A small firmware update for the top-of-the-line Pioneer DJ CDJ-2000NXS2 media players was released today. The firmware update fixes a few issues with the players, but also adds new Beat Jump functionality. Read on to find out the details of the update and what might be motivating Pioneer DJ to increase the frequency of their firmware updates.
Beat Jump Becomes Actually Useful On CDJ-2000NXS2s
If you don’t own CDJ-2000NXS2s, you might be amazed to find out that until today’s firmware, there was no way to use beat jump at any setting beyond 1 beat. This applied to Loop Move as well – so if you wanted to jump around the track in quantized increments during playback, your only option was in 1 beat increments.
With the new 1.70 firmware update, launched earlier today, this finally changes. Here’s the notes from the update:
[NEW]
- 2, 4, 8 and 16 BEAT JUMP added. (Press [BEAT JUMP] to select length).
- 16 BEAT JUMP added when used with a DDJ-SP1.
[FIXED]
- Emergency loop issue with certain MP3 files containing APE tag data.
- Wrong info appeared when showing PLAYLIST using SHORTCUT after SEARCH under certain conditions.
- Search results did not appear when moving cursor during SEARCH
Learn why Beat Jump is so useful for DJs
Continued Feature Disparity vs Other Pioneer Players?
We can’t help but continue to notice that Pioneer DJ is creating a major feature disparity between their media players. Instead of one consistent experience, the Beat Jump / Loop Move controls are all over the place, even on units that are released in similar time frames:
- The XDJ-1000(+ MK2) is capable of Beat Jump just in 1/2/4 beats and Loop Move in 1/2/4 beat increments. They’ve had this since launch – so they were more powerful than NXS2 CDJs until now.
- The XDJ-RX has no Beat Jump or Loop move functionality.
- The older CDJ-2000NXS will likely never get this functionality, despite easily being the most common unit in DJ booths around the world.
- The XDJ-700 has no beat jump/loop move functionality – despite coming out after the XDJ-1000 and using almost identical touchscreen functions.
External Motivation = Denon’s Upcoming Players
To a keen observer, it’s pretty clear why Pioneer DJ is trying to move fast on adding features to their top-of-line units: the Denon DJ SC5000 players have a dramatically superior feature set in terms of in-track transport control. They’re much more analogous to the Beat Jump / Loop Move features in Traktor Pro – with support for moving loops 16 and 32 bars. No extra hardware required.
We’ll see how Pioneer DJ continues to improve their units in the face of this upcoming stiff competition – but one thing is clear, DJs will only stand to gain new features with these two companies squaring off.
