I used to use home / personal computers and dedicated software for writing music way back in 1988 however compared to todays systems, it was dated!
Used an Amiga during a gig in London 1992 with a then expensive 16-bit sampler and tracker software (Octamed if I remember). Also used the Amiga for Genlock video editing (basic).
The software seemed more stable than the OS as I recall, and the visual gfx demo's doing the rounds were pretty cool - exactly the sort of sophisticated visuals required today to enhance VJing!

Mind, too much to carry around then!

Those were the days.....

Well its on its way down already Click..Got me thinking now................Where is my bank card????

Give it 6 months and you will get it for around £400 Give it 12 months and you will get it for £300

It is a shame sometimes how fast new technology comes down in price so fast... Just when do you make the jump to a new bit of kit?

Nik

Just got round to reading all of Gary`s review. Very good Gary thanks. I have highlighted the bits below which IMO the laptop (for DJ-ing) will soon be in our local museums along with dinosaurs. Playing mp3`s via a pc/lappy was/is a great idea but one thinks now, PC/lappy DJ-ing will soon be moving out of the way for the HD 2500, Newmark and the likes. I guess the only advantage of a PC is playing spider or solitaire during the buffet.

I've just been reading through this review, and have downloaded the introductory video - all 50-odd megabytes of it!!

Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear oh bloomin' dear.

I've been racking my brains for what to get as my main deck, as my original one is getting old and blind, and for the moment can't see any convincing reasons for not choosing one of these.
Similar price to what I was going to pay for a pair of CD decks...

I think I'm in love!!

Oh, and thanks Gary for taking the (considerable) time to write all that out - I think you've sold me on the idea.

Not quite correct, a laptop has a battery. If the power is cut, the battery takes over so there is no break in usage and it is ready to go as soon as the power is restored - 14 seconds quicker than the HD2500

OOOooo your in for it now how dare you knock the perfection that is the HDC 2500 LOL


Nik

Andy, you can always pop down and have a play with mine

Amazing how brave one can get after a couple of cans of Murphy's but in defence of the HDC 2500, I read a review from someone who had a Numark D2 and a HDC 2500 on a sale or return basis. After using both, he sent the D2 back. One of the main factors was that the sound quality was much better from the HDC 2500 and no tweaking of the EQ could make the D2 sound as good.

Hope I've redeemed myself now and can come out of hiding

Thats if its a laptop with a good battery..

lots of people have custome PC systems...

and I know a lot of DJs with cheep laptops that do the job perfects but stay on PSU all the time because the battery is fupped and they dont want to spend £90 on a new one...

its good however to see that a lot of people are starting to use UPS on there systems so the disco will continue even if the venues lights go out...

Having just bought the D2, cant see this is correct to be honest, whilst the 2 units are very different in gizmo's and the Denon has more features, the sound quality form the Numark is exactly the same as my Denon cd players?
so not sure how this can be the case...............If the Denon Cd players are as good if not better sound quality than the 2500? (same at least)

Quote Eddie:
"Andy, you can always pop down and have a play with mine"

Eddie - Me and 'The Boy' are extremely interested, and your offer sounds too good to be missed.

Your place, or a gig somewhere perhaps? Up to you, and thanks.

and there's more...

Here's "SOME" of what you can look forward to receiving FREE in the forthcoming update - this is whats happening to the Music Manager (MM) software which sits on your PC safely at home.

Many great improvements have been made in the next MM & firmware (coming June xx) to reduce the amount of work on your end, thanks to our loyal users input.

Unicode support (less imported tags with hollow squares and wierd characters)

Duplicate file name support

Duplicate Playlist file support by MM (import/export)

Pre-warning if (over) 5000 folders are found by MM

Latin Character support by display (previously latin characters could junk the filename display)

Auto BPM by MM (hurrah! no more having to press the tap tap tap button whilst listening to the tune to input the BPM.)

Save error list option by MM, up to 50K (When a file is rejected for whatever reason, you'll now be able to look up a list and see what that reason was).

Faster USB speed

Many new features added

All reported minor issues cured

Widened file registration conditions

Does this mean it scans the files and calculates the BPM, ten enters it in to the tag?

Even on wav files?

If so, this is a great addition!

Good set of new features there Gary.

Is MM ever going to run on or are MM users going to be tied to forever?

Music manager compatible with Windows 9X??

Neither of these are in this release, or planned, ttbomk.

MM will run (apparently) on a Mac under the Mac "Bootcamp" application.

An Ex-lappyDJ was telling me a month or so ago that he got MM to run on his Windows 98 (sp2) but needed to get the ".NET" language/protocol for a Win 98 platform first.

Remember also, that the above features are only the add-on features for the Music Manager Software, there's a whole seperate present to un-wrap with regards to the firmware enhancements on the DN-HD2500 itself.

I think I read somewhere that defragging your external HDD can cause problems with the HD2500, can anyone shed any light on this?

I don't know anything about such issues, but it should never be necessary to defrag anyhow.

As you load files onto an empty HDD, they pile on in a highly organised way, filling any available space as they go, and being stored on a contiguous string of clusters.

Using the HDD for playback won't move them around at all, so makes a defrag pointless, as the drive is already defragged to start with.

If there is an issue, I suspect it could be something to do with when a database is created, maybe it not only logs the files, but also the clusters they occupy. Defragging may move some of the files about, rendering the database out of date. I'd have thought simply creating a new one would sort it, if this is the case.

Defragging ANY harddrive which is connected to a USB port is at best tediously slow, and at worst a potential corruption issue. I recall a lappy DJ mentioning that he defragged his USB external harddrive for his lappy a few hours before his NYE and lost the use of the drive that evening and ended up running the night from a load of un-labelled CD-Rs.

The DN-HD2500 hard drive doesnt need defragging under normal use.

Will the new update address the issue I raised previously about DDMM recognising and playing mp3s only for the HD2500 to say they are corrupt?

Handling of files whose headers have been corrupted by rogue PC-applications is a very key part of this months firmware update for the DN-HD2500. However there's plenty of other enhancements too.

Ohhhh Gary - you little tease you ....

Hi Gary

You missed this question - Will it BPM wave files as that would be great

Regards

Tony

Yes, sorry, I missed this question.

The new version of music manager which is due this very month will auto-calculate BPMs on both WAV and MP3 files.

You can also point Music manager at a whole batch of files, not just individual files, one-at-a-time, and leave it to do its thing. The calculated BPMs are then placed into the BPM field of the IDtag/metatag data.

Fantastic!!!!

Only a day left, any news?

I've got pages to write about the firmware update - there are 3 pages of enhancements, which I loaded onto the DN-HD2500 on the Denon section of the "West End DJ" stand at "London Calling". (I doubt anyone could call that a plug for the event by the way, as its only running tomorrow,and that's presumably too short-a-notice for anyone to be tempted to come along...)

I can't publish the list in any way shape or form right now, but is all very very close - and you can be sure that I'll post all the details here on DJU.

I know that many of you have your DN-HD2500s in flightcases, so please be aware that you may need your serial number to key into the DenonJ website, in order to download the new firmware and new music manager software.

Anone would think that we'd opened about 20 doors on our advent calendars...

So if it's ready, and you have it and will be displaying it at a show tomorrow, surely we can know what's in it at one minute past midnite tonight as it will be no longer secret????

I hope they hurry up and sort this as I for one am getting a bit fed up with the software glitches which SHOULD have been sorted prior to release.

Denon have sadly dropped a bit in my estimation now, and that is from someone who has exclusively used their product since the mid nineties!!! Which is a shame.

So how come your having glitches.. my 2500 has been working without fault or glitch...

It appears the update will now not be available until "next week"

Although that is a bit vague, I can't get anything more concrete...

I can't wait for it to fix the issue with Key Adjust as the 2500 is rubbish compared to the 9000s for this - And it BPMing my wave files will be nice.....

The key adjust issue of key adjust switching itself off during device changes etc, but still leaving the key adjust light "on" making some people think that key adjust didnt stop the ol' Darth Vaders and Helium mouses etc, has been resolved in this issue.

Also, there's a video about some of the other new features. Suggest you right-click it and "SAVE AS"

Some of the things featured in the firmware are resolved things which didn't come to light until users tried all sorts of combinations and all sorts of pc-application corrupted files etc. As users reported the few issues, firmware resolutions were sought and implemented on this firmware release. However, Denon have never simply "patched-up". In this same firmware release are a number of BRAND NEW features which were simply never there in the original machine. These have transpired from feedback received by users. The one firmware release (this one) is therefore a mixture of issue resolution and user requests, from listening to users. Preferential to having two separate firmware releases, one for resolutions and another for enhancements.

Thanks Gary.
I hope you chaps like the video.

Here's the Latin-1 characters we now support:

its coming down

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DENON-DN-HD2500-DNHD...1QQcmdZViewItem

Not quite what we paid for ours yet, but getting there.

Yea, I had the possibility of one £100 less than that but it seems to of gone quiet.

Got ours at pretty much trade, the day after it arrived at the dealer!