Over the years, as we got more into DJ-ing and had more time to use different bits of equipment, we have viewed different pieces of industry standard differently.
Current gear
At home and if we are bringing a deck out and about, we these days are running a Denon Prime 4+.Denon?! The other DJs shriek and cry.
Yeah. Honestly, hear us out.
The Denon does everything we need. It plays any file format. It reads any library format. It's intuitive to use and the sound is pretty great too. Is it perfect? No. Does it work for our needs. 100%...
For the budget we had at the time, the all in one Pioneer systems felt restrictive and we had poor experience with them previously.
--[Incoming rant]--
Unlike CDJ-2000 NXS2s or even newer CDJ-3000s, the all-in-ones from Pioneer we had issues with:
File compabilitible
I (Mike) began building my Rekordbox folder about 5 years ago, and my music collection is even older than that. Filetypes galore in their variation. AIFF, Flac, mp3, WAV, Opus... 24 bit, 32 bit, 192 Khz, 22khz... But more than anything, was discovering ALAC (Apple Loseless) and it becoming my de-facto file-type preference for all things music.
Pioneer equipment has been slow to keep up with file-types, and even weirder, sample rates and bit depths. Stu and I have both had what we thought were completely well formatted USB sticks, that when shoved into the dusty club port have rewarded us with pain. Error messages saying file types not recognised.
Feel and features
Let's not fuck about, CDJs have the best feel period. The jog wheels are class.
But we weren't at the budget to get CDJs. Despite being owned by the same company, the premium all in one XDJ systems, failed to impress us with their jog wheel quality. They're a step up from the early stage controllers like DDJ-200, but not enough that we thought to notice.
Quality
We've played Opus Quads that are almost fresh out the box, that feel like they've been stuck in Pirate Studios with the heaviest handed baller absolutely slamming volume cuts non-stop for 2 week straights (we won't name the venue...). We've also played with the same kit that's been looked after with care and attention and it certainly makes the world of difference (shoutout NextDoor @ Earlsdon)
The early days
Back when we got started, we both began by using a mouse and keyboard...
In the wake of COVID-19, and a couple hundred quid down later, we both welcomed a DDJ-200 into our homes.
Cieran, our previous member, he was more au-fait and happy to run Traktor and used a Traktor S4 (I think). We would occasionally use this and support each other to learn the ropes of different software.
We also would take a formatted USB stick over to Pirate Studios (mainly in Brum, occasionally elsewhere) where we would practice on CDJ2000-NXS2s and a DJM-900 mixer.
Through to gigging experience...
As we booked gigs, we were therefore well primed to handle most equipment provided by venues. We tried out different mixers, some from Pioneer, some from Allen and Heath, occasionally the odd 'other'.
We've also experimented with using a laptop running Ableton to trigger sounds from to how create 'audio-beds'.
On wax...
Whilst we both would love to be 'vinyl' DJs, and despite a growing record collection, we jumped in at a point where digital lowers the entry barrier for learning to mix and is also simply incredibly convenient.
However, we both have occasionally dabbled with vinyl mixing. In fact, Mike's first solo set as a DJ was a combination of a vinyl and digital setup, although mostly was using records and the digital only required to fill in tracks that simply weren't avaiable in physical form.