Pioneer DJ have finally released the Rolls Royce of a DJ setup they had teased earlier in the year to a curious crowd at NAMM 2016. While most fixated on the five large screens attached to the top, a few were asking the questions about the other new features included in and around each device. Guest contributor Dan D-Squared shares some insight on what Pioneer DJ was thinking behind this over-the-top design of a product line.
Who Is The Pioneer DJ TOUR-1 For?
The big question everyone is asking themselves is “Who is this system for?” and the blunt answer is “probably not you.” At least not yet.
This system is really for the most popular “big name” DJs of the world, who are playing on the biggest stages and sound systems week after week. This TOUR-1 system is for:
- artists whose booking costs are in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands for a 1-2 hour set
- artists who have a full crew they tour with, including a FOH engineer, lighting technician and visual team
- DJs who have specific requests for equipment on their artist riders which if not met by the show provider means a breach of contract and a cancellation of their performance on the spot
These DJs all exist, and we all have many opinions about their talent, the music they play, and if they deserve to be where they are.
Playing On Multi-Million Dollar Soundsystems
So why is this new rig a big deal to you if it’s not something most DJs will get a chance to even touch? The TOUR-1 appears to be made to give the crowds of people at these huge shows the absolute best experience possible. When paying upwards of $500 a ticket to go to a festival, your level of expectation is very high. The audience expects the absolute greatest display of stage design, visuals, lighting, fireworks and more. No expense is overlooked when it comes to the finer details.
Having the best possible sound at a festival is a big deal. When you’re a DJ playing in front of 50,000 to 100,000 people at EDC, Ultra, or Tomorrowland on a multi-million dollar sound system, every thing you can do to improve on that has a cascading effect on the end result of sound.
Every sound system, no matter how expensive and technologically advanced, is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. That chain starts at the DJ booth.
Pioneer DJ has recently started advocating for higher quality sound in DJ booths – specifically on the NXS2 line, increasing their D/A conversion inside to 96 kHz/24-bit and advocating the use of more lossless formats like FLAC.
For most real-world scenarios, a 320kbps MP3 track is enough of a balance between file size, affordability, and perceivable quality when jamming out tunes at a club. But when you’re playing on a 300,000-watt stereo system specifically designed to deliver the clearest truest signal at the maximum volume level without distortion, MP3 begins to lose its benefits.
Significant New I/O On DJM-TOUR1
Enter the Pioneer DJ TOUR-1 system. Pioneer DJ has added some new features throughout the mixer to take full advantage of massive sound systems. On the back of the DJM-TOUR1 you’ll notice a few changes:
- The Booth output changed from 1/4” TS to XLR. this is a great addition as I can tell you the first thing we do at festivals when hooking up mixers is plug a 1/4” to XLR adapter on each Booth port to run the signal to the FOH snake back to the mixing console for tweaking. Most DJs who are playing on stages have requested a substantially large monitoring rig that will almost always take XLR inputs, so not having to use adapters always is a nice benefit.
- An ethernet hub built into the mixer with NEUTRIK etherCON® connectors. The ethernet connectors on the backs of CDJs and DJMs are typically the first thing to break after years of abuse. They can only take so many times of unplugging/replugging before the soldered connector breaks off inside. NEUTRIK etherCON® is a much more secure connection, which means your mixes will not lose their link connectivity as easily should some cables get accidentally moved slightly mid set.
- The SPDIF Master Out (found on the DJM900 series) has been replaced with a Digital AES/EBU. This allows for a single, secure, digital line to be ran straight from the mixer to the FOH mixing console at a festival. Digital cable runs over several hundred feet long are generally better than long analog runs as the signal doesn’t degrade. However the cost of the cable itself is vastly more expensive than your typical XLR run. Read more about the AES3 specification in this Sound on Sound article.
- There’s also now a Word Clock Input – this is a signal that tells pieces of gear when exactly to sample audio at each sample rate interval. The more accurate your Word Clock, the less jitter you get in your A-D D-A process, which translates to a much more accurate sound reproduction. Read a solid post here explaining Word Clock in more detail.
All these improvements are a huge deal for Front Of House audio engineers at festivals who are relying on the DJ to deliver a clear, clean, consistent signal that they can then tweak to sound best on the speakers. FOH engineers are actively listening and know how sound is, for lack of a better word, supposed to sound. They understand the frequency response of the speakers, the physics of the room or environment they are in, the reflections coming off the crowd or roof and any correction to the audio signal that can be made to steer it back to it’s “true” sound.
As a DJ, you are behind the main speaker system, you do not have any idea whatsoever how it sounds out in the audience. You have to have a working relationship with your FOH engineer to deliver the cleanest, clearest, consistent signal possible from the mixer so that the FOH engineer has to do minimal adjustments to make sure the signal maintains the sound you’re hearing in your headphones amplified at ~110dB in a large open room or outdoor environment. So this combination of upgraded internal sound card quality, using lossless audio files, digital connections throughout to minimize signal degradation and Word Clock to keep your mixer’s sample rate in constant sync is the ultimate combination for delivering the “truest” sound possible.
- There’s also now a dedicated Internet port for KUVO integration. KUVO is Pioneer’s social network which aims to deliver track information that DJs play to people in the audience. It still remains unknown if KUVO will ever gain popularity.
- There’s also another NEUTRIK etherCON® port labeled Extension. We don’t know the purpose yet – it could possibly be a means to send Rekordbox information to the visual / lighting team to sync up scenes to the music playing with relative ease. Or perhaps this is for daisy-chaining DJ mixers, similar to such a function on the PLAYdifferently mixer.
Cue, Aux In + Send/Returns On DJM-TOUR1
- On the top of the mixer, Pioneer has added a second independent headphone cue system – useful for sets with two or more DJs playing at the same time, trying to cue up multiple tracks without having to listen to the other person’s adjustments.
- Pioneer DJ has also included a separate auxiliary channel on the mixer with its own dedicated TRS/XLR input combo jack. This is for DJs who are using their own soundcard, mixer, or controller with audio interface, but still would like to hook their signal into the DJ mixer without having to disconnect anything. Plus, the Beat FX can be applied on the auxiliary channel.
- Oddly, the 1/4” TS Send/Return Input/Outputs have moved to the top of the mixer. This seems a bit out-of-place as you’ll now have four cables randomly sticking straight out the top of the mixer – but perhaps it is because Send/Return hardware might be changing with each new DJ.
What About The Screens?
Of course the biggest cosmetic change of all is the addition of the screens. Rather than re-designing the existing four touchscreens on the CDJs, Pioneer DJ has added a second touch display on each CDJ, which essentially shows the same information on the screen below, albeit more in-depth and higher resolution. This seems a bit counter-intuitive to the design and further adds to unnecessary bulk of the CDJ. It puts a barrier between the performer and the audience they are working to interact with and almost seems like too much of a distraction of information at once.
They’ve also added a screen on top of the DJM, which now shows:
- more accurate detailed metering such as RMS level vs. Peak of each channel & master output, or
- all current track waveforms in a linear or horizontal layout.
The added information display is surely nice, but is it really needed given that there is already a touchscreen on each CDJ? Pioneer DJ may have been better off to redesign those screens to accommodate the information they wish to display on these large, seemingly non-removable screens. The hinge mechanism that the screens fold down with also looks like a potential failure point during transit and setup/breakdown – not exactly ideal on a high-cost piece of touring gear. While they do include a sun shade, it remains to be seen just how effective they will be or what anti-reflective coating each screen has.
Only Ready For The Big Time
The thing to take away from all this is that although these TOUR1 units are made for a very specific purpose currently, it is a good indication that at least some of these features may find themselves in the DJ gear of the future at the more consumer grade level of price point. Features typically get added to the most high-end gear first and slowly trickle their way down to mainstream equipment as the years pass on.
It’s certainly no harm to at least learn what the purpose of each of those functions do, and how you might make use of them, should you ever come across some form of equipment that has one or more of those features down the road. The TOUR1 might not show up in the average DJ booth, but rest assured that the DJ booths it does end up in will be delivering the absolute best possible sound quality for the large audiences in front of them.
Now the music chosen for that sound, that’s an entirely different subjective story…
[…] On the DJ side of things, the controls are almost identical to a CDJ-2000NXS2. Sure, there’s a large 13-inch touch screen attached to the top of the unit that allows for advanced browsing and multi-waveform views from up to four CDJs concurrently. But that aside, the big differences on the CDJ-TOUR1 is inside the unit. There’s a 32-bit D/A converter that allows for “incredibly low noise and distortion, even at the super-high volumes needed for large-scale events.” Beyond that, it’s about a full system – read more about why the TOUR1 system matters to festival DJs + sound techs. […]
I honestly don’t see the point of this product line other than to say “you cant afford it”. If Pioneer wants to stave off Denon they really need to focus on quality sound. Sound processing is the only thing I will pay this amount of money for, and the lowest latency signal processing possible. The only other deciding factors for me is the robust feel of the equipment and how fun it is. Touchscreens are simply boring when compared to a high quality 12″ platter. It’s just more fun to touch something with a quality feel than a slippery touchscreen. If Denton learns anything from thsee monsters, it would be to put design and sound first and let Samsung and Sharp handle the shiny screens.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6e12131b2a2105118550e1b6835750a91c0a05acb663ee318f3738c3c0542f8e.jpg
Um, No. All professional gear works professionally. If some sound guy doesn’t want to work outside of his comfort zone, that’s his issue. If he makes you sound like shit because you don’t give him what he asks for, fire that company, demand some sort of recompense, and lose that company’s contact information. No gig will ever require you to have them work your show, you have the right to bring in your own people (although you may still have to pay the people you don’t want touching your gear their day rate not to be there).
Please stop buying into the hype that one specific piece of gear is the ultimate show piece and that’s the one piece of gear you should have. Professionals enjoy working with other professionals to complete tasks, but not when either side gets snippy, or dictatorial… please stop that (although, from what I’ve seen, it’s mainly artists acting this way).
Should you have lights sound and you want it all synched up the way you like, HAVE THAT GEAR TRUCKED FROM PLACE TO PLACE… WITH BACKUPS. Otherwise, be the professional and find other solutions to problems.
This is my opinion, as a professional A/V guy who does work on shows like this.
Curious as to what the point of word clock-in is when everything from the original TI chips on the PPD to the SHARC on the DJMs and the Denon just re-sample and re-clock all the digital inputs, anyway. Word clock input is more likely to cause problems than to resolve any.
Also, most DJ media players have been able to do WAV files for about a decade, and for the last few years AIFF has become increasingly common, not to mention desirable due to its tagging. Pioneer never previously advocated the use of FLAC; in fact they closed threads on their forum specifically for bringing up the ludicrousness of >$2000 players that couldn’t unpack and play the files because they lacked the processing and memory to do so, and could not simply be updated by firmware to resolve it. I do not think it’s a coincidence that KKR buys them out and immediately, in spite of brand new products like the XDJ using legacy chips, forces Pioneer DJ to put out new units with completely new innards that address these concerns.
Regardless, though, FLAC compatibility is entirely an issue of convenience. I’ve been using WAVs for lossless for many years now and get complete compatibility with most players by most brands (Pioneer, Denon, Hanpin, Gemini, etc), and I don’t even bother with the tags on thumbdrive MP3s, anyway. It’s hard to imagine FLAC taking off for thumbdrive/SD playback any time soon considering the existing alternatives and that it’s not reasonable for most venues to allow riders to stipulate the CDJ2000NXS2 when so many non-nexus and original nexus CDJ2000s are already in the wild. Pioneer just took too long to move their overpriced hardware’s architecture over to something more expandable.
Does it include Key Shift / Key Lock?
*Nothing* messes up audio quality more than key lock. All your audiophile bullshit is useless if you are using it.
The huge screens are superfluous, but the connections – as an A1 and more sound engineer – are quite a boon to FOH engineers worldwide.
However, most engineers worth their salt will not attempt to run a cable directly from such gear to the front-of-house mixer rather than plugging into a snake.
For this specific set of equipment, it will be on the biggest sound systems in the world. To run one extra digital cable to DJ booth from FOH during show setup is no issue whatsoever. In fact, a lot of the newer consoles already use a single EtherCON cable to send to stage box instead of a multichannel analog snake. As well as a digital line ran to monitor world mixing console from FOH. This allows the main FOH engineer to control the signal at the other console remotely should they feel the need to.
Right on. But have you ever heard of split snakes? Foldback is an old technique, brother.
Usually in these festivals edm dj’s play prerecoded set, so its already comming directly from FOH. This is just a a gimmick to look cool in the pictures.
I’ve worked as a backline manager for a large majority of the major artists in the industry. The truth is, pre-recorded sets just don’t happen. Pre-planned is a whole other story. You can argue it all you want, but in 99.9% of cases out there, DJs are actually mixing tracks back to back, not just dancing around while one hour long song plays. This thought process you & others share comes from the assumption DJs must be doing something at all times while on stage. If they aren’t doing things in between mixes then surely it must be fake. A lot of these artists that get labelled as hacks play some of the most generic music there is, which is so simple to mix, especially on modern Pioneer equipment, that you can pretty much be deaf and still do it, even without the sync button.
I will whole heartedly agree that, yes, a lot of DJs turn knobs on the mixer during parts of songs that have absolutely no effect on the audio, mainly for theatrics to make it look like they are “doing” something. But when it comes to transitioning from one song to the next, realistically it takes all of 15 seconds to load up a song, match the tempo numbers, hit play, swap the eq’s and be on your way.
Not once have I ever seen an artist rider explicitly say “audio will come from a track at FOH” out of the hundreds of DJ touring riders I’ve had to read, source & setup equipment for. This is completely not true. If I ever do come across one I will almost certainly screenshot it and expose that person. But it has yet to ever happen
>pretty much be deaf
>without sync
That’s a tall order, mate.
on CDJ2000nexus it shows you the beat grid and even counts down to the next marker you’ve set in rekordbox. you can mix entirely visual and be pretty much perfect, if you’re mixing standard 4 to the floor house music stuff that follows the basic 16 bar progression structure. and well, yes, there is sync now too if you still can’t get it right.
“This system is really for the most popular “big name” DJs of the world, who are playing on the biggest stages and sound systems week after week.”
In other words; Tossers who do little to begin with and need to have more the most expensive equipment that will allow them to do less, and the engineers that work for such tossers and need a way to make those tossers sound even better than they already do..
Snarky as my answer might be.. It really boils down to Fuck festivals and fuck festival DJs. No talent jesus christ posing twats.
All of that said.. WTF does it take this level of equipment to provide a decent send/return loop on a DJ mixer? It’s 2016 fer fucks sake. Every premium mixer should have at least one.
I love music, I love DJing, quite simply a CDJ has no place at a festival. Producers should have some integrity in their work. They should be playing live music at festivals.
ports make sense, screen and price point don’t ¯_(?)_/¯
You can get a fully built ES9018 DAC for <$200 USD if you want the same sound quality. There's no reason why Pioneer shouldn't already by installing this dac in almost all their equipment when they slug the Pioneer tax on it and make it 2x expensive as it should be.
Honestly, the additional features (aes/word clock etc.) don't actually cost that much to add and/or implement. I'd assume much of the cost is just in manufacturing for a small market. The screens are frigging ridiculous. Add one to the mixer, have it run rekordbox and capable of dvs and you're done. Rip the screens off the cdjs.
Clearly this is NOT a consumer level set up. So all of you consumer level DJs – most of whom won’t ever tour in your lifetime, should just STFU and stop whining about it.
I could only zoom in on the picture of the back.
there’s higher resolution pictures on PioneerDJ.com
so these expensive crap is for big djs and big festivals? isnt that the place for fake dj acts when guys like steve aoki plug in their usb stick to play a premixed set not doing anything? super high tech with a ridiculous price tag for guys who just pretend that they are doing anything at all.. i cant belive how far we came in 2016….
No you can feel safe pumping out the reds!
My complaint, and trust me I am no authority of people that spend 500$ to see a DJ, nor am I a DJ getting 50k plus a show, is those screens. I get having a screen on the DJM to lose the laptop but not on the CDJ’s. We need to get the screen out of the way and this just adds a whole bunch in front of you. I would like to see the same audio features added to the NXS line and lose the screens.
Agreed. I mentioned it in the article, but I’m still not sure why they added a 2nd touch screen to the CDJ rather than re-engineer the one already there to show the extra information. The screen on the mixer also means you can’t plane a RMX1000 where it usually sits.
As a professional sound engineer AND dj I can see why they built these, in very large venues where you have a sound system in the hundred thousand watt range it is extremely important to have the highest sound quality possible it benefits not only the dj but the front of house because because rather than having to put a dongle on the master out (which a find to be slightly unreliable) it’s a direct connection which locks to the mixer. The master clock output is also quite a nice addition because I can reduce jittering from unsyncd sample rates. But what they should have done is make everything connect through the NEUTRIK connectors, it is possible because a lot of mixers have digital snakes which can send 32+ channels through a single cable. Also the change from a ts to and xlr on the booth out is nice because most booth monitors are incompatible with Ts style connectors so they have to be adapted, so with this its just less things to go wrong
Now from a dj’s perspective…
I think the screens are a distraction, they don’t give you any essential information that isn’t already shown on the regualr screens of the cdjs so for most people if they ever use them they’ll be useless. Having beefed up connectors and cables is a big improvement I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a show stop over a broken cable. Also they seem to be built tougher than the regualr nexus system (even though they were built pretty well) these things are obviously going to be moved around a lot being shipped across the country constantly being abused by headlining dj’s jumping on them and spilling various substances on them day after day for hours at a time, that part gets a thumbs up.
The price though… No. An extra $2500 for a thinkpad attached by two plastic hinges. That is the biggest load of bs I’ve seen in a long time. Either way I’m excited for them because the high end bits will slowly trickle down to the other gear eventually (I’m predicting by NAMM).
Who cares. It’s only for the crap DJs like Hardwell. The proper DJs don’t need those gimmicks.
“Every sound system, no matter how expensive and technologically advanced, is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. That chain starts at the DJ booth.”
Actual sound engineers may dispute this furiously. Also physicists. Ambient humidity and line noise from 100’+ cable runs have a significantly greater effect than a better AD/DA converter will, but the world is full of “audiophiles” who will insist otherwise.
it really is about time the mixer was brought up to “True” pro standards, not sure about the recycled G3 Powerbook Screens though!
I love the idea of the screen on the mixer, makes a perfect modular stand-alone system. This on a Z2 type mixer with Traktor inbuilt would be my ideal setup with my TTs on either side. mmm….
Glad to see Pioneer FINALLY including flac support! Hope it trickles down to the lower end models!
Not possible on pre-existing models.
Hey people in the comments…. did you not read the artical? THIS ISN’T MARKETED TOWARDS YOU so stop complaining that it wont ever be standard because it isn’t mean to be standard
I really don’t get why Pioneer didn’t just do the following.
Update the DJM-2000NXS to have a better audio card/ update feature set.
Update CDJ line to move the standard screen to be a flip up 10″ touchscreen (move hot cue pads to old screen location?)
Switch to an Ethernet based audio connection inside the Link protocol. They can even market it as “bringing the professional studio to your DJ experience”
Give us something to allow the link protocol to sync computer visuals to tempo.
That’s my ideal Pioneer setup.
They seem more interested in producing ever skyrocketing pricing tiers, and even castrating lower-priced tiers by removing features, such as digital outputs.
Oh DJ Techtools always the first to hype something just because its announced and well before it has proven its use… looking for that revenue $$$$ –
I’m not mocking the gear I just simply and honestly wonder if the author (Dan D-Squared) has actually physically seen one of these up close.
I answered your comment on Facebook as well, but I’ll re-add it here.
No. I haven’t seen these in person. The cost is definitely way out of price range of even most clubs and large scale events for rental or purchase.
And I definitely share the same criticism over the design of those screens as everyone else.
Thank you for sharing this.
As we move into a huge transitional period for music lovers everywhere its good to look at new avenues. Rekordbox is a great tool from Pioneer by itself and for those users this deck should be interesting but as far as industry innovation is concerned It is not nearly as liberating and as bold a step as say, the S8 from NI. I just wish there was a little more restrain from what I still consider ‘the press’ when hyping these products.
This is an editorial piece, written to provide a bit of a different perspective than a lot of other DJs and media out there on this release – which largely has been “WOW $6000 for SCREENS?!”
From my perspective (and feel free to disagree!), I wouldn’t call this hype, it’s more an explanation of who the undercard features are designed for.
Whoever does R&D at Pioneer DJ needs to be fired, this is the most ridiculous toy ever.
Any competent FoH engineer has been using the digital out port on DJM mixers for years now, converting SPDIF to AES.
This mixer will have absolutely no difference in sound quality, and is a huge waste of space and audience view.
Please DJ’s, do not ever request this POS so it can never become a standard.
It’s not the SPDIF that needed an upgrade in durability, it was the ethernet ports, as the article stated. And as someone who handles DJ gear and changeovers, the increased sturdiness of both the connections and the builds themselves would be a phenomenal upgrade as well, if only for the sake of not having to worry about handling the hardware so damn delicately.
How many times can you replace a whole new set of CDJ2000nxs2s and a 900nxs2 because of failing Ethernet ports before you would have bought this?
The improved Ethernet argument isn’t a good one to justify the Tour series. I could definitely see an upgraded/beefed up Tour series, with upgraded Ethernet ports and all, but THIS Tour series? No thanks, I’ll just replace my gear when something fails (which just so might happen to be along the Pioneer gear release cycle, imagine how stupid these will be when the nxs3s come out in 2 years and all the DJs riders that play on these things are requesting those).
lol…. NOPE!
Guys, check new tour1 prototypes! 😉 https://www.facebook.com/allfordj/posts/1227975157213563
Take my money.
Dont forget the HDJ-2000 TOUR1
and the CDJ TOUR1 MKII 😉
its only missing a cake stand
you mean a cake launcher
Outside looking in as essentially a bedroom DJ/Producer…I’m accustom in other tech services, to their always being a super top of the line that in reality is NEVER used by anyone but the most elite of the elite, but the tech associated with it slowly disseminates amongst the future lines as the tech matures, and they find ways to cut cost. Perfect example – graphic cards or CPUs, new chip hits the market and the price is ridiculously high compared to “averages”, wait 6 months and streamlined versions start to pop up at half the cost.
Becuase of the recent release of the new Nexus – it may be a while, but I’d fully expect the “ideologies” of this setup to pass along to the next set of Pioneer equipment. They may cut corners on say the D/A converter or number of connections, but something like the neutrik connectors aren’t a big difference financially and could work their way to standrds. Perhaps the screens will be adjusted in size or format to make traveling as a “smaller” DJ feasible, more affordable, and not so…disconnecting, Serato Face is real…my personal experience (licking my chops helping a local DJ with setup, tear down, etc) has shown me that face before, and how easy it is to disconnect, especially at weddings and the such where “request” can run rampant.
but all in all, the bigger the top, the bigger the things under that umbrella can be.
I think that these screens are completely superfluous…Why didnt they just made the screen bigger after the 1st CDJ???
The screens are ridiculous and have to be the reason they cost 3x more than the regular, already professional, versions of these.
The added soundquality, connectors, etc. will surely be a very welcome improvement for many pro DJs / sound riggers. But I really think the screens will be a dealbreaker for most DJs. It’s the fact that you can’t remove / move them, they’re so big and mostly have redundant functions. This is clearly aimed at commercial EDM mainstage DJs. Their actual DJing is not very complex so they definitely don’t need the screens for their performance. What they care a lot is their outer appearance and interaction with the crowd, which will be massively impaired by these screens.
Wouldn’t it be way more useful if the FOH guy had these screens and could see the exact same information?
actually these big edm dj´s might like the screens they make it harder to see that they´re just acting
Yeah. I thought the play button would be much bigger and all the other buttons would be non-functioning decorative pieces.