l_rids
Hi all,
Finally got a pair of ICDX's and tested them throughout the day yesterday and was satisfied enough to use them in my gig last night. Note I haven't read the manual, I'm the sorta person who will only look into it if I really need to.
Things I picked up on that people may like to know...
Tap button on the icdx works perfect in cd mode, in vdj I notice its been mapped as autobeatmatch to the opposing deck. It would be cool to get it running like it does in cd mode... especially when some of the tracks arent the correct bpm.
Time display mode on the decks works perfect in cd mode, when running with vdj the times are mixed up between elapsed and time remaining... that is that the time remaining is actually the time elapsed & vice versa.
The eject button for the cd when used with vdj swaps the decks... switching between deck 1 & 2 in case it is on the wrong side.
The parameters knob on the icdx controls the internal crossfader in vdj. I don't know if this is intentional but I accidently moved the crossfader away from the centre and during the night I was wondering why 1 channel was louder than the other.... I had to compensate by turning up the gain on my mixer until I figured out what was the problem.
The icdx has a switch which runs 2 modes in reverse or bleep. Effectively they are the same except you have to hold the switch in bleep for it to reverse until you release it. Reverse basically stays in position until you change it which is all good. Problem I had with this is that the 'bleep' under my impression is to be used when ever you want to bleep or garble swearing or offensive language. Problem is when you use it, all it does is basically reverse the song... meaning you will never get past the point you actually want to bleep out. My idea of the bleep is that it should be playing that section in reverse but still playing forward. Might sound weird but there is current sound fx which do this already.
The platter sensitivity needs to be adjusted also. Its kind of ridiculous of how long it takes to rewind and fast forward through the tracks by using the platter. This also affects your ability to scratch like you would on the pioneer cdj-1000's or even xp10's. The movement is so slow that sometimes I find you have to extend your hand too far around whilst scratching.
The cue, pause & play buttons.... well they do exactly what they say. But it would be nice if there was a stop button which you could press to get back to the beginning of a track, especially when the track movement on the platter is so slow. It would be nice if the functions on the ICDX is mappable to solve this issue.
Biggest problem I had during my gig that was of most concern was when I was rewinding the platter fast to get to the beginning of a track whilst another track on the other deck was playing... it would affect the current track that was playing. It would sort of slow down and change the pitch of the track playing... really weird stuff. I never have this problem when I'm using my xp10's.
Also another problem which I think someone mention in one of the other threads is the activating of the video ouput. I think I was touching the parameter knob and quite possibly pushing it and it the video window popped up. This shouldnt happen... Another time during the gig the video window popped up again and this time I was only touching the platter. Weird! I've found it hard to replicate the problem, but its obvious that vdj is responding to something from the icdx.
I also noted I had a bit of a sound problem with the start of every track that I played. At the beginning of each track there was a peaking sound at the beginning which I had to advance the track a little bit to pass that sound and cue it from there. I've never had that problem before.... and yes my tracks are perfect recordings. I'll look into it more.
Choosing the effects on the icdx is a bit of a mission also. Basically theres a knob you use to scroll through the list of effects available and a button to activate/deactivate with the wet/dry adjusting knob. My personal preference is to have a button to activate each effect. This again could probably be solved by giving the icdx a mappable option of functions to each button. My recommendation at the moment is to delete the effects that you don't use from the effects folder in your installation directory to save you scrolling so much through the list.
The hot cues and looping functions work well with vdj... its simple and works the way it should.
Basically thats all the comments I have to say about the ICDX and my experience with it thus far. Alot of the problems can be fixed with a bit of tweaking and adding the ability to map whatever function you like to the buttons like the xp10. Overall I am still impressed because yes, the ability to switch from cd & vdj is great. Note I upgraded to v4.1r2 the same day I tested it.
If anybody has any comments about what I've mentioned or know of any possible fixes feel free to post your comments.
I'll post some pictures of my icdx/nuo4 setup later today...
Finally got a pair of ICDX's and tested them throughout the day yesterday and was satisfied enough to use them in my gig last night. Note I haven't read the manual, I'm the sorta person who will only look into it if I really need to.
Things I picked up on that people may like to know...
Tap button on the icdx works perfect in cd mode, in vdj I notice its been mapped as autobeatmatch to the opposing deck. It would be cool to get it running like it does in cd mode... especially when some of the tracks arent the correct bpm.
Time display mode on the decks works perfect in cd mode, when running with vdj the times are mixed up between elapsed and time remaining... that is that the time remaining is actually the time elapsed & vice versa.
The eject button for the cd when used with vdj swaps the decks... switching between deck 1 & 2 in case it is on the wrong side.
The parameters knob on the icdx controls the internal crossfader in vdj. I don't know if this is intentional but I accidently moved the crossfader away from the centre and during the night I was wondering why 1 channel was louder than the other.... I had to compensate by turning up the gain on my mixer until I figured out what was the problem.
The icdx has a switch which runs 2 modes in reverse or bleep. Effectively they are the same except you have to hold the switch in bleep for it to reverse until you release it. Reverse basically stays in position until you change it which is all good. Problem I had with this is that the 'bleep' under my impression is to be used when ever you want to bleep or garble swearing or offensive language. Problem is when you use it, all it does is basically reverse the song... meaning you will never get past the point you actually want to bleep out. My idea of the bleep is that it should be playing that section in reverse but still playing forward. Might sound weird but there is current sound fx which do this already.
The platter sensitivity needs to be adjusted also. Its kind of ridiculous of how long it takes to rewind and fast forward through the tracks by using the platter. This also affects your ability to scratch like you would on the pioneer cdj-1000's or even xp10's. The movement is so slow that sometimes I find you have to extend your hand too far around whilst scratching.
The cue, pause & play buttons.... well they do exactly what they say. But it would be nice if there was a stop button which you could press to get back to the beginning of a track, especially when the track movement on the platter is so slow. It would be nice if the functions on the ICDX is mappable to solve this issue.
Biggest problem I had during my gig that was of most concern was when I was rewinding the platter fast to get to the beginning of a track whilst another track on the other deck was playing... it would affect the current track that was playing. It would sort of slow down and change the pitch of the track playing... really weird stuff. I never have this problem when I'm using my xp10's.
Also another problem which I think someone mention in one of the other threads is the activating of the video ouput. I think I was touching the parameter knob and quite possibly pushing it and it the video window popped up. This shouldnt happen... Another time during the gig the video window popped up again and this time I was only touching the platter. Weird! I've found it hard to replicate the problem, but its obvious that vdj is responding to something from the icdx.
I also noted I had a bit of a sound problem with the start of every track that I played. At the beginning of each track there was a peaking sound at the beginning which I had to advance the track a little bit to pass that sound and cue it from there. I've never had that problem before.... and yes my tracks are perfect recordings. I'll look into it more.
Choosing the effects on the icdx is a bit of a mission also. Basically theres a knob you use to scroll through the list of effects available and a button to activate/deactivate with the wet/dry adjusting knob. My personal preference is to have a button to activate each effect. This again could probably be solved by giving the icdx a mappable option of functions to each button. My recommendation at the moment is to delete the effects that you don't use from the effects folder in your installation directory to save you scrolling so much through the list.
The hot cues and looping functions work well with vdj... its simple and works the way it should.
Basically thats all the comments I have to say about the ICDX and my experience with it thus far. Alot of the problems can be fixed with a bit of tweaking and adding the ability to map whatever function you like to the buttons like the xp10. Overall I am still impressed because yes, the ability to switch from cd & vdj is great. Note I upgraded to v4.1r2 the same day I tested it.
If anybody has any comments about what I've mentioned or know of any possible fixes feel free to post your comments.
I'll post some pictures of my icdx/nuo4 setup later today...
Posté Sun 19 Nov 06 @ 4:27 am
xeon
Great review!!!!!!! Really thanks for that :)
And ICDX & NUO4 is my future setup. Just have to know if any mapper will be out soon.
Thanks again!
And ICDX & NUO4 is my future setup. Just have to know if any mapper will be out soon.
Thanks again!
Posté Sun 19 Nov 06 @ 4:54 pm
Rune (DJ-In-Norway)
Thanx for the review ;)
Hope to test them real soon as well...
Sad to hear about the platter, hope the sensitivity can be adjusted... ;)
Hope to test them real soon as well...
Sad to hear about the platter, hope the sensitivity can be adjusted... ;)
Posté Sun 19 Nov 06 @ 5:59 pm
alx2k
My setup is:
2x iCDX
Dj console mk2 (video crossfader, etc)
Denon dn-x300
I also don't like in VDJ mode when you use scratch, and press the platter, it stops the song for about 5 secs, then it continues playing, doesn't matter if you still have the platter pressed. In CD/DVD mode the song keeps stopped as long as you have the platter pressed.
2x iCDX
Dj console mk2 (video crossfader, etc)
Denon dn-x300
I also don't like in VDJ mode when you use scratch, and press the platter, it stops the song for about 5 secs, then it continues playing, doesn't matter if you still have the platter pressed. In CD/DVD mode the song keeps stopped as long as you have the platter pressed.
Posté Sun 19 Nov 06 @ 6:45 pm
Rune (DJ-In-Norway)
hmm, damn...
The jogs dont seem to be all good then... thats a bummer
Posté Sun 19 Nov 06 @ 11:10 pm
xeon
Btw is iCDX firmware upgradable?
Posté Mon 20 Nov 06 @ 11:44 am
alx2k
dj-in-norway wrote :
hmm, damn...
The jogs dont seem to be all good then... thats a bummer
hmm, damn...
The jogs dont seem to be all good then... thats a bummer
Actually with CD/DVD work great. The problem appears with VDJ. Then it's not a hardware problem but a mapper problem (so as the LCD time remaining/elapsed problem). when a mapper comes out, maybe it is solved.
xeon wrote :
Btw is iCDX firmware upgradable?
Well, I found nothing on that, I thought it was upgradeable, but I found no answer on that yet.
Posté Mon 20 Nov 06 @ 2:07 pm