Do lots of people grow out of the VCI-100?

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Do lots of people grow out of the VCI-100?

It seems like I’ve been seeing a lot of VCI 100 SEs for sale in the forums lately. I’ve been thinking of getting one, and the fact that so many DJTT members are selling theirs is a little alarming no?

How many of you have grown out of your VCI 100s and moved onto other gear? Was it just not enough for you? Did you crave the S4? Did you give up DJing?

Whats the scoop here?

I’ve made a lot of bad choices buying gear on impulse before, and I don’t want this next one to be the same..

2

i’m only sticking as i’ve personalised the crap out of mine too many times. hotwired leds into new places, drilled holes in it for said leds, and it has no real resale value now, lol.

also, still does what i need it to do, while the s4 et al are cool controllers. i see no real need to change as yet when vci does exactly what i want and need

3

I don’t think anybody would ever “grow” out of the VCI. Maybe want change for change sake or suffer from gear lust, but the VCI is perfectly suitable to just about any level of DJ.

4

yeah.

back in the day the natural progression was; shitty belt drives, then half decent direct drives, then 1200’s

now with all the options/combinations/possibilities set-ups will change over time based on the needs of the ‘performer’.

5

I didn’t grow out of mine (i don’t think i had it long enough to grow out of), i just couldn’t help myself when the S4 came out. I love my S4, but i still miss my SE from time to time. when i make my first million, im going to have a room dedicated to all my old favorite gear from the past, and i will have a place of honor for a re-bought VCI.

6

Personally I feel that controllers such as these with poor jogwheels and pitch faders suit those who wish to sync more and as a result controlling more than just 2 decks becomes much more viable. The vci 100 isn’t exactly ideal for control of more than 2 decks so when this flood of 4 deck controllers came about I guess most people jumped on it.

7

pffft. i got awesome 4d control on mine. just have to be creative with mapping

8

I said “not ideal”, not “not possible”.

Out of curiosity how do you EQ the fourth deck? Surely you don’t have enough knobs.

9

current map is similar tp mk2 layout. but where that has a switch i have a toggle for a/c and b/d. just toggles all the functions over. if i need to tweak i toggle, if not i don’t.

also have a couple of buttons that switch pitch faders to channel faders for ‘background’ decks.

example;

i have a/c side set to a
pitch fader is a pitch fader.
i press button and it becomes c channel fader.
while it’s still c channel fader, if i switch a/c to c from a, the piyth fader becomes channel a fader, unless i hit button to swap back to pitch fader.

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Do you have visual reference to note when the pitch fader controls pitch and when it controls volume?

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led light up. as it’s mod based they light based on if mod = 0 or 1, same for buttons to toggle the a/c b/d bits

12

this.

pah. They were never ‘poor’, and since fw1.4 they’re more than adequate.

13

Bollocks. They may be excellent in the way that they have high resolution but it doesn’t change the fact that they are absolutely minute. A turntable is going to have a 100mm long fader for pitch and even at a 8% pitch range you’ll be making mm fine adjustments, a necessary degree of accuracy not achievable with what you get on the vci 100.

Not bashing it, it’s just clearly designed with a different task in mind.

14

i sold mine looking for an all in 1 solution, thinking the ohm64 would suit my needs. Unfortunately it didn’t (not the same feeling, missing endless rotary’s) and switched to 2 kontrol x1’s. loving them a whole lot, so no looking back to the vci100 anymore. but sure enjoyed the hell out of it back in the day!

15

was referring more to the jog wheels comment. The jogs are brilliant.

No one’s suggesting the VCI is a direct replacement for a turntable, but it does its job extremely well.

16

Agreed.

But, to get back to the original question, I’m kinda growing out of it. After 2 years with VCI and Traktor, all my music on physical media has been transferred to my hard drive. I’ve learnt to set tight beatgrids are well. So today I enable sync and hardly need jogs or pitch faders. But then the thing is that jogs and pitch faders waste space (Hawtin made a point about waste of space by jogwheels recently, too; I know).

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Anything that isn’t spinning with a needle on it is an inferior jog wheel :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh hell yes! Why do all these 4 deck controllers have jog wheels on them? If I’m using 4 decks I’m going to be syncing, jog wheels are a complete waste of space.

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[QUOTE=MrPopinjay;216347Oh hell yes! Why do all these 4 deck controllers have jog wheels on them? If I’m using 4 decks I’m going to be syncing, jog wheels are a complete waste of space.[/QUOTE]

but then if you want to do any movement of the track, for example finding your mix in point, you HAVE to have set load and cue markers throughout every track. Either that or bury your face in your laptop before every mix.

that, and have you ever tried fader FX? it’s fucking inspired.

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really? you can’t find a use for them outside of the original intention?

20

Again, I agree. But, then again, this is something that could be implemented in a leaner way by a small touchscreen or touch strip. Of course, that’s looking forward a little bit as currently, few decent devices with touch screen or touch strip are available. EDIT: yeah or map beatjumps as MrPopinjay suggests.