dj magazine  
Gear Review

 

r

Search DJzone


Home
This Issue
Daily News
Features
MP3
Mobile
Club
Radio
Karaoke
Reviews


Calender


Chat
Issue Archives
DJ Games
DJ Musiclists
DJ Book Store
Gear Mall
DJ Software

 

 

 

  

The D stands for Dynamite
Russ Brown


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

 

 
powered by

 

r

web hosting | how to advertise | submit an article  

  about DJzone


DJzone network:
DJzone.com | Partypros.com | DJchat.com | DJ-mall.com | DJgearbid.com | MDJU.com | DJTalk.com | DiscJockeydirectory.com | 411dj.com


   DJzone | letters to the editor | features | reviews | daily music news | classifieds | resources


Copyright © 2001 DJzone, Inc. All rights reserved.