DCD-PRO400 Review in DJ Times Magazine

Review from DJ Times Magazine, September 1999Words: Mike Klasco & Paul Binder

ADJS CD UNIT: A FEATURE FILLED WINNER!

I know what youre saying: "Just what we need, another dual CD player!" But American DJ, long known for its range of club and mobile DJ lighting, has released its DCD-Pro 400 CD player and DJs may be surprised by its features and overall quality. As our field-testing will reveal, its not just another CD unit for DJs.

First, a little industry info: Except for the Pioneer and Denon CD players, most of the DJ-specific CD players are either manufactured in two different factories in Taiwan or one in South Korea. This is no mystery, and actually it is hard to tell by appearances which factory supplied which U.S. brands. Some of these products were less than rugged a few years back, but these days almost all of these players are more than decent.

Why are there so few factories producing this type of product? To begin with, aside from karaoke, there is not much need for pitch controls on consumer CD players, and only a DJ craves an instant start feature. With a "limited" market of 20,000 DJ CD units a year, none of the big manufacturers are interested, especially when most of the business is already tied up to a couple of factories that specialize in this stuff.

So here we are with the American DJ product. It is an upscale product, with the usual instant start, pitch control, nice soft touch buttons, along with "hot start" buttons (a fairly tricky feature). There are a few styling touches such as the display and the fronts of the transports that show some thought. I will leave the operational style discussion to our taste tester, DJ Paul Binder.

Inside the control (remote) unit the construction is very clean. All controls mount directly to large circuit boards just behind the front panel. Workmanship was very good. The unit that holds the CD transports is well constructed with good grade CD mechanisms. However, there was no special effort to provide any shock isolation. Nor is there any electronic shock memory protection. Chassis is of adequate gauge metal.

Maybe the biggest surprise is not the product technology, but that such a decent and competent effort is coming from a company introducing its first DJ CD player. Its a nice product, especially for the $1,000 list price. Now for Pauls "hands-on" look.

ACCORDING TO PAUL: OK, before I get into this article I have to be honest. When I was first exposed to the thought that American DJ Audio was going full force into the DJ market, I thought, "Great, all we need is another low-end supplier." At this pasts January NAMM show, in fact, I tried to get out of my appointment because I was more interested in other DJ products. But. once I was introduced to the "new" philosophy of the company and learned about the new upcoming products, I have to admit that American DJ Audio was the biggest surprise for me at NAMM. ADJs DCD-Pro 400 CD player reflects that commitment.

UNIT DESCRIPTION: Dual player with a two-rack space body and a three-rack space remote. The finish on the player is brushed aluminum, which helps in hiding dirty DJ fingerprints.

FEATURES: The first thing that shouts out at you is the instant start. It is the fastest I have seen. From cue to start, you have absolutely no delay. From my experience, I would say the American DJs instant start feature rivals that of the other Pioneer units. The cue button also acts as a sampler; the longer you hold down the longer the sample. The start can also be activated by the "Q Start" feature that works in conjunction with the American DJ mixer series (we used the Q-2221 Q-Deck). The cross-fader can instantly activate the start of the CD when the 1/8-inch relay jacks are installed.

The CD players standard seamless loop sampler with buttons for In, Out, and Re-Loop functions. The loop is very forgiving and truly seamless. The In button works as a cue button when on-the-fly cueing is needed. The loop has no length restrictions and the buttons feel similar to those on the new Denon DN 2000 MK3.

The display is large and backlit, and indicates features Time and Time Bar, Track Number, Program Display, Single/Continuous Playback, Loop & Re-Loop, and BPM/Pitch. To the left of the display sits a jog dial that has the usual features (outside ring for fast cueing and inside ring for frame-by-frame cueing), but American DJ did something extra. When in playback, instead of only using the pitch-bend buttons to adjust the pitch, you can spin the inside wheel and have the song smoothly adjust. The hard clicks are gone! Thank You.

The CD player also features programming and a "flip-flop" feature. The programming is for the following: track-sequence order (up to 30 songs per side), cue point programming (to program 10 cue points to each side), and direct track access (to cue songs from the program buttons). Don't start doing back flips yet. This is a very cool feature, but it isnt the Holy Grail. There are 10 access buttons that, when pressed in normal mode, will access the given track, but it takes about three seconds to read and cue up.

HERES HOW THE 10 BUTTONS WORK: When inactive they are used as direct track access. When in recall, they are used to recall, they are used to recall cue points. To memorize and assign a cue point, you set the cue point, then hit memory and assign it a number. These cue points will stay memorized as long as the CD is in the player, but if you accidentally take the CD out or turn the power off, the cue points will hold in memory until a new CD is put into the player - a great feature!

To access the cue point, just press the recall and the memory number. You can go from one cue point to another once in the recall mode. (Note that when going from cue point to cue point there is about a one-second delay.) The cue buttons also act as a stutter effect once programmed. To change the tracks order of a CD for playback purposes you hit program again and repeat. This is good for our lovely background CDs.

The "flip-flop" feature allows DJs to play song one from CD transport one and, when finished, song one from CD transport two will automatically start and back and forth. This can be done with any "Q-Start" mixer or any other brand of mixer. With the "Q-Start" mixers all you have to do is place the cross fader is the middle and set the CD player in single mode on both transports and the CDs will basically mix themselves.

This works when the "Q-Start" feature is engaged on the mixer and the 1/8 inch relay cables are hooked up from CD transport one to CD transport two. Even the dead space from the end of the song will be eliminated, so your mixes will be smooth.

The unit also features a sleep protect function that shuts off the transport and the laser of the unit after 15 minutes (when in pause or cue-mode) and a 60 second transport protect mode which closes the CD trays if left open for more than one minute.THE ANTI SHOCK

When the unit is shocked, it has a two-second pause and then returns to the position where the shock occurred. It doesn't skip all over the CD. The anti shock feature, in our opinion, is acceptable, but not the best we have seen. When we road tested, we used some of Bobby Morgansteins Shock Pads and they seemed to do the trick.

Overall, however, I was blown away that this player was loaded with so many useful features that really worked. With a suggested retail price of $999 I cant think of a better CD player to purchase unless you are a DJ who needs extreme anti-shock protection, such as in the Numark CDN-34. What a great surprise! Five Stars!