Reloop - Digital Jockey?
Anyone played with a reloop yet ?
http://www.westenddj.co.uk/product.asp?mod=DIGITAL-JOCKEY-IE&PCFeed=GoogleBase
http://www.reloopdj.com/product_info.php/info/p399_Reloop-Digital-Jockey.html
Are they any good ?
Thanks
Stace
Reloop Digital Jockey review
i’ve got one. This is a review i wrote for the www.djdecks.be forum:
Hello,
i am the happy owner of the Reloop Digital Jockey (Interface Edition), a dj midi controller with build-in USB soundcard. For the people interested, here a quick review after having owned it for about 1 week.
Build quality is good to excellent. The jogwheels, gain and volume rotaries, pushbuttons, and crossfader really feel smooth and sturdy. The casing is also good, with aluminium parts it feels strong and not plastic. The entire unit is a littlebit larger than my Acer Travelmate 15.4" laptop.
The controller has a lot of buttons, sliders and rotaries. There are 20 encoders/rotaries, of which 15 can be pushed down. Furthermore there are 42 regular buttons. Of course then there are the pitch-, line- and cross-faders, and the 2 jogwheels.
The line-faders, pitchfaders, endless encoders and EQ-rotaries also feel ok, but sometimes have a little movement. This is mainly because the EQ’s and endless-encoders also act as pushbuttons, ie they can be pressed down like buttons.
All in all the quality feels very good for the price-range of 350-400 euros.
On the back there are a stereo cinch output and a stereo cinch input. On the front there are a stereo jack monitor output and a mic input. The backside furthermore has a phono/line-switch for the stereo-input, with a earthing-connection for turntables, a channel a/b midi-switch, an usb-connector and a power-input and -switch. The unit runs from USB only, but can also be powered from the included power-adapter. On the side there is a kensington-lock connection.
On the front there are 4 more small rotaries, mic input level, mic tone, monitor tone and monitor level. 2 of these act as midi controllers.
With all these buttons and encoders you can control a huge amount of options, but it never feels crowded or small. Especially the fact that you can press down encoders and turn them gives a lot of powerfull options. When using f.e. Bome’s MIDI Translator you can controll a seperate parameter when pressing down a controller and turning it, compared to normally turning it. There are also 2 shift-buttons that change all the controller-assignments to different note on/offs and CC’s when pressed down. This means that you can basically control over 200 parameters from this unit without breaking into all too much sweat
One very nice thing is that the pitch-faders send out 14bits MIDI data, which means that it gives a much higher resolution,and thus smaller pitch-change steps, if your favorite DJ software supports this.
The build-in 16bits/44.1KHz USB soundcard is sounding very OK and loud enough.(here is a basic rightmark loopback test: http://www.expansions.nl/filez/[MME%5 … M%20Au.htm). The inputs also work ok, although they seem to have been set at -9dB, which cannot be changed. There doesn’t seem to be any hardware-gains, so all control over output and input loudness is software-only. The unit is shipped with ASIO drivers which work fine on my system.
The Reloop Digital Jockey is shipped with 2 dj software packages: Reloop Attack and NI’s Traktor 3 LE. Attack doesn’t really work for me, as it doesn’t fit entirely on my 1280x800 laptop screen, and the jogwheels are also set way to sensitive to be usefull for pitchbending, and this behaviour cannot be changed in the software. Traktor 3 LE works very nice right out of the box, the behaviour of the jogwheels when pitchbending, cue’ing and scratching is very nice if you’re used to vinyl like i am. Traktor 3 LE is a 2deck “light” version of Traktor 3, and doesn’t enable custom MIDI mapping. The Traktor 3 LE mapping that is provided with the software does also work with Traktor 3 full version, and in this version you can use 4 decks and make your own controller-mappings.
With the line/phono input switch you could theoretically connect a turntable with timecode-vinyl and use this to control a third deck while you use the midi-controls to control the first 2 decks. I didn’t test this but i wouldn’t know why it wouldn’t work.
If you would like to use the Reloop only for midi controlling and use a regular dj-mixer for volume and EQ control you could also use the stereo monitor output on the front as a second stereo output.
All in all i really like this controller. With certain encoders the build quality could have been a littlebit better, but for the money it really gives a lot of value. Lot’s of MIDI control and a good quality build-in soundcard (there is also an regular non-interface edition version without a soundcard that is 50 euro’s cheaper), combined with a laptop give you a very compact and powerfull setup. Definately recommended!
BTW, i am currently building some very cool MIDI mappings for Traktor 3 Fullversion with Bome’s MIDI Translator that are inspired by the amazing VCI-100 DJ Techtools Ean Golden special edition mappings (like controlling a low- and high-pass from one rotary encoder, engaging effect-freeze automatically when turning a rotary entirely to the right, and automatically disabling the effect when turning the rotary to the right, controlling filters and effects when pressing down a EQ-rotary and turning it, etc.). I will post .tks and MT files here when they are done.
If you have any further questions feel free to ask
Olaf
Great Thanks.
What size are the jog wheels?? Much bigger than the VCI100? Is the resolution any better then the 100?
Don’t know the exact size of both, but they are about the same size as the classic Pioneer CDJ100 jogwheels, a littlebit around a 7" vinyl single that is
The resolution is the same i think, they send out the regular 7bits pitchbend messages, plus note-on/off events when starting and stopping turning the jog. The jog’s aren’t touch-sensitive though.
The action in Traktor 3 feels fine though, although there currently seems to be a strange behaviour when stopping a scratch. The audio then almost stops entirely and speeds up quickly to regular speed. This is not regular vinyl sound behaviour, but i am investigating if i can change it with some different mappings in traktor and/or some presets in Bome’s MT Pro.
Olaf
Hey Olaf, ook jij welkom hier!
Thanks for the review. 
Nice write up, welcome to DJTT
Nice review! I was thinking about getting one of those, but I didnt find any nice reviews like yours before, then Ive decided to get the Vestax VCI-100.
update: today i checked how the stereo input works with timecode-vinyl, using my trusty Shure M447 cartridges. Everything works like a charm, incoming loudness is good enough for almost 100% timecode tracking. Nice way to control a third deck using vinyl, or play some regular 12"es through an external third deck
The Jog wheels not being touch sensitive basicly blow scratching out of the water. Then again scratching on jogs is a bit of a gimmick.
I have seen two types of images…some of them have all black knobs and others have some silver ones. Does somebody know witch one is the final version if ordered? Thanks!
The final version is the one with the black knobs.
I totally agree with Olaf. I’ve been playing around with the Digital Jockey for a week now and I must say it’s a solid piece of gear. Although the MIDI-map could be better
Am I insane when I’m actually thinking about selling the vci-100 and getting a reloop digital jockey (not interface edition) instead?
After this came out I actually can’t understand why anyone would want a vci-100. Even the Ean Golden edition…
Am I missing something?
I would gladly downgrade in terms of build quality if the Reloop is so much more usable and flexible as I think it is.
Does anybody know if the rotaries click in steps or do they just turn smoothly like an EQ encoder?
Maybe yes…
[QUOTE=Guust-Fi;12892]Am I insane when I’m actually thinking about selling the vci-100 and getting a reloop digital jockey (not interface edition) instead?
[QUOTE]
Yup, no offence to Reloop owners but this one is basically a cheap version of the VCI.
One thing i have to say though, is that the fx functionality is probably a bit better with the basic mappings off the bat.
Don’t you people wish for rotaries? How can you properly control the effects (on 2 decks) when the knobs never match the position in the software? With rotaries al these problems would be gone? I believe the effect section is a major upgrade in comparison to the vci-100.
Also yes the Vestax probably offers better build quality. This is most important with the faders and jogs but what use does it have when Vestax doesn’t offer 14bit resolution?
I don’t think you should be scratching on a vci-100 as well, so why would you want such high quality jogs?
Overall the build may be better but compared to professional gear it still doesn’t cut it imo.
In my work flow I regularly use the Mixer Master Controls and the buttons on the vci-100 are just to small. Even if you mapped them to other functions wouldn’t you want full sized knobs?
I personally prefer a black controller with white labels and a limited amount of different colours. On the vci-100 the leds almost cover all the colours of the rainbow. Furthermore, not all of the buttons light up.
There are some other problems with the vci-100 too:
The effect buttons in between the EQ section seem to send out the same midi value as effect button 4? This cannot be changed as far as I figured out without changing firmware? That renders that button quite useless imo unless you mapped effect button 4 on the controller to effect button 1 in Traktor, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.
No offense, I’m trying to understand your point of view here. I definitely like what Ean did to the vci-100 as well but I can’t see why one would not consider the reloop digital jockey unless the build is really much worse than most people said so far. (In this price range it’s supposed to be in second place behind the vci-100).
What are the facts that makes VCI-100 quality so much better other than it is labelled as Vestax? What I mean is many manufactures might share same components and product lines for similar products. Or is the VCI-100 made in Japan? Japan vs. China is sure one thing but is there any other?
What we need is Reloop Digital Jockey and VCI-100 real life comparison. Opinions are different than the facts.
Ok, here we go, I am in the process of ordering a Reloop Digital Jockey right now.
I’m going to compare them both before selling either one again.
They also tell me I’m stupid when I tell 'em I use a simple BCR. (Rotaries only.
)
Happy Reloop Digital Jockey user: http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72551
hey daft punk used bcr2000’s in their pyramid when i’m sure they have enough money for any controller out there 