getting initiated with pioneer gear

[DJ Matt]

im putting this in the beginner section, even though iv actually been DJing for 25 years, but i completely side stepped the pioneer CDJ movement for all that time.
went from vinyl 95-2005 to DJing digitally in video formatl with virtual DJ in 2010 and never looked back since.

until now that is
im looking at starting a series of electronic music events which will be audio only, and i really need to get familiar with the pioneer stuff, so that i can just show up with a USB stick like the other DJs do and not have to bother with laptops and things like that.
i should probably just find someones CDJs to practise on for a couple of hours, and that might do, but i want to get totally comfortable with it

so
my question is, for lack of buying CDJs, what cheaper equipment provides a similar enough experience that one can feel totally at home when the time comes to use CDJs ?
would the XDJ700s be good for that? or one of the pioneer standalone controllers?

[light-o-matic]

Are you planning to get a Pioneer mixer too? Or you're ok with that and just want to get comfy with the deck setup?

Basically what it comes down to is:

1. The all-in-one units have just one screen and one scroll knob shared between two decks, you just have two buttons to load the track to the left or right deck. Also there is no need to worry about linking (that is, selecting whether the deck is reading tracks off its own USB or the USB of the other deck if they are linked by an ethernet cable) That is not an issue when you have a single unit. Whereas separate decks have their own screen, knob and USB jack, when you are working with the deck on your left, you use the knob on your left.. select the track, click, done. Same on the right.

Is this a really big deal?? No, definitely not, you will figure it out easily enough. I have separate decks and have always played on separate decks.. but I played a couple of times last summer at parties (outdoors of course, due to covid) where they had all-in-one Pioneer models, and it felt a bit weird to me, I do a quick double-take every time I push the "load" button making sure I'm loading the correct deck, because I'm not used to that. But then, I've been using Pioneer gear for decades.

Basically I think that if you want to be fully comfortable the first time walking up to a dual deck Pioneer setup at a party, you should have separate decks at home. If you don't mind being a little uncomfortable at first.. then experience with the all-in-one will translate to the dual decks quickly enough.

2. The different models can more or less do the same things.. not all the same things but mostly the same things, but more of the functions are on the touch screen and fewer on their own real buttons. If you are doing cue points, scratching, reverse, braking and all kinds of mixing then you might miss the buttons and features if you go with the 700.. whether they are just moved to the touch screen or gone altogether. If you're more mixing stuff like house and techno and your mixing is more smooth mixes and not so much tricks then any of the decks will be fine.

One thing the XDJ-700 is missing is the S/PDIF output.. analog only. If you're a stickler for sound (and have a mixer that offers S/PDIF inputs.. the Pioneers do).

3. Obviously if you want comfort with the Pioneer mixer, that will be an extra cost that really adds up, but the experience you get using the mixer section on the all-in-one is fairly equivalent tho not exactly the same.

Basically it comes down to, the all-in-one units are a really great value for the money, the feel and sound is much more alike separates than it is different. But it is different. It's all about how important it is to be totally comfy at these gigs (at first, because you will adapt soon enough).

Same thing goes with the XDJ-700 vs the full-size models (even then, the XDJ-1000 is a bit different than the CDJ.. tho the functionality is all there).

Whatever you get, your first step is going to be organizing your music in rekordbox and getting that workflow sorted out... that's a major thing to get sorted out.. once you've learned their workflow on any decks you will be able to pick up different Pioneer decks without too much pain.