XDJ700 Vinyl Brake Adjustment

Pulse, can you please contact me. I got in touch with customer service and they said you could help with this issue. My company alone will purhase 14 of these if you can have the software guys modify the touch screen to help with the vinyl brake adjustment (using lets say the jog wheel instead). This is a feature that is definitely needed.

Please advise.

Sincerely,

Eddie Makabi
eddie@eddiemakabi.com

@eddie I'm guessing Pioneer did NOTHING about this since the omission of the vinyl brake controls was deliberate. Pioneer's design strategy is to first design the flagship product (i.e. CDJ-2000nxs2 and DJM-900nxs2) and then randomly subtract features to create the other lesser products, which are not necessarily that much cheaper to manufacture. It is no secret that Pioneer's pricing model is extortionate.

That's not to say they don't take heed of user feature requests, it's just that they usually don't deliver them as free updates. Instead, they tend to save them for the next model—why give features away for free now when you can charge several thousand dollars a few years later?

It's not as if the vinyl brake function costs hundreds of dollars to manufacture—for Pioneer it'd be a simple matter of copy-and-paste from the CDJ. The underlying electronics and potentiometers cost them only a few cents when purchased wholesale, but Pioneer wants you to hate their non-flagship products so you buy CDJs. They've got it all planed, long ago. They will not be releasing CDJ-3000 or a CDJ-2000nxs3, instead they will kill the CDJ range and merge it into the XDJ, and probably release the XDJ-2000, which is likely to be a CDJ-2000nxs2 without the CD slot, some backlit pads below the jog wheel and an on-jog display—nothing revolutionary, but then again, Pioneer haven't really innovated much since they started riding the CDJ wave of success.

People don't buy CDJs because they are amazing, they just buy them because they are club standard. People who buy non-flagship products don't get CDJs because they can't afford them. Pioneer are a business and their products are priced according to the law of supply and demand, and that's just how it is.

Now, if you use XDJs with Rekordbox (not stand-alone), I believe you can map a third-party generic MIDI controller like the Novation LaunchControl (cheap and very small) to control the vinyl brake parameters from the hardware. I would gladly confirm this but my Rekordbox trial period has just expired and I'm still not sure I'll be getting a Pioneer controller due to having massive doubts about Pioneer's practices. Maybe someone else can confirm. You are probably better off asking on Reddit though, Pioneer forums are kinda quiet and people tend to be politically correct. I'll might get banned for posting this but I suppose it doesn't matter as I'm not a Pioneer customer.

@Maneul > Your last line says it all:

"...I'm not a Pioneer customer."

So why are you here posting this rant to a topic that's over 2 years old?

Yes, the omission of the brake controls was deliberate. Have you ever heard of product differentiation? If every product we made had the same features and functions, why would we ever have more than one? In addition to that, we cut back features to lower the price. And argue as you may about the apparent value of "only a few cents" for the parts and electronics, but there is a much greater underlying value - but given your post, I wouldn't expect you to understand that.

The DDJ-400 only has one FX SELECT button, you need to hold down Shift to select the previous FX. That's like a car where the driver is required to hold down a button to steer left but not to steer right. Duh. You can dress it up as product differenciation or cost-cutting, but I'm not buying it. One for www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/

I'm not a Pioneer customer yet but I'm considering the DDJ-1000. I was hoping for a smaller 4-channel controller, but no luck.NI, Vestax, and many others have been making affordable 4-channel controllers that aim to unlock all the features of their software since forever. Meanwhile, Pioneer products are designed to NOT unlock all the features of their software. I'm just a bit bitter that none of your controllers does Rekordbox justice.

I DJ at clubs and I'm also a mobile DJ. I am interested in Rekordbox because it would enable me to maintain a single track collection (using Traktor currently for mobile gigs).

I'd like a 4-channel controller with all the features of a CDJ+DJM system and the same layout but a smaller footprint and lower quality components, less I/O and no LCDs. That's what 90% of Pioneer DJ customers would want so they could practice at home before hitting the club, and so they could carry a full-featured controller that unlocks all the features of the software at venues where they need to bring their own gear. People don't buy Pioneer controllers because they are amazing—they are meh at best—, but because Rekordbox libraries are compatible with CDJs, and for many, myself included, that is a compelling enough reason. I just wish it wasn't the main reason.