Then a dj sees a
new product often his first thought is "What does it
do?" With Denon's introduction of the new DN D-9000 that's
about to change. The question that is more readily answered is
"What doesn't it do?" Answer: not much.
The D-9000 has
numerous industry firsts. User replaceable CD drives are a
simple idea but leaps forward for the working DJ. You can
actually swap out drive 1 while continuing to play music in drive
2. In essence, the D-9000 is it's own backup unit. No
more down time while sending your unit in for repair!
The next thing to
blow my mind about this unit was the fact that you can mix between 2
songs on the same disc! There are 2 RCA out puts per side so
that you can plug the output into 2 channels on your mixer and use
your cross fader to control your mix. All of the specialty
effects such as scratching and brake will work on either of the
songs. In essence, Denon solves many mobile's dilemma of
number of CD's to carry vs. reliability and sound quality of MP3
systems. Now you can condense your music library onto custom
made compilation cd's while keeping the genre neatly organized on the
same disc. It's like having 4 drives and 2 copies of every disc!
Another huge
innovation is the fact that all of your effects work when using the
digital output. Unlike CD players of the past, whose digital
out rendered the them nothing more than overpriced home units, the
D-9000 gives you digital flexibility without compromising
functionality. The only feature that's lost is the mixing of 2
songs from the same disc. All effects, Key control, and pitch
adjustment remain intact. Now you can easily record songs
exactly how you'd play them live onto your computer.
The D-9000
includes multiple effects giving you the ability to remix on the
fly. A new feature is splice. This allows you to cut out
pieces of a song. You set your start and end points the same
way you would with a loop and all of a sudden, the unwanted portion
of a track is gone. This works great when you want to eliminate
talking or a rap in the middle of a dance song. All of a
sudden, you can play any song you'd like without having to worry
about killing the dance floor in the middle.
Other effects
include 4 hot starts per drive, 2 samples of 15 seconds each per
drive, delay, flange, filter (2 types) and transform (2 types).
Up to four of the effects can be used at the same time. Denon
also includes what it calls "Platter effects."
Drag-S, which gradually raises playback speed to normal after
playback is stopped; Brake, which gradually lowers playback speed to
stop when Pause is pressed; Echo, which repeats and fades last
playback sound when Pause is pressed and Reverse, which shifts
playback immediately into reverse. You can finally hear if Ozzy
Osborne has hidden messages. The last of the Platter Effects is
the Dump feature. Just like a radio station, you can now
eliminate up to 8 seconds of live playback at the touch of a
button. Dump plays the song backwards as long as your holding
the button down. In essence, you can now play an unedited song
and dump the offensive lyrics. Perfect for school dances!
Denon has also
upgraded their scratch function. You're now able to scratch
samples. Additionally, there are 3 scratch modes: Forward,
Reverse, and both. What that means is that you can tell the jog
wheel only to make a scratch noise when moving it forward or
backwards. Both would let the jog wheel function as the platter
on a turntable. Now, my sausage fingers that are too slow to
crab don't stop me from performing all of the tricks. The
scratching sound is clean without that tingy sound of earlier scratch
units. The small jog wheel takes a few minutes to get used to
if you're a vinyl jock but still performs nicely. If you're
buying this unit just to scratch, you're wasting your time and
missing out on a whole new world of creativity.
Features are great
(and the D-9000 is loaded with them) but what matters most is how a
piece performs. After about 15 minutes of play I started to
feel comfortable. There are a ton of buttons, but they're laid
out neatly and logically. I was able to perform all the
functions after about half an hour. The unit fits neatly into
my current rack and works great with any mixer. Just as Denon's
Dn-2600 and 2100, current Denon mixers can auto cue the effects
taking you to a new level of creativity. The D-9000 works
perfectly in either a mobile or club setting. The only draw
back is that MP3 and DVD formats aren't supported. The DN
D-9000 is without a doubt the best CD player I've ever used. After
hours of play, I can only conclude that the D stands for
Dynamite. I'd strongly recommend everyone take a few
minutes to play then next time they're at their local DJ store.
You may just change the way you DJ.
The Denon Dn
D-9000 should arrive in stores the first week of May
|