in a couple of months - the engineers were not able to get everything working exactly as planned in time for release so instead of delaying the unit further it was put to the public with that as an intended update later.

quote:

If there would be a chance to get the controller only with a usb connection, I would by this one as well. Its really a shame that you cant do that. This is so far the only advantage of the HD2500 over the MEP.

I don't quite understand - the controller DOES connect via USB. Are you asking about having USB sources (like a flash drive) connect to the control head portion of the unit? That wouldn't do you any good since the soundcards / audio outputs are on the drive head.