Gear: Review of the CDJ Mk 3’s and it is love
Written by: David Harrison
I have spent the last few years looking at traditional CD players, 4 ipods and a few computer crashes have left me feeling very shortchanged by MP3 or Itunes collections. With Music Towers establishing as a brand we get sent an awful lot of CD’s (sorry if we didn’t review you) and it is so much more convenient and sounds so much clearer with sliding someone in a CD. Arriving on stage at various festivals, I suddenly realised everyone was using these Pioneer CDJ’s they have all these buttons I don’t understand. Queue some free credit from turnkey just before it went bust.
First impressions out of the box, oh they are bit noisy. Not quite the tool for wooing as they can have a slightly computer server whir in the background if you have the PA on quiet. OK so that is the bad out of the way.
Now the Good, they have standard features for any CD player play, cue, single, time elapsed, fast forward track skip. They have features for any more modern CD player, Mp3 playing from CD. They have the same big control wheel that most other CD tools for Djs have.
The Control wheel has some nice tools with it, it responds to be pressed down. It has two modes Vinyl and CD which the Disc will respond to as though (yup you guessed it) more like vinyl or squibbly like a CD. There are two control to measure the speed at which the release and attack of the tune will happen.
Now past those tools is where the CDjs and in particular the Mark 3 come into their own. For a start the Mk3 will play any CD no matter if it is black, white covered in wine, scratched to buggery. It will play it (probably not wise to test the extremes of this). When it reads the CD it starts plotting the music straight away, takes a few seconds to pick up the Wav forms and BPM of the track. Suddenly you know how well produced this track was and most of important of all is going to match right in with the last one you played without before you even had time to put on the headphones.
Like the Mk2’s or the 500’s they have some In and Out loop buttons, but unlike the Mk2’s these are actually useful. The difference between the this function on the two versions is so wide it is almost to earn a new name. The Mk2’s have the ability to set a single loop, release and recall the last loop you did. The Mk2 also has three buttons where you can set que points to start the track from somewhere. However those ques are often a second out from where you actually set the que.
The Mk3’s have dispensed with any sense of guesswork. When you set a loop you can set that to a recall number (and in turn is stored on your memory card). With a few loop recalls you can mix endlessly, you can hit them on the beginning of a beat again and again to ensure perfect dumbed down mixing everytime. It is soo easy and so much fun, so much so it is quite managable using 4 of them, triggering noises, loops, tunes anything you want really. They allow you to throw the track about almost literally, you can see why they went on to base the DVD version on them.
The Pioneer Mark3’s are the best of the best of CD players, they are the SAS, The A-Team and Chuck Norris rolled into one, they are just fabulous and I love them.
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