XDJ-RX3 Video One an Honest First Time Users Opinion

0:00 Welcome to my first look and actual go on the RX3

Right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my first look and actual go on the RX3. Now, yes, this has been out for quite a while, but it's only recent... Well, actually, I've just got it. Now, very quickly as well, this is not mine. I have been loaned this for a month, so... I'm going to have a little mess around with it. It's in pristine condition and all being well, it should go back in pristine condition. Rekordbox friendly, Serato friendly, MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF and FLAC. In other words, it's going to probably play anything. What do I think about it? Well, as soon as I opened it up, literally the second I opened it up, this massive screen hit me. It's like an iPad. It's insane. It looks good. It feels good. And again, I'm going to give my honest opinion here because I have had the RX1 if you've been watching my channel and the RX2. So during the course of me having this, I'm going to give my honest opinion and say whether you want to bin your RX2, not literally bin it, but just part exchange it for this.

1:55 Again, this is going to be like a very basic kind of overview

Or maybe you should take up needlework. Dunno. Alright, as well, just to let you know, I'm playing a tune by Mr Danny J Lewis. All night. All right, so again, this is going to be like a very basic kind of overview. Now something I do like is the vinyl speed adjust. We've got that on at the moment. So it's a little bit like the old school vinyl turntable. You know, you'll give it... You've got that kind of nice, very quick sort of stop. Not an abrupt stop like this. You can set it there. Okay, also, what I do find is that the jog wheels, even though they're the same size as the RX1 and 2, they seem to feel better. There's something about them. They just, I don't know whether there's more of a response, but I'm sure you can get a different kind of response in the settings. But anyway, I mean, like I said, I have literally just turned it on, put a couple of thumb drives in and away you go.

Now one thing I will say, please by the way leave a comment. Let me know what you think of it. Have you got an RX1? Have you got an RX2? Have you got the RX3? Have you got the RX3 now? You had the RX2, you got rid of that to buy the RX3. Are you like annoyed because you should have kept it or you're happy with the RX3? Let me know in a comment. I'm going to go through some of the features and after my sort of quick little go on it, I'll let you know what I think. Well, the footprint of the RX3 is pretty much identical to the RX1 and 2. One big difference is, of course, the screen. The other one is you don't have the buttons on the side for USB 1 and 2. You have to go to source And then you choose which one you want to use. Now, something as well that I try and explain to people, which is important. Now, if you're going to use something like this all the time standalone, that means you're going to be using the USB ports, which means you're more than likely going to be taking USBs out and in, out and in all the time. Now, there are no moving parts in the RX3, so theoretically...

Not much should go wrong. A little bit like modern day or decent computers with SSDs, you know, no sort of disk drives in there. And over time, I actually had to take one of my computers in. It was running really slow. The guy took one look at it and he says, yeah, your hard drive's knackered. I said, take it out. He put SSD in. Now it actually starts. In a minute instead of like four days, so really pleased about that. But over here with the USB ports, if you're going to be taking USBs in and out all the time, it's obvious that they will wear out. So what I highly recommend is you buy yourself a small adapter which plugs into the USB ports. It only has to be two or three inches long, so male and female, you'll plug one end in to the RX3

5:29 He also offers jog adjust, which is a really nice feature as well

The other end then, you plug your USBs into. So of course what you're doing over time, the plug will wear out and not the plug or the cable that you plugged in will wear out and not the actual plug inside the USB in the unit itself. So that's just a by-the-by really. Anyway... He also offers jog adjust, which is a really nice feature as well. So you can get some nice feel on the jog wheel. And again, it's reminiscent of, you know, the CDJ-1000s where, you know, a good DJ would turn up at the event. One of the first things they do is set the jog adjust to how they like it, okay? Now, the only feature I've never really been keen of with the RX1, 2 and 3 is the small jog wheels, okay? But then again, you know, if you want bigger jog wheels, you wouldn't look at this. You'd go for the XZ straight up. I'm just mesmerized by that screen, OK? And also very important here. Now, I honestly think the way technology is moving forward, I can seriously see in our lifetimes the controllers like this.

Getting to the stage where you just do not need a computer. Now, at the moment, yes, you can plug your laptop in. So you've got a choice here of phono deck line. So again, you can plug in external CD players, your MP3 player or even an iPod. On the other hand, you can plug in vinyl turntables. But of course, you can plug in your laptop. But let's be honest, all right? What's the point in having a laptop in front of you relaying information to the player when you can transfer all the information from rekordbox, Serato into the player and it's going to do the same thing. It's like to me now that's getting pointless to have. A laptop. And also, digressing a little bit, but how many times have you, me, everyone and his dog and the cat and the auntie next door and the uncle and the banana seen DJs on controllers and all they're doing is they're looking at a laptop at a screen to the right or to the left? That, to me, is wrong.

8:01 You have your sound colour effects, you have your beat effects

A DJ needs to be concentrating on the crowd. So with something like this now, the RX3, bigger screen, that's all you need, okay? So in a way, they've nailed it, even if they did nothing else different between the RX2 and 3, and they just thought, let's keep everything the same, we'll just do a bigger screen, thumbs up, it's good to go. Okay, so sound-wise, I'm no expert, it sounds just as good. Features, very similar. You have your sound colour effects, you have your beat effects. And just to let you know why they're called sound colour and beat effects, the sound colour is the user being able to just play around with colours, or the sounds, whereas the beat effects is more the user being able to get effects in beat with the track. So the analogy there, two artists.

One artist got a bunch of colours and they paint a picture on a white piece of paper. The other artist has got the same colours and they have to do painting by numbers, in boxes, squares. And that's what you can do here. So for example, I've got the echo and on the screen I can change the parameter as I like. Okay, so I like the wave format, like I said, I like... How big the screen is, also at the top, browse, tag list, playlist, search, the usual, back, the dial here which is pretty much standard with all of the RX series and the XZ and the RR and of course the big players as well. So if we have a look say at just one of the sides, what you're looking at pretty much here is a CDJ sort of 2000 but with a smaller jog wheel now again let's say you want to go down the road of these separate players there's nothing wrong with that but you've got three separate players you're paying a lot of money uh plugging everything in when you could turn up at your event and you could have one complete unit that does practically the same thing and i'll be honest with you as well i don't think there are many djs

A vast percentage of DJs, should I say, will only play on two decks. There are very few who, on their ride up, have got to have three or four decks. In fact, even at some big festivals where you see like 500 decks all over the place, if you watch the DJs more often than not, they're playing on two. The other two are there just in case, or it looks good. But here, you've got everything you need. Now again, like the RX1 and 2, you can chop and change. So if you've got your laptop plugged in, While you're playing, you can go from your laptop to your thumb drive, switch over to vinyl, maybe to CD and back again. So you don't have to unplug, plug in and whatnot. It's all there. Again, there is only two channels, unlike the XZ that's got four channels. So you can have two CDs in and the player itself so you could go from USB to USB.

11:03 Beat effects seem the same

Directly to CD so you can have a mix on sort of four decks as it were. All right, so again, I can't really say much about it at the moment because I've only just sort of like opened it up and plugged it in. But I mean, so far, so good. I mean, I'm going by the RX2 that I had and looking at it, sound colour effects seem exactly the same. Beat effects seem the same. There may be one or two new ones, I'm not sure. I need a closer look. But, I mean, it's great. Like I said at the beginning of the video, what does stand out is that screen. It's absolutely massive. So even for people like me who, like, I think I need to wear glasses, not that I want to, but having a screen like that is, yeah, it's a big thumbs up. Alright.

So, what do you think? I know this is sort of a short video, but what do you think? Like I said earlier, have you got one? Are you thinking of getting one? Now, what I would say, and I'm going to be very honest with you here, if you've got the RX1 or RX2 and you're thinking, I need to get the RX3, maybe consider this. If you get the RX3... You're almost having the same kind of player with a bigger screen and more features, and I'll find out about those features the more I look into this, but you might want to consider the XZ. It's bigger, bigger jog wheels, and for me it just looks more professional. This is professional, but if I saw this in a big super club, I'd go, okay what's the DJ doing?

On the other hand, if I went into a super club and I saw Carl Cox using the XZ, which takes up a lot more real estate, I'd be like, yeah, the guy's a professional. He knows what he's doing. All right. So again, tell me what you think. Do you like it? And also in some comments, let me know what you'd like me to do in future videos on the XDJ-RX3. That's what this is. And once again, thank you very much. Thanks for watching. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.

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