I have tried out RB DJ at home and the other night for a 5 hour gig. I have very mixed feelings.
Been on on Serato Scratch Live and then Serato DJ for 10 years and started to look at Rekordbox DJ. Laptop and CDJs in HID mode are the best of both worlds to me. But being on Serato and having to wait forever to get HID supported every time a new CDJ comes out is frustrating. As of now Serato DJ can't be run in HID mode with CDJ 2000NXS 2 for example.
Apart from compatibility RB has so much going for it and I really want to make the switch. Things like library management no need for extra soundcard and custom key commands for a bunch of features, are way beyond what Serato DJ can offer.
However, what really counts out in the field is reliability and smooth operation.
Here I find that RB DJ is still behind Serato.
At home I've been trying RB out with DDJ-SX. Serato is rock solid with a buffer size of 64 samples whereas RB, even with the standard 256 samples setting, gives me random nasty audio dropouts/glitches. Also the pads on the DDJ-SX have way more latency and are less touch sensitive when running RB. The pads have more latency than the CUE button. They also require more force to trigger properly!?
I thought this might be due to the DDJ-SX being originally made for Serato but the other night I ran RB with CDJ2000 NXS2s in HID mode and used the CDJs as soundcards. I had the same issue with audio glitches. I ran at 256 sample buffer size (which is very different when you're used to 64 samples) and got 4-5 nasty raspy sounding glitches during a 5 hour gig.
The other thing that really bugged me is the sluggishness of the program. When selecting/clicking things especially with the mouse - tracks and some intelligent playlists - they took 2-4 seconds to get selected. Maybe it's because my library is some 24500 tracks but Serato handles it no problem and is super snappy. The one thing where RB excels in speed is needle search. Way faster in RB.
There are a bunch of other quirks I'd like to see fixed and features I think should be added but that's for another post. I could still use RB as it is now but I need it to be reliable and snappy. Does anybody else experience these problems? Is this something Pioneer are working on?
I have a very fast ASUS gaming laptop, i7-4720HQ, 16 GB RAM running Windows 8.
All the latest drivers for DDJ-SX and CDJs installed. No other programs running in the background. Process/resource monitors shows nothing unusual. CPU never goes over 25%.
I can also run Ableton with a Steinberg UR22 interface at 64 samples without problems.