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"Fuckity Bye, Pioneer!"

Posted: 20 July, 2024

Let's talk about Pioneer DJ gear. It’s well-made, battle-hardened, and the defacto standard. But it’s overpriced, and let down by some of the worst software I’ve ever used. Three months ago, I bit the bullet and part-exchanged my DDJ-1000 – which I’ve had since 2018 – for a Native Instruments S4. Why? Rekord Box is a piece of shit, and Pioneer are taking the fucking piss, charging a subscription to use it.

There was nothing really wrong with the hardware – just like there’s nothing really wrong with CDJs, or DJMs – it’s built like a tank, and didn’t cark it at the first sight of cigarette & spliff ash. Is it the most feature rich controller? No. But it’s a decent size, and the platters felt comfy after years of using CDJs. And given I’d most likely stumble into a booth with Pioneer controllers (and / or Xone mixers), keeping to a familiar layout seemed important when I bought it.

Like all Pioneer gear, there are better, cheaper alternatives. Denon spring to mind; their CD controllers are excellent, and though I wouldn’t swap my Technics for anything, so are their direct drive record players. And then, there’s Native Instruments…

But I didn’t make the change because of the hardware.

I wouldn’t say I’m a vinyl purist (although, I did hold out until 2002 before making the move to CDs), but there’s a certain tactile pleasure in mixing with them. Beat-matching might be irrelevant, but it’s still fun at a party, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of it. And it was vinyl that first attracted me to Traktor Final Scratch; I could hook up my Technics (and CDJs), with time-control, and mix my digital tracks. Even better, without the need to burn everything to CD! But the external sound card was a ball-ache, and the few times I did try to play out with it, setting up, in the dark, with someone in the mix, was a pain in the arse. So, as was fashionable, I moved over to Ableton.

For my money, Ableton isn’t really “DJing”. Even with the VCM 600. For me, it quickly descended into waiting to press a button. Or worse, layering on too many loops, so I didn’t get bored, and felt busy. It did teach me a lot about production, and mastering, which is especially useful now I have to do most of the audio in my work, but I didn’t last very long DJing with it.

Verkkokauppa in Helsinki has (had?) a decent electronics section, all hands-on, and I used to go in there regularly to test out the gear. The DDJ-1000 immediately seemed perfect. Compact, nice pads, great platter, nice faders, all nicely responsive. And it came with Rekord Box, which I tested, and was quite impressed by. Version 5.1.

I never had any issues with Rekord Box 5.x. It fired up quickly. I can’t remember it ever really crashing. The analysis seemed solid, and I rarely had to tweak the beat grid. The DDJ was always present and correct. Rekord Box 5.x worked, with one little oddity: it wasn’t particularly good at keeping a loop in time. And I loop. A lot. I loop mixing in. I loop mixing out. I love me a loop. Blame Ableton? But it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. A quick nudge, now and again. It’s just a bit of beatmatching, innit?

I didn’t think particularly much when Rekord Box 6 came out. It was a free upgrade. The 5.x point releases were fine... What could possibly go wrong? Wheeee! And then I fired it up. And it was slow. Slow to load, slow to stop dicking about with the database, slow to move between playlists. Laggy. As. Fuck. (in comparison). And could I go back to version 5? Haha, no. Idiot boy didn’t bother to back up the database, and Pioneer “upgraded” it for me. Yeah, I should know better. facepalm

It’s been a gradual decline, ever since. I’ve even tried the Windows version which, surprising no one, was even worse than the Mac.

So, in no particular order, the list of fucking annoying bugs Rekord Box 6 displayed on an all too regular basis:

1. It still can’t fucking loop. And I don’t mean, it might drift once in a while. It. Can’t. Hold. A. Fucking. Loop. I don’t think I need to explain how utterly, mind-blowingly piss-poor this is when it happens. Which is most of the fucking time.
2. Let’s say you’ve got sync on, and you want to drop (or jump to) a hot-cue. You’d expect the cue to start, ON THE BEAT, every single time, yeah? No. Fucking lottery. To the point I’d loop the bar at the cue and use the cross-fader to bring it in.
3. Is it going to play audio this time, or just fart out of one of the channels?
4. Will it see my DDJ-1000?
5. Will it respond to a button on the DDJ?

Thow into the mix the crap audio quality when recording internally – I shit you not, I used to record the output of the DDJ into an iPad, because it sounded better – and the fact it took an absolute fucking age to download and install an update, that more often than not, introduced a new and exciting intermittent bug, and you can see why the forums are full of people screaming.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, for me, was getting my Technics back out of storage and setting up the DVS. Which cost ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY EARTH POUNDS. A year!

Fuck you, Pioneer.

And thank you Bop DJ in Bristol, who gave me 600 pounds for the DDJ, and another 80 for its flight case, making the part-ex cost for the S4 an absolute no-brainer.

So I’m back on Traktor. Full circle. With a slightly smaller, lighter controller, and DVS that works. Just in time for Traktor 4, which I upgraded to (60 quid!) and installed last night. No doubt I’ll be blogging about it fairly soon…

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