Hi Pioneer guys. At the risk of sounding truly ancient, I've been switching over from vinyl to digital and am a bit mystified about what looks like a gap in the Pioneer's product range. Well, everyone's product range actually.
Here's the thing. With a day job as well as DJ gigs, last thing I want to do is bring my laptop to club or bar, to stare at it some more while mixing tunes. I think Traktor and Serato are great products, no offense there, I just think in any club/bar environment where you're up close and personal with the crowd, I don't want and patrons don't want to see me noodling away on a laptop. Visual impressions matter.
So that points me at CDJs, ok no worries. But at the same time I'm perplexed why CDJs nowadays need CD players inside them at all, with all the size, weight, cost and reliability issues they bring with them, rather than just USB stick input. Maybe there's a legacy issue of building systems that people can play ye olde audio CDs on. But I would expect that to be fading pretty fast, and already wouldn't apply to everyone - EG my music collection is vinyl + wav/mp3, with no physical CD collection in between.
I guess I'm saying I want the pioneer quality build of an interface device like a DDJ S1/T1/ERGO, built large and comfortable for serious use, but I don't want to have to plug a laptop into it, just a USB stick with some tunes. Put another way, I want a pair of CDJ900s but I don't want to pay for CD slots in them I'll never use. I've seen a few bottom-end rinkydink products from other manufacturers along these lines, but they're tiny mounts with 2-inch jog wheels and 4 inch pitch sliders. Pathetic. At the upper end Numark have the NS7 which seems almost the thing. So how about it? Or am I being really dense and not seeing you're already making this? Thanks for reading.