11/02/2019
First thoughts of the Denon DJ Prime 4 from a 7 year Serato/Pioneer (DDJ line) user.
For the past two months I’ve been plagued with audio drop outs from Serato DJ software. Even bought the new DDJ-1000SRT and after a couple of weeks the same thing. Clearly it wasn’t my DDJ-SZ2 or the newer 1000SRT, it was the Serato DJ software. It culminated at my last wedding gig when the music stopped as the bride and groom were doing their couples first dance. As you might imagine, that’s pretty messed up! Good thing I had the same song playing on my iPad which was coming into the mixer on channel 3 and I had synced it with the laptop around the 20 second mark. When I saw the computer stop I switched over to the iPad. Crisis averted, but what a PITA!!
I ordered the Prime 4 that night, which was last Saturday. It arrived on Thursday as I needed it for a gig Friday (last night). I have to say it was SUPER easy to use! One thing I didn’t like was the hot cue functionality. By default, you press the hot cue and it starts playing. I’m more familiar with the DDJ functionality of pressing the hot cue and it plays until you release the pad. A quick read in the Prime 4 manual and voila, I changed it to what I prefer. Once that was done, I felt COMPLETELY comfortable.
Searching tracks during the gig was simple and scrolling through tracks on the touchscreen with a flick of my thumb was awesome!! I felt right at home doing so. The gig went off without a hitch and no audio drop outs. It was paired with two QSC K12.2s and the new QSC KS118. Awesome sounding setup!
I thought the internal drive would be a cool feature and as I had a 1TB SSD laying around I threw it into the Prime 4. This seems to be where the big bottleneck is with this whole system. I don’t want to have to connect the Prime 4 to my laptop every time I’m adding tracks or new playlists. There has to be a better way of doing this!
I had an amazing time using the Prime 4 and even though I had less than a day of messing with it before my first gig, it performed as promised. Since I have a lot of paid gigs, I won’t update the software often. I have horizontal waveforms and no audio dropouts, so I’m happy! I really don’t need it to work with Serato DJ. Anyway, I think the Prime 4 is an amazing piece of gear!