I know all focus is on the Denon - and I am sure that it is a fabulous unit (which i would like)

But in terms of price - bit out of my league.


have read a review of the CORTEX system here - has anyone bought the Numark Director ??????


As far as i can see it lacks hard drive and lots of effects (which i probably wouldn't use anyway) but does much the same basic job.

I quite like numark - and have used them lots.


Any reviewer / owner out there ????????

Think of the D2 as a Ford Fiesta... and dont forget you need to supply your own hard drive and a backup drive...

now it does the basics it plays music... it gets you from A to B.... and on the face of it there is nothing at all wrong with it..

However it has been reported that it has a habbit of hanging..

the cortex is more like an old skoda.... again gets from A to B but the feel is very toy like....

and the Denon is the Nice S class merc..... is £200 more for a denon really out of reach???

I have a D2 Director.

Haven't used it in anger yet, only at home, but it's good enough for what it is.

Mine was £400 or thereabouts, from Thomann.

Plays mp3, Wav. and Ogg Vorbis ( have to admit ignorance of the latter ).

Jog wheels are pretty useles for scratching IMO but OK for searching/cueing etc.

Load and start times are good. Lack of master tempo is a pity although since most of my work is weddings, that's not really important and Numark can probably add it as a software upgrade. It does have seamless looping

Lack of a hard drive is not important for me since I had some standalone ones already.

The "crate" is a good idea - you go through your library and send tracks there ready to pull out and play when you feel like it. 3 USB connectors - 1 on the front. Keyboard included, which makes searching very easy.

It probably isn't as good as and doesn't have as many features as the Denon but it's a few hundred quid cheaper!

I think Marc is on comission from denon

You still need an external drive for the denon as 40gb is no where near big enough.

Dont tell denon but i know of a couple of HD2500s with nice 120Gb hard drives in

I'd be astounded if a usably decent Master Tempo/Key Adjust feature was possible on either the cortex or the numark - it really needs a dedicated digital signal processor (DSP) or have enough spare processing power in ADDITION to coping with all the regular tasks.

The Key adjust feature on the Denon DN-HD2500 is probably one of the highest quality key adjusts around, to date, including cd decks.

The internal harddrive on the Denon will store between 13000 mp3 tracks (@128kbps), 6500 mp3 tracks (@256kbps) or 1200 tracks in uncompressed WAV format.

That's as many as 362 double cds, on the internal drive, with upto 50000 tracks on each of 4 external drives, and any standard usb keyboard.

Depending on how desperate you are at moving from your current method of DJ'ing, you may find that more stockists will supply the Denon DN-HD2500 at less than the £RRP once stocks become more readily available - at the moment, the 2500 is selling out as fast as dealers are getting them in with many units on back-order. There's obviously reasons for that demand.

Black mark to Numark USA then. That's what they told me - no immediate plans but possible.

Stand by to be astounded.

I'm told, by Rob Voisey of Numark, that keylock will be in the soon to be released 1.06 firmware upgrade for the D2 Director.

Nope, I'm still safely unastounded.

Note how, back in April, I said that I would be astounded if they added a decent key adjust via firmware. The key (no pun intended) word there being "decent".

Key adjust is best done from a dedicated (or at least not very hard worked already) Digital signal processor(DSP) chip. It'll be better than nothing, but I would'nt rely on a firmware only pitch lock/key adjust/master tempo to the same degree as a hardware based one - especially when slowing down - or on pitch changes over +/- 4%-5%.

what by the digital artifacts. glitches and odd darlek sounds it makes...

BBC sci fi effects department might want to try one out...

??????




Well, waddya know? The D2 contains a powerful DSP in addition to the CPU and its code is fully upgradeable with a normal firmware update.

thats good news...

they should post the tech specs on there web site.. its seems to be missing right now...

And here on Centre Court, the first set, without dropping his service at all, goes to: Spinner!!!!!!!!!

All of the HDCs contain some form of DSP.

Of course, how good the DSP chip is, and how much of its capacity is/was used up prior to key adjust/Key lock/Master Tempo being added to its list of duties - is a primary factor here. The quality of the components within will obviously have an effect on price of the overall unit. The Numark is the mid-priced of the 3 main HDCs.

Remember that key adjusting, and especially the "artifacts" (unwanted distortion etc) is going to be heard alongside the music every second that the track is playing. IF, and it is only an "if", the DSP cant handle key lock simultaneously with say, the other "deck" also running with key lock and big pitch adjusting eg: Key lock at -10%, and cueing up a song on the other "deck" at +5% while pulling both tracks off of the same external device, without audience noticable artifacts then it might be one of those features which needs to be used selectively.

Having said that, I doubt that Numark would have added the feature at all, if it didn't work reasonably well. Although if it could be done well, I'm surprised that they didn't have this fairly sought after feature on the unit from day 1. I would be far more concerned if software key adjust suddenly appeared on the Gemini models.

Still, Key Adjust/Key lock etc... it's like any other feature - some will use it all the time (if they can), some wont ever use it, some will only use it once in a blue moon. All features are just extra colours in the DJs pallette.

An increasing 'trait' these days for products to be launched early, without all 'features' initally available?

Good points.

So Spinner - are you using your D2 in anger yet...... ?

Still happy with it ?

Any USB compatibility issues etc?

Yes

Yes

No.

Keylock/Master Tempo is part of the latest firmware upgrade and works very well.

didnt know theyve released another firmware update, is it available now?

need it!!

It's available for download on the Numark forum now and will be available generally in a few days. To use it you'll need to rebuild your library although it won't be necessary to do that when the generally available version comes out.

We use the D2 director and to be honest only have one issue with it which is that when browsing via folder view you only see the track name were it would be better if you could see track and artist.
This is only down to the firmware so can be sorted no problem.
Other than that its a quality unit and has never let us down which is our main priority.

Firmware upgrade 1.09 should be available next week.

Thats good to hear, any ideas on what has been included?

There will be a new version of the library with it which will make searching for tracks much faster. In addition support for USB CD drives will be available. I'm not sure if this means it will read from CDs in the same way it reads from a hard drive or if it means allowing control of the drives in the same way as a CD player.

You'll find some details on the numark.com website. Look for the forum where you'll see comment on the D2.

Thanks spinner much appreciated