January 10, 2017 | Leave a comment By Phil Morse – Denon DJ has today officially announced a complete ecosystem of pro DJ gear and software including the flagship SC5000 media player, signalling a comprehensive assault on the commercial DJ booth – a space that has, of course, been dominated by Pioneer DJ for more than two decades. Read on for full details. Denon DJ has today announced: The SC5000 Prime media player, the X1800 four-channel mixer, and (as exclusively revealed on Digital DJ Tips last autumn) its VL12 pro turntable. For good measure, it has also announced a new version of its Engine library management and file analysis software, called Engine Prime. We actually got to play with all of this gear in a private preview a few weeks ago, so here is a closer look at each of the items released today and our initial thoughts. Of course, a full review of all these items is coming as soon as we can bring it to you. We’ll also post a gallery of sneak pics we took when we were ensconced in Denon DJ’s secret den just before Christmas… This is the big one: A player which feature-for-feature broadly matches Pioneer DJ’s flagship CDJ-2000NXS2 model, and in many ways moves past it. The biggest new feature for us is that SC5000 can analyse music on the fly, meaning DJs who like to throw a load of tunes onto a USB stick and “just play” can now do so with all of the benefits of pre-analysed music, such as key detection, beatgridding, waveforms, sync and so on. Network four of these together and you’ve got a powerful system indeed. Apart from that, the SC5000 Prime has a very smooth, high res touchscreen that is akin to the quality of, say, iOS as opposed to that seen until now on DJ gear, and it has eight RGB performance pads of the type that are now standard on DJ controllers but haven’t until now made their way to a pro media player. A gimmick – but a nice one – is the displaying of release artwork in the middle of the jogwheels. A notable omission, however, is a CD slot – a bold move (think Apple/headphones socket). traktor and Serato compatibility is promised. • Retail pricing for the SC5000 Prime is £1,499.99. Availability is Q1 2017. Source: Digital DJ Tips