Because all of the elements play so nicely together, we got a synergistic feeling from the components of DJM-2000: the creative potential hidden inside adds up to more than its discrete components belie. But that's not really the best part about this big black chunk of signal processing. Technically, nothing in the DJM-2000 is groundbreaking on its own, although there is one true 'first' here - a touchscreen has not, to our knowledge, ever been inserted directly into a mass-produced mixer. But we've gotta say, we've never seen a more tightly-integrated, stable, and functional implementation of multitouch display in an audio context. iOS DJ and MIDI applications are plentiful and useful tools for swiping, pinching, and tapping into an innovative mix. LEMUR pioneered (no pun intended) the use of multitouch in the realm of audio and continues to innovate there. The way it makes you feel We know that there are, of course, lots of other options out there for taking your DJ sets into a highly-stylized future. It's obvious a lot of work went into optimizing this screen for the DJ. We can't stress this enough: the purpose-built touch interface feels just as reliable as a knob or fader. Feeling like we could be able to trust a screen to respond quickly and reliably to ultra-timing-sensitive interaction was a new one for us we certainly wouldn't trust our iPads in the same way. We can't say that about some other touch applications. The touchscreen itself, while not particularly high-resolution or beautiful, is as snappy as any hardware button we've ever used to trigger a MIDI note. We imagine it will take quite a bit of time for jocks to be more comfortable touching into frequencies than tweaking knobs as they have been for decades. That said, after a chunk of time with the Frequency Mix area, we found ourselves reverting to the traditional 3-band EQ to notch into specific frequencies. An X-Y frequency-time grid controls four oscillators, a re-sampler, and pitch / gate effects, with handy frequency-based triggering to set the sounds in time with the beat. The REMIX interface is a bit like a Kaoss Pad in the mix. Virtual sliders, X-Y fields, and buttons will send MIDI over USB, a very handy feature to keep most of your triggering functions close to the center of your rig. The touchscreen itself can become a controller: we used preset control screens to trigger tracks in Traktor Pro. Such a fancy piece of gear would be remiss without its fair share of MIDI.

Three buttons handle the screen's destiny: MIDI, MIX, and REMIX.

Touching the freqs The first thing you'll notice upon powering up is Pioneer's piГЁce de rГ©sistance: a 4.5- x 2.75-inch multitouch screen sitting right on top of the crossfader. We ended up spending more time experimenting with different knob-tweaking permutations than we did with. No exception here: highly-assignable and programmable beat and harmony effects take up a lot of space on the face of the DJM-2000, and with good reason. If you've ever used one of Pioneer's effects-laden mixers, you'll know they're a lot of fun to mess with.

Pioneer djm 2000 photo