X1 arrived yesterday!!

**bumtsch** · 02-02-2010, 05:15 PM

So - I finally received my pair of X1 + assorted cases, plugged them in and played for a few hours.
The cases first.
Big rubber feet on the bottom. These things don't move and they fit the X1 very tightly. There is an internal hard plastic layer on all the sides and a little padding on the sides + bottom. Not much on the top and with the X1 inside, there's hardly any room below the top flap - but no padding, so careful with what you put on top.
On the inside of the top flap is a mesh pocket you can use to hold a few business cards, maybe some cardboard beer mats. These top parts are just removed by pulling them out of the zipper, super simple.

Now, to the actual units. I had a Xone 1D for a month or two last year, so I'll be comparing them often.
Each unit comes with a spare plastic overlay sheet : the front looks like it's built for Serato. There is no logo, but the black/red scheme and "sampler" controls for the top part made it quite obvious. The flip side is a blank overlay.

The usb cable has a ferrite near one end.

The build quality is, as others have mentioned, very nice. Everything is well aligned. The unit does not feel as much like a tank as the 1D, but I felt the 1D was too "tanky", if that's even a word.

Everything feels silky smooth to the touch : the metal plate on the top, the pots, the buttons.
The faders and rotaries have an outer rubber layer which is softer than standard Allen & Heath pots.
Pot rotation is quite tight, but not as hard as some of the pots on my former Xone 1D (some of the caps were pushed in too far on it). The center detent is precise, not too strong, not too weak and lighter than on a 1D - same for the click in the rotaries.
I should mention 1 click on the rotary = 1 action in traktor which wasn't nearly as obvious with the rotaries on my 1D (turning back and forth, I'd miss some midi events).
No pot wobble whatsoever.

The buttons have a short travel - longer than MPD buttons - with a light click : there is no wondering when you are triggering something. I find this is an improvement over all the buttons on the 1D, which have a longer travel and do trigger halfway through without much haptic feedback.
I should mention though : I like my buttons clicky on anything, and I didn't particularly rate the pads on a friend's dual MPDs in traktor.
Being able to check the status of most things with the leds is invaluable.

Plug and play action was pretty much there. After the light show, I had to wait a few seconds for windows to detect and install the driver which was available on my system due to a fresh migration from T3 to traktor pro 1.2.4.
Traktor detected the unit and asked if I wanted to override the effect presets, which I accepted and I found myself with 2 fx units in advanced mode.

shift + FX button 1/2/3/4 on each side did not change the effects as I expected. switching to four FX units in chained mode however made these button combos cycle through all the effects in each chained slot.

I then plugged in the second X1 for my other decks and noticed the fx slot buttons for both decks didn't enable fx1/2 for decks C/D. I gave up on effects then (as I was loading tracks and looping them all over place to get familiar with the really core controls first).
Again, as pointed out by others, not having the view reset to your decks when loading a track gets old, even though by default you can shift + click rotary to switch between decks and full browser view.

And then I looked at the time

Next time, I'll edit the mapping to sort out the above issues and it should be smooth sailing from there.

**djtim** · 02-03-2010, 02:21 AM

First off thanks to slangemenneske for the great little review.
i have put the word "Tanky"in my dictionary for future use.

I was thinking of running the X1 with the Midifighter for EFX and Beat Juggles.
looking at Eans TSI some of the EFX are chained and some in advance mode.
first question can you change FX banks from chained to advanced over midi?

The way things are going with the TSI evolution, is smart knobs/buttons I.E echo button loads up the echo, sets the time and engages the effect all at once.
great for the Midifighter because of it's lack of pots.

i was thinking of doing the same type of thing with the X1. pressing an effect button on the X1 reverts the effects back to Chained mode and you can play around that way.

hit Deck select on the Midifighter and it selects the deck loads up all the FX required for the mapping and off you go into you beat juggling routine.

i love Eans Midifighter TSI as it has had allot of thought put into it. however the X1 seems a bit standard. one button does one thing unless the shift key is held down.

any thoughts ?

**renegens** · 02-03-2010, 08:05 AM

I will get mine today afternoon and will test it right away on a 5 hour set. Wish me luck

**space monkey** · 02-03-2010, 08:57 AM

Good write up slangemenneske . I've been waiting for a more articulate opinion on the X1 especially how it compares to A&H products which are pretty much my baseline.

djTim:
Yeah you can toggle ADV|Chained via midi. IME, there are some considerations unique to controllers and how each handles midi I/O. For example my Korg nano control handles multiple midi funtions simultaneously pretty well where my APC40 sometimes needs a "double-punch" to get all the commands working the way I program them. Of course, there may be something going on in the program that causes this but these kind of issues are going to surface more as the user base becomes more savvy.

**pushplay** · 03-07-2010, 02:22 PM

Originally Posted by space monkey

Good write up slangemenneske . I've been waiting for a more articulate opinion on the X1 especially how it compares to A&H products which are pretty much my baseline.

djTim:
Yeah you can toggle ADV|Chained via midi. IME, there are some considerations unique to controllers and how each handles midi I/O. For example my Korg nano control handles multiple midi funtions simultaneously pretty well where my APC40 sometimes needs a "double-punch" to get all the commands working the way I program them. Of course, there may be something going on in the program that causes this but these kind of issues are going to surface more as the user base becomes more savvy.

how my I ask?