Do Not Buy the New Pioneer DJ XDJ-XZ Until You Have Watched This Video

0:00 Music sources, house house, piece

Right guys, my name's Jonathan Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor and the first part of this video is going to explain to you in relatively not great detail at all why you should not buy the Pioneer, the new Pioneer XDJ-XZ. And this is it. This is why you should not buy it. If you have to have a standalone, all-in-one piece of hardware where you can play four music sources From. So in other words, you have to. It's obligatory. It's in your rider. It's gospel where you have to have one piece of kit, not two or three dotted all over the place. One piece of kit where you will be able to play from that one piece of kit four separate music sources, four separate sounds, house, hip-hop, soul and R&B or house, house, house and house from that one piece of kit.

That's it. That's it. On the other hand, on the other hand, on the other hand, listen to this. Now I have not used the XDJ-XZ yet. Let's call it the XZ for short. I've seen videos on it and I like it. Alright? Now I'm not going to slag off other companies but something that's very important here, really important. If Pioneer Wanted to make an all-in-one unit where you can indeed, like other people, person, someone, you know, out there, play from four music sources. They would have presented it and made it. But it doesn't mean to say that they're not making, designing something as we speak. And if they do, the one thing I can guarantee, putting my head on the block now, is that it will be, it will be far better.

2:29 Second-hand price, sell, plug separate

Then what is out there at the moment? I truly believe that. Truly believe that. Now let me give you an analogy here as well, because some people complain about the cost of Pioneer. Let's say you want to go and buy a car and you go and buy some clapped out dodgy vehicle that looks good, it's got big exhausts, sounds great, drinks petrol and pulls the women. You'll pay a fortune for it. Probably. And then after quite a few years, you want to sell it, you're not going to get much back for your money. On the other hand, if you buy maybe an Audi or a BMW, something that's out there a lot, has got that Vorsprung-Duck technique, has got the kudos, has got the reputation, has got the good second-hand value, then when eventually you do sell it and it's still in good condition, you will get a decent second-hand price. Now that is exactly the same in the music industry.

In the DJ industry. Because if you do, and by the way, Pioneer are not paying me for this video. Alright? Not. This is me. I can do what the hell I want. It's exactly the same with DJ Kit. If you buy low-end, cheap lighting... PA, hardware, then you go to sell it. You are not going to get a good second-hand price because it hasn't really got a good name or I'm not going to name names. On the other hand there are certain items that if you do buy brand new and you sell second-hand you will get a good price for them. So, that's one reason why you invest in good top quality. As I've said time and time again for the mobile DJs out there, if you're going to spend a fortune on your hardware and your laptop and your lighting, for God's sake, don't buy a crappy PA system. You're an absolute idiot. What's the point in spending a thousand plus pounds on a controller, 500, 600 quid on a laptop, only then to think, oh, I'll just buy a cheap set of PA speakers for a couple of hundred quid?

You're only as good as the weakest link, and if your PA is crap, you're crap. No, well you're not, but you know what I mean. Okay, so why should you... Invest, look at or even give the XDJ-XZ a go. Well first of all it's four channels of course. You can only play from the two decks into the inside two channels. At the moment I've got the XDJ-RX2 here so you can only play right deck into the third channel along from the left, left deck into the second channel along from the left. But of course you can plug in two separate external sources. Now with the RX2 here, I can indeed plug a separate source in and play three decks, but only via the auxiliary, which is a little bit awkward. I mean, alright, it's great because if someone thrusts a phone in at a gig and says, can you play this from my phone? Go away. You know, sorry. By the way, I'm a keen cyclist.

5:24 Laptop, side channel, hand side

You can, but you've only got the trim for the auxiliary off 0 dB or plus 12 dB. Whereas the XZ you have... Two other channels. So you can, for example, have an XDJ-1000M2 on this side and you can have a Pioneer Nexus 2000M2 on the other side and you can switch. So the player on the left into channel 1, the XZ left hand side channel 2, the XZ right hand side channel 3 and your Nexus on the other side channel number 4. And you can switch from all of those however you like. But one of the great features of the XZ, and I mean just one of them, is let's say you've got a thumb drive plugged in to the media player, your XDJ-700 or XDJ-1000M2 on the left hand side, you've got a USB plugged in there, you've got your LAN cable plugged in to your XZ, you also have a LAN cable then out of that into your Nexus, guess what?

You can play from that USB anywhere. Very clever. This is what we like. Also, I truly believe the days of the laptop are coming to an end because it doesn't matter how expensive your controller is or whatever you've got as a hardware, it doesn't matter how good your laptop is, you are relying solely on the connection from the USB from the laptop into the controller that you've got now again when you plug the square part of the usb into the controller it really pushes in there is a nice kind of field as it pushes in whereas on the other hand when you plug in the flat part something that looks like that into your laptop i'm not happy with that now pioneer again A thinking in advance, it's been out there for a long time but of course there is actually no need for the laptop because if you use rekordbox software and you analyse your tracks via the software, put it onto a thumb drive, in America it's called a stick drive, you put it on a thumb drive, you put it into the Pioneer kit then not only do you not need the laptop but you have

8:05 You have bigger jog wheels

Practically all, if not every single feature you would have if you were using the laptop with not having to have that USB plug and not thinking, having to think, sorry, about if the laptop crashes. Now, with the RX2 I've got two USB inputs. I believe the XE has three. I haven't used it yet. I hope to in the future very soon. Cross fingers. Okay, so what else? You have bigger jog wheels. Now, the price-wise, right, the mixer on the RX is very similar to the 900 Nexus Mark II. Now that's quite an expensive item. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't get it, but it's quite expensive. Now the cost of the mixer is around, it's actually slightly more expensive than the XZ. So for the XZ you're getting everything whereas you buy the 900 Nexus Mark II mixer and you're just getting a mixer that you can look at and go and you can't do anything else with it. Whereas the XZ you can plug music into it and play music. Also again the four channel mixer

Ellaskins has your colour effects and your beat effects. And like I said, it's really similar to the 900 mixer. Now something with the RX that I've always liked is the two channel input for the microphone. But the trouble here is you have low and high only. So let's imagine you've got a singer and you've got a rap artist and they want to go through your mixer which This probably has happened somewhere around the world. You can of course set the sound according to how loud or quiet either either is, but what you can't do is separate, you can't EQ each separate input, whereas with the XZ you can. And it has a three-band EQ as well. So, for example, you can have a good sort of mid kind of sound with the vocalist and if you want to, you can increase the bass on the rapper. It's almost like having a band mixer and that's very clever and that is something that is a must-must-have for mobile DJs.

Also, I believe there's a little LED signal on there that shines one colour when there's no audio coming through and another when there's audio going through. It's a great feature. Alright, now I have not used the XE yet, I hope to very soon, but at the beginning of this video I explained why you shouldn't get it, you know, and if you do have to have four decks, you've got to. Then don't bother. But let's be honest, alright? I'm predominantly a mobile DJ and I very, very, very rarely use more than two turntables because what are we doing? We're playing one, mixing in another one, playing another and another. On the odd occasion there'll be an acapella in the background or something like that. But what I do like is I like...

10:47 Alternatively, you could have two vinyl turntables there

The idea of having a Nexus over there, maybe XDJ-700 over there as backup, okay? As just as purely as backup. Because someone could come along and say, can you play this CD? Alternatively, you could have two vinyl turntables there. And you can still use DVS. Alternatively, you could have your two vinyl turntables and use real vinyl. At the same time, you've got all the functionality of the XZ. So you have the complete unit which you can play from your laptop or your thumb drives. And at the same time, yeah, vinyl, let's go old school. Needle on the record so the drum beat goes like this and you bring that in over an MP3. Magical. But if we go to superclubs now, now if you think about it, if you go to any superclub, they will more than likely have the Nexus set up. And if you said to the top superstar DJs, well when you walk in there, there's going to be the new Pioneer controller. If they don't know about the XE, they'll be like, I don't know, no, no, it's got to be Nexus, got to be, got to be. But I truly feel, honestly, and quote me here, leave a comment if you agree or disagree.

When that said, DJ turns up, he or she, and sees an XZ in front of them with a Nexus next to it, the CDJ-2000 Nexus either side. And then they go, ooh, four channels, right, OK, so the two channels in the middle will do the controller, and either side there's my Nexus, and that mixer is four channels, I've got the colour effects there, it looks exactly like a 900 mixer. They'd probably be very happy. Because it just does what they would want it to do anyway. Plus, they walk in with their thumb drive with all of their rekordbox files on there, plug it in and they can use all four decks. Me as a mobile DJ, I am thoroughly looking forward to using the XZ and carry on watching this channel because it's going to happen. Any comments, anything like that, stick them underneath here. If you use or you're going to use the XZ or you're buying it or you want to buy it or you want to know reasons why you should or shouldn't, stick them in a comment and practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.