A critical review of the Pioneer XDJ-1000 MK2
Introduction
Bought two XDJ-1000 MK2 for 2550/2950 euro/usd to use in a underground club setting. I bought them to standadize our dj booth, thus not needing traktor with a controller that non-resident might not be familiar with. I have always used traktor, from Vestax VCI-300, Kontrol S4 and now my favorite X1MK2 and timecode, but now I wanted to go all in on a standalone player.
The XDJ-1000MK2 are very expensive, as with any type of the Pioneer standalone players. I have always thought of the Pioneer players as being overpriced, and probably have gotten too much praise from djs, primarily because of the monopoly that Pioneer has managed to create. I tried to leave these assumptions behind, and got going with the XDJ-1000 MK2. Here is my short but critical review. I will not go through the features etc., as there are plenty of videos showing this out there.
Build Quality:
A bunch of plastic, disappointing considering the price. Pretty nice plastic for sure, but still plastic. No metal parts anywhere, and the weight make the players feel cheap. Considering the price, I found this to be very diserapoting. Generally, I feel like these players could break any minute. Compare this with the build of a S4, which is more than half the price. The buttons, oh the crappy buttons. I cannot believe why people like these cue/play buttons. They feel very plastic and hollow, and the push-button that it connects to is just a tiny, low quality component from China. Compare this to the soft buttons on a S4. I know that hard/soft buttons are personal opinions, but to me, these are just something out the 90s. Speaking of buttons, it makes no sense to me why you would have four buttons for scrolling through tracks. You have three options on the XDJ-1000 MK2; (1) use the dedicated fast-for/backwards and skip track back and forth, (2) search with jogwheel which can be combined with the fastforward button to be it faster and (3) using the screen. Now, the XDJ-1000 MK2 does not have physical cue buttons, and yet, Pioneer decided to include buttons that functions like an old CD player. I would be much happier if the four search buttons where hotcue rubber buttons. I find the search button to be a relic of a time when CDs was the standard format, and lack of physical hotcue buttons is disappointing. Furthermore, Pioneer thought that it would be a good idea to include a physical knob to control the start/stop time when pressing play/stop. This should be in the digital menu, as it way too easy to manipulate the knob by mistake, and the feature is extremely niche. Having had over 20 DJs from all over europe come play at my event, I have seen no one using this feature.
Here are some bulletpoints of other issues with the XDJ-1000 MK2;
* Does not load the whole track into memory, meaning that potential USB errors or whatever creates an ‘emergency loop’, which is like 2-4 bars if I remember correctly, which is useful if such a situation should occur.
* Rekordbox is a wall-garden, is unstable and lacks basic features like multiple genre support. Not free/open source software. No proper Gnu/Linux support.
* Not possible to save and maintain collection ex. hdd without having to have duplicated files of each track with rekordbox.
* Players cannot analyse tracks on the fly, you always have to use rekordbox.
* Low refresh frequency display makes for laggy interface/waveform.
* Rekordbox takes forever to export tracks to a USB. Would take 1/4 the time just copying the files manually.
* Just as unreliable as traktor. Having used them for 2 weeks, I have already experienced the error 'file collapsed' something something. It has happened multiple times at home (no biggie), and tracks that would play the day before, which suddenly get ‘collapsed’. But his has also happen at a gig. DJ put on his last track, Born Slippery by Underworld, and the crowd went wild as the intro of the track started playing. 1 min. later, the player goes into emergency mode. Then we had to replug the USB. This RUINED the last part of his epic set. Now can a player in 2018 have problems playing a track? A track that it did play for 1 min. without problems, and then crashes out of nowhere?
* Lack of file system support. Does not support exFat nor NTFS.
* Not possible to save and maintain collection ex. hdd without having to have duplicated files of each track.
The good:
* Pretty good jogwheel.
* Besides the low refresh rate, the display are pretty good.
* Easy firmware update proces.
* Rekordbox analyses tracks pretty fast
* USB link.
* I like the size and the generel feel of using a standalone player.
* Very nice interface on the display. Filtering works great!
https://i.imgur.com/BiaJZTs.jpg
Conclusion:
Overpriced, lack of build quality, disapointing hardware and software features. Rekordbox sucks, a wall-garden that fucks up your main library, and makes a weird arrangement of folders on the USB stick. Exporting takes forever, so you better have 1 hour to export files before you go. Weird decisions on the physical design of the unit, e.g. button features and placement.
