#small controller

When at home or in the studio, the average musician might have more than 5 piece of gear sitting around, with wires strewn about the place.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with having your gear the way you like it, even if it isn’t clean or properly set-up in the professional’s point of view.  Sometimes it feels comfortable having your own personal mess that you can easily navigate by yourself.  Who needs an expensive stand to rest your laptop on when you have a bookshelf that will do the same at pennies on the dollar?  Many of us can get by with makeshift solutions; and who is going to actually see the mess anyways? The problem is when you start lugging your gear around.  Then it actually pays to have professional looking gear to haul it in.  The last thing you need to do is to have some embarrassing wires hanging out of your backpack, only to have it get tangled and rip a piece of gear right out of your hands.  One solution that may save you money in the long run is to have gear that is small to begin with.  A smaller controller is not hard to carry around and isn’t expensive either.  http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2013/02/best-micro-set-up-for-djing-live-performance  

In the spirit of portability, many controller companies have taken their larger floor models and revamped them to a smaller size in order to please the backpack DJ crowd.  Something large, like a NS7 by Numark, is smaller than what would normally fit in a DJ’s coffin, but larger than anything that should be carried in by one person.  The same sort of goes for the Pioneer DDJ-SX, which is actually much smaller than the NS7 – yet still not a contender for any sort of dark room backpack stuffing.  It can be carried by one person, but only a fool would walk around with that expensive controller in one arm. What Pioneer has done is re-crafted it into what is being called the DDJ-SR.  Although it might sound like the DDJ “Senior”, this one is actually the Junior, and much much smaller.  The Pioneer jogwheel which they have been known for are still around, and only minor changes have been made to account for the lost space.  For one, there are no visible touch strips on the front of the unit – and this means that the tip row has been vacated for a button panel to be inserted.  Also, secondary functions allow a single button to control two types of effects. http://djworx.com/pioneer-ddj-sr-controller-ddj-sxs-mini/

When controllers are produced from their respective manufacturers, we usually know what to expect from them – and this has more to do with their product branding than anything else.  If Pioneer releases a controller tomorrow, we should expect it to be nothing less than ground breaking, and expensive.  Likewise, if Korg does the same thing we don’t know if this will be part of their top end collection or their budget buys from guys who are just starting out.  Akai has sort of a strange spot in this paradigm, since they rarely produce something they are going to regret later on. Even their cheapest MIDI controllers are given more respect than Korg’s cheapest, and since Akai has the long history with button mashing machines, we shouldn’t find it strange that we expect something odd form them, from time to time.  Their MPX8 is something of a nice change.  It is a small controller that takes its cues from a budget controller – yet it is built as solid as tank.  Even if you find yourself only needing the use it a few times in a performance, the quality and feel of it might be worth paying the extra for.  True MIDI user will be happy with this one. http://djworx.com/review-akai-pro-mpx8-sample-player/#.UxjWx_ldW1B

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