07 April 2011

Pioneer DJM-T1

As anticipated earlier this week (due to a mysterious choice in the Traktor auto configurator) Pioneer has launched their first ever dedicated Traktor mixer.
As a central unit in a standard Mixer/Vinyl/CD setup the option to play directly through via line or phono aswell as an option to use the internal USB soundcard (48 kHz / 24 bit) is available.
It's a two channel mixer for a four channel software. One can either work with the A or B decks loop and hot cue functions or switch to sampler mode. Sampler mode will probably use C/D decks. Meaning that you must assign A/C to output channel 1 and B/D to output channel 2. This is one of the new features in Traktor Pro 2.



The most used functions are available directly:
  • Browsing section (Folder controll*)
  • Effects section
  • Loop control
  • Transport controls
  • Hotcue
  • (Relative/Absolute mode*)
  • Sync (Master*)
  • Snap (Quantize*)
  • Effect bank assignment buttons (Tempo bend*)
  • (Tempo Tap*)
Features that I like alot:
  • Doubleclicking the Shift button will toggle the function.
  • The TAP function that is the shift function of the cue buttons.
  • Hotcue / Loop / Sampler section (Sampler is for deck C/D)

Speculating:
Midi section
I have no idea at this moment what this section does!
There's only one Midi socket, so It's not a "quick swop" function where two Traktor instances can use the mixer at once like the Rane 68.
Maybe the mixer has two midi channels so that each button has two separate functions (in addition to the shift function). To what end I do not know. The Utility/Wake Up might be that it starts a small application on your computer in addition to start the computer if it is in sleep mode or something. Can be good if you have a desktop computer that's hidden away and just a monitor available.

A/C and B/D markings
It's a two channel mixer and I can not find A/C or B/D button anywhere...
Which takes me to the question: Why!!??
It might be because it's meant to be used with the sampler which will be always activated. Remember that you can allocate one or more decks to one audio sources in the new Traktor Pro 2.

Play mode
The Active button most lightly toggle the loop and indicates wether or not it is activated.
The Play Mode I'm not sure about, but I think it might have to do with the sampler function and if so it will toggle between looping or one shot samples.




Sample level
Since there is no volum controll for the C/D decks. This might adjust volume on all the samples.
So you can either use loop OR sample... Would be nice to have both functions available at once though.


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