American DJ Pro-DJ2 CD Player +American DJ Q-2221 Mixer
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Review from URB Magazine Sept/Oct 99 Issue 68Reviewed by Sam Cannon
It used to be that you had to drop serious dollars to own a pair of full-featured tabletop CD players. American DJ has changed all that.The Pro-DJ2 decks convert all the features from their popular line of industrial strength rack-mount models to a pair of solid, good-looking tabletops.
If theres a feature out there, chances are the Pro-DJ2 does it. On-the-fly seamless looping and pitch control (up to 16 percent) let you freak a disc without missing a beat. Ten programmable cue points with instant start enable you to jump to any point on a CE with, seriously, not even a fraction of a second delay. The jog and shuttle wheels allow for subtle pitch bending and detailed or high-speed cueing. A "bop" button acts as a sampler trigger which can be used for a manually manipulated stutter effect by playing a cue point as its tapped. A "flip-flop" setting lets you take a bathroom break without worrying about music stopping.
Not only are the technical specs solid, the design of the unit is refreshingly intuitive. Front-loading drawers free up surface space for readout and instrumentation. Buttons are marked, sized and positioned with a DJ in mind. The easy-to-read green glowing LCD readout offers everything you could want to know at a glance.
Get two DJ2 players together with a Q-2221 mixer (which can be purchased in a maching brushed-silver finish) and the real fun begins. In the Q-2221s "Q-start" mode the DJ can crossfade between selected cue points the flick of a wrist. This can be used to beat-juggle between two CDs or, when activated on one channel only or coupled with a turntable, flicker samples over a breakbeat. The Q-2221s fluid fader, hamster switch, adjustable transformer switch (up/down or right/left as you prefer), three EQ kills and dual fader curve settings enable the spontaneous thrills of performance/scratch mixing while the digital features of the decks open up new worlds of possibility to the mix.
American DJ proves you "can" have your sound system and eat, too. The Pro-DJ2/Sys -- the Q-2221 mixer, a pair of Pro-DJ2 CD players and a custom coffin -- costs half as much as comparable systems withoutcompromising on features or performance. The party people at American DJ have broken down -- no, demolished -- the cost barriers that have for so long kept DJs from incorporating CD manipulation and mixing into their bag of tricks. The affordable, versatile and powerful Pro-DJ2/Sys allows you to spend your hard-earned money on music, not equipment upgrades.
c1999 URB Magazine, 800.URBMAG.9 www.urb.comP.O. Box 16147, North Hollywood, CA 91615-6147
