- Today I'm looking at
the new Pioneer DDJ-200 controller.
Which as I record this,
has just been launched.
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Right, let's get stuck in and
have a look at this thing.
You know, hobby and semi-pro
DJs, that's you and me.
We kind of know what we want and we are
a little bit more advanced than the people
this new unit is aimed at.
This is aimed at casual
users, first time users, kids,
people who just want to dabble.
It might be aimed at your kids.
It's aimed at anyone who's got a phone,
and uses DJ software on their phone.
Let's face it, we've all got that, right?
We've all got one of those DJ
apps tucked away on our phone.
But you will find it a bit frustrating.
I want to do a little bit more than just
sit there poking on a phone.
It doesn't look cool, you
can't plug your headphones in.
It's hard, so Pioneer's made the DDJ-200.
To try to unlock DJing
for that massive group,
of kind of people who haven't really
been served by DJ
hardware until this point.
But as we're about to see,
it's also about DJ software
because it's a new
version of their WeDJ app.
That's designed to go with it.
It's even gotten it written on the unit.
So in doing this, Pioneer
is hoping that a lot
of people who are not quite at the level
of the Digital DJ Tips community,
are going to get into DJ here
and of course move up very quickly.
Kind of become at the level we're at.
Right, let's have a look at the unit then,
let's talk about what's going on in it.
So I've already said
that this is for phones.
I've got this here with my iPhone,
it's coming for Android.
The app is free for it.
It's for people who want
to use streaming music as well,
because as you're about to find out
this works with a whole load
of streaming audio providers.
So that means that you don't actually
need any local music.
So I know one of the things people
think, well all my musics on Spotify,
all my musics on one of
my streaming platforms,
why do I need to actually go and buy it,
just to be able to DJ?
When you put it like that
it's ridiculous, isn't it?
When I talk to you about how this works,
you'll see that Pioneer's made sure
it works with lots and lots
of streaming providers.
Including Beatport's brand new service,
which again, is available as of today,
at the moment only on the Pioneer
system that we're looking at here.
So it's designed for phones and
it's designed for streaming.
I think we should have a better
look at the unit first,
before we move on to
looking at the software.
So it looks pretty similar
to Pioneer's pro gear,
or rather the gear that moves up through
the controllers to pro.
For instance, here is the DDJ-400,
not an awful lot of difference
between those two units,
it's like a stripped down one, right?
And even up to the DDJ-800 and 1000
and then up to the
pro gear in the DJ booth.
A lot of this stuff is laid out exactly
as you would expect to find it.
The jogs, the play pause buttons,
the big tempo fader, the three band EQ,
the filter knob, the
headphones monitoring,
and of course the shrunk
down little mixer here.
It's all as you would expect.
Any DJ that's used to using
any of the other gear,
would know immediately
where to go on this unit.
Which of course means it's great
if you are starting out in DJing,
and you want to learn using stuff
which is going to feel
familiar as you move
up through semi-pro and pro gear.
It's obviously smaller and lighter
than pretty much all the other controllers
in the Pioneer range and pretty
much all of them out there.
Pioneer has made an optional extra case,
which for an extra 50 bucks can give
you something pretty cool to carry
this thing around in as well.
So they are definitely thinking about
the kind of user that would want
to take the round to a mate's house
to spin some tunes instead
of maybe using video games.
So big tick in the box for music rather
than video games there which we always
like here at Digital DJ Tips.
So talking round the unit,
(upbeat electric dance music)
the jog wheels are really nice,
small obviously but they do
exactly what you'd expect.
They've got nudge when
you move them like this,
and they've got scratch functionality
when you use them like that.
You can actually adjust the amount
of the way they feel in
the software as well.
The play/pause buttons, very responsive.
I'll talk to you about the way
this is all connected up in a minute.
I just want to show you
the unit its self for now.
And your cue button is exactly
as it works on all gear,
you can put a cue point anywhere
you want temporarily in the track,
and that will work.
Nice big tempo controls here.
Again it kind of trickle down from gear
that costs a lot more.
You don't often get
big nice tempo controls
like this on entry-level controllers.
Now down here we have
a filter.
As you can see in a minute,
that can be assigned to
other things as well.
The EQs are, as I
mentioned, are full 3 band,
cross fader, two up faders,
and performance pads I'm going
to talk you through in a minute,
and a shift button for
unlocking other functions.
So in other words this has got pretty much
the basics that you need on it.
It is missing things, we'll
go on to those in a bit.
One of the big things
it's missing, in fact
which leads me nicely
to what I wanted to talk
to you about next is where you plug
your headphones and your speakers in.
Because they are not
plugged into this unit here.
Instead the until uses built
in audio on your phone,
in order to give you something
to play through your speakers,
and something to play
through your headphones.
And the way it does that
is using what's called
a mono, or DJ splitter cable,
which comes in the box from Pioneer.
So in the box you get the unit,
you get a USB cable, again I'm coming
to that in a minute, and you also
get this splitter cable and the idea
is you plug your speakers
in to one bit of the cable,
and you plug your headphones into
the other bit of the cable.
And that allows you to listen something
independently of what your
audience is hearing via this.
So that's how the audio works on this.
There's no audio interface
built into the unit at all.
Now you can see lots of wires here,
I think I'm going to
explain to you, kind of
what this one's doing because I've already
explained the output coming here,
one off to the speaker and one
off your headphones but this one here
isn't plugged into our phone at all,
this is only plugged into
basically a phone charger,
in order to give USB power into this unit.
So if that's only plugged into a charger,
how's this talking to this?
Well the give away is the little
Bluetooth sign by the midi light here.
There's actually a Bluetooth connection
between the phone and the unit,
in order to transfer not music
but midi data between the two.
Now of course the thing with Bluetooth,
as anyone who's dabbled in this, for DJing
already knows is, there's a lag.
So you can't effectively
DJ with Bluetooth.
But we're not talking about sending
audio over Bluetooth here,
we're just talking about
sending a midi signal,
which is a fraction of the amount of data,
and actually that means it can happen
effectively instantaneously.
And let me just show
you what I mean by that.
(upbeat electric dance music)
Keep your eye on my finger.
(scratches audio of electric dance music)
There is nothing at all
that makes you think
anything other than there is a proper
wire between the two of them.
If anyone's used or
seen the Phase Wireless
Scratch System, which
is a way that pro DJs
can scratch using
turntables without wires.
It feels exactly the same as far
as the performance goes.
So Pioneer's done a really good job
of putting Bluetooth between your phone
and there which is kind of one less
cable to worry about.
Now before we move and look
closely at the software,
WeDJ, which is brand new.
It's also free on the App store
for Pioneer to work with this.
I want to just talk to you about all
those streaming services it works with.
So this works with Beatport's
new LINK as I mentioned,
it also works with SoundCloud Go+,
both of which require a subscription.
That's within the WeDJ software,
but Pioneer's opened this up to work
with other people's software as well.
It works with Algoriddim's djay software,
which means you get Spotify,
because Spotify is plugged
into Algoriddim's software.
And it also works with EDJing mix,
which brings you Deezer and also
a free version of SoundCloud.
So across all those pieces of software,
you get a lot of potential streaming
platforms to play with,
which is a real plus point of this.
And now we're going to
move on to the software,
and I'll show you how it's
incorporated into WeDJ,
it's very similar in those
other platforms as well.
So the first thing I want
to show you about WeDJ,
is this really cool built in tutorial.
It's designed to show
complete newbies to DJ.
Exactly what needs to be
done in order to play,
across mixing, monitoring, filtering,
hot Ques, loops, effects,
transition effects,
and something called Phrase sync,
which we're going to get onto in a minute.
It's there at all times and it comes
up as soon as you start the
software for the first time.
They've also got something
called pop hints,
which is short for pop-up hints.
And when you turn that
on anything you touch
on the surface of the software there,
will have a little pop-up explaining
how it works a bit better.
It's just a really nice interactive way
of getting the basics of DJing down
and it's done very well.
Overall the software is a huge improvement
on the original WeDJ software.
You can load tracks here,
you can see I'm on Beatport at the moment
where I've got playlists and
genres and individual tracks.
I can also select SoundCloud from here.
I can also select my local music,
I can even select music that's just
in files on the idevice.
So that's really nice how you've got
all your choices there for music.
Once you've got tracks
loaded onto the system
they show as waveforms
as you can see here.
I can start a track
playing on the controller,
(rhythmic pulsing music)
and you can see the waveform is now
scrolling away in front of us.
(scratches on rhythmic pulsing music)
And I can move it around like this,
and on the other deck I've got the other
track waiting there and I
can mix this like normal.
Just as a normal DJ
would without any sync,
or I can turn sync on and it's going
to control all of that for me.
(upbeat electric dance music)
(rhythmic pulsing music)
There's my two tracks
automatically synced there.
It also has something called Phrase sync,
which is really really nice,
what Phrase sync does is take the actual
phrases, verse, chorus and so on,
and sync up those for you
and not just the beats.
So if you really are a beginner at this
and you just want to practise getting
from one track to another this
will help you to make it sound all right.
So with Phrase sync on if I click play,
on this deck it's counting
both decks down now,
to a point where it thinks is a good point
to mix those two tracks and then all I'm
going to do is bring
the cross fader across.
I've not seen this before in any other
software and it's a great
little feature for beginners.
(upbeat electric dance music)
Let's look at how the
performance pads work.
So the performance pads
don't have selector
buttons above the pads like you
see on other DJ controllers.
You have to press a little
button on your phone.
Now talking of the phone notice
I've put it down here.
I actually find this to be a better place
then somewhere around the back
which you might think would
be where you'd want to put it.
And I think the reason for that
is that I've got my headphones plugged
in here and you're used to
having headphones down here,
and also maybe because
the phone's quite small
and so I can see it better.
Anyway it works fine down here.
So hot cues are the
first thing I can select.
There's hot cues for deck one
and there's hot cues for deck two,
and when the hot Ques are on I can
jump hot Ques in my track at any point.
(clicking buttons on phone)
(upbeat electronic dance music)
And go back to them I can erase them by
pressing shift and hot cue
as on bigger DJ systems.
They work really well.
(looping electronic dance music)
The next set are loops,
which work in a kind of
loop roll manner like that,
there's no other looping
on this controller.
So you don't have manual loops
or anything like that.
It's all done in the pads.
The next thing along
we have is pad effects.
So these are really
nice one-touch effects,
that just let you do
something cool without
having to do anything else
other than press the button.
(music softens)
(music distorts)
And you've got another
five of these to play with.
Or it could stop there or
kind of start the echo.
Reverb, and a kind of
echo out effect there.
Pretty cool really easy to use.
So moving along we've got
a sampler here as well,
which comes preloaded with samples
but you can add extra samples
and indeed extra effects
are some of the things we're about to look
at via a app kind of
upgrade within the software.
So the software is free
but you can buy like
little add on packs to do stuff like this.
So the sampler drops some rather unsubtle
I think samples over the top.
(mysterious electric music)
(air horn effect)
But hey they're there for you to play with.
Now something else I wanted to show
you was something called
transition effects.
So these are really cool as well.
This is for when you've got two tracks
playing and instead of just cross fading
between the two of them,
you can switch on transition effects
and as you're moving
the cross fader across
it does something cool as well.
So if I set two tracks playing,
(rhythmic pulsing music)
(upbeat electronic dance music)
Here's my transition
between the two of them.
Why don't we turn on transition effects,
transition effects give me lots
of nice ways of moving
between these tracks.
So for instance,
(intensifying upbeat
electronic dance music)
(fading upbeat electronic dance music)
You can hear a kind of
filter effect going on there.
I can touch here and it
shows me what I've got set.
Set to filter mix, raw mixes
is another one I liked.
Listen to this.
(vocals fade out)
(euphoric music)
It puts a ever increasing loop roll
on the outgoing track.
Pulls me into the other track,
there's also other ones here as well
that you could choose.
I quite like the noise
spin, listen to this.
(whirling effect through
upbeat electronic dance music)
Kind of a noise followed by a spin back,
and there are more of those available
as add on packs as well.
So for a tiny piece of DJ software,
or at least on a tiny device,
there's a lot more going
on than the beginner
would need to find out about,
but once you get stuck in here
as someone who knows a bit more about
this stuff you'll enjoy these things.
For instance, I like the X Y pad here,
the X Y pad, there's one for each deck
and they let you do stuff which
you could otherwise not do,
by using your finger on the screen.
This is filter and echo together.
(echoing effect over upbeat
electronic dance music)
Sounds pretty cool but
also you can edit these,
so if I don't want echo there I can choose
another effect and the
same at the top there.
And then whatever you choose here,
carries across to the filter knob.
So this is no longer a filter knob,
it's now got a noise effect
which I set in there.
So again there's stuff that
you can mess with there.
In the pad effects similarly you can edit
the pad effects, you can
choose what you want.
You can even choose the LFOs so if you
know what I'm talking about here,
that's pretty cool right?
It's all there if you need it.
Now then under the hood,
there's a whole load of stuff you can
mess around with the audio,
with setting up how the headphones
and the speakers give
you the split cue or not,
depending on how you're DJing.
Auto mixing here as well if you
just want to set the thing to
mix all those tunes you've chosen across
within your platforms.
So more than meets the eye in WeDJ.
So clearly I've only
been playing with this
for a very short time
now but I want to give
you some first thoughts about it.
I mean, the first thought
which is a really big one
is this is a big change for
Pioneer DJ in so many ways.
The idea that Pioneer
DJ makes a controller
that works with lots of other
people's services and apps.
Until now you wouldn't have expected
that from this company.
They've been a very
closed system if you like.
A kind of closed ecosystem,
but now they are thinking differently.
I think that's down to
the fact that this whole
idea of DJing moving
from using your own music
to using stuff from streaming services.
It's kind of behind the rest of the world,
like 10 years behind.
Everyone uses Spotify and
they always have, right?
But it's kind of struggling
to arrive in DJing.
So I think Pioneer has
hedged its bets here
and said look we'll
just support everything
and help to push this in.
I think that's the really good thing.
One thing I haven't talked to you about
which is also interesting
about this device,
is that you can plug this USB cable,
which as we talked about is only going
into a phone charger at the moment,
straight into your laptop.
And this little controller is about $140,
150 pounds about 60 euros,
it's around that kind of price.
The full pricing is in the article
that's linked to from this video.
But look it's a cheap controller,
you can plug it into your laptop
it unlocks Rekordbox you don't need to go
and buy a licence for Rekordbox,
which is by Rekordbox DJ which
is Pioneer's DJ software solution.
So you've got a controller
for Rekordbox DJ
on your laptop just by
plugging the cable in there.
So there's a value add
there and also as you
outgrow using your phone or if you
do want to move up to laptop
DJing for whatever reason,
you've got that option in the box as well.
Bluetooth midi works really nicely.
However I would like
to have seen this thing
with a battery in it or battery slots
so you can put rechargeable batteries
or even just disposable batteries in it.
In the same way that most Bluetooth stuff
works without wires, right?
And this still needs a wire which I think
is a little bit of an opportunity missed.
It just feels like if only
it didn't have that wire,
if only it did have built in battery,
control you could literally just throw
it in a bag along with your phone
and DJ from anywhere
without any wires at all.
Apart from of course if you
want headphone monitoring,
plugging this little one in.
It does work with a
Bluetooth speaker by the way
but you get a bit of a delay on DJing.
Certainly wouldn't be any good for trying
to beat mix and stuff like that.
A little bit better maybe for playlisting
and adding a few effects.
But anyway I'd like to have seen
an option to remove that wire,
in a future one I suspect
we might see that.
As it is you could always
plug a battery pack
like the ones that you maybe buy
to recharge your phone up with
and have it set next to it
in order to make it portable.
The software is excellent.
The hardware is I think it is wise
that it looks like the gear
higher up the food chain.
If you like.
It is missing a lot of things
that you get even on the DDJ-400.
So for instance there's no selectors
for the pads as I talked about,
you have to do that on the until its self.
There's no VU metres there,
we've already talked about
there's no audio built in.
But also little things like the
looping controls and stuff
just in this unit at all.
You're going to be touching
the screen a lot to control
some of the features of it,
but hey that's what you
get for the portability
and for the market they're kind of aiming
at with this thing.
There are a few things that you
need to know though.
So obviously you're
going to need an adapter,
some kind of charging
adapter to plug in your unit.
We've all got phones, right?
So I guess Pioneer are thinking well
everyone who's got a phone
has got a charger for it,
that's what you're going to be
plugging this thing in to make it work.
But also something which might be
a little bit less obvious to you
is if your phone is a later iPhone,
this only works on iPhone at the moment,
Android is coming,
if your phone is a later iPhone
you're going to need this little adapter.
It's one of the few Apple cables
that actually doesn't rip you off.
It's about $9 or something but you
are going to need this just so you can
plug your headphones in because
you cannot charge your phone with the
USB in there unless you
buy yet another adapter.
So for instance I've got a battery
pack on this phone.
In our tests it doesn't
really drain the phone
much more than just using the thing.
So you're going to get hours and hours
of fun on it but worth baring in mind
that you can't charge your phone
and plug this stuff in at the same time.
So there it is the Pioneer DDJ-200.
By large we think it will be a hit.
It's bold to move into that new
market segment, it's bold to have
something that's available
to all platforms out there.
I've got all the different streaming
services plugged in as of now.
Obviously those things
are going to consolidate
over time, no one's got
Apple Music plugged in yet.
I think whoever plugs that in first
is going to get the win here.
That's more about the
software than the hardware.
The only down side with the hardware
I would like to have seen
that battery control here.
But let us know what you think about it
in the comments underneath.
I'd love to hear what your thoughts
are on the Pioneer DDJ-200.
Until our full review then,
get good, get out there,
and make the moments.
See you again soon.
