The Shrike

I had an Alesis AirSynth before. While the AXYZ dome was nice to play with, the sounds were so limited it wasn't really interesting. Same for the AirFX. This little controller is bringing the one-of-a-kind control to any MIDI feature you'd like. It's also a class-compliant audio and MIDI interface (no driver required), The knobs on this thing are plenty enough to control all your standard synth/sampler features, the semi-weighted keybed is really comfortable to play with. Back to AXYZ. It's not precise. It's not meant to achieve exact results. It's a little sad it's been discontinued before software caught up with this. The best way I found to use it is set range-based random effects. Crashing a track with Stutter Edit and the AXYZ dome feels like a spiritual link between the track and you. Jiggle your hand a little to modulate instantly... Listen, it's a 25 key controller; there's nothing much special about it. The audio interface and dome are what sets it apart, and if you use it for random results and probabilities, try to find a used one!

The Stanton SCS.1D is a Firewire-based turntable controller. It sports the same direct drive motor as the flagship Stanton ST-150 turntable. It has many buttons, knobs, displays, a motorized pitch slider, and a 10" platter instead of the classic 12" size. First thing first; when Stanton announded this product, nothing on the market even came close to being as advanced as this. Its closest competitors were traditional turntable combined with a Serato SL or Traktor-driven interface, and CDJs with the same setting. But Stanton played themselves by marketing this as the new best thing: delays caused by development issues finally caught up with the public interest. For months we only had a 1 minute video demo to rely on. Stanton came back to NAMM next year with what they said was where they were in development stage, showing only a software counting the platter resolution. While this at the time was revolutionary (the count was about 1000 per round IIRC), people were starting to believe this was all vaporware, and I deeply believe this played a huge part on how things turned for Stanton there after. Product was released early, and was plagued with bugs and hardware issues. Parts were nowhere to be found, distributors couldn't fill their orders. The first issue users noticed was small displays were burning out, or displaying data randomly. Traktor support was non-existent while the controller was supposed to be automatically mapped, platter didnt behave as supposed (had to be used as a scrub wheel instead of an actual turntable emulation. VirtualDJ though was the first DJ software to properly support the SCS.1D, with good results. But this never took off. Stanton discontinued the SCS series shortly, leaving many unhappy customers with mostly useless units in their hands. Stanton also released USB touch strips controllers around the same thime, and while their low prices gave them many sales, the controllers were seen as toys more than real DJ hardware. The rest is history, Stanton has been sold to Gibson and since then, nothing much came out of it. But how's the SCS performs today? I have a VirtualDJ lifetime license which I bought for next to nothing back in the days, and it still supports the SCS very well, for what's working on it. Every knob and button are mapped properly, but you have to have good memory since none of them could be labeled properly on the long-gone displays. BUT, and it's a big BUT, if you're a turntablist, scratch DJ, or simply want to get into live remixing, the SCS still stands its ground today. The motor is working as good as day 1, the layout is pretty intuitive and the most well hidden gem is the motorized pitch fader. The motorized pitch fader allows you to many things if you map it to other functions, but out of the box, it gives you instant zero % recall at the touch of a button, and can do the same but progressively, slowly moving towards 0%. I never understood why such a feature was never done by another DJ-industry company on any product; this was revolutionary, and should have a place on today's controllers instead of inaccurate touch strips. That platter/motor... It just feels great. 10" is really a great compromise between the standards 12" and 7". Denon had put 9" platter on its DN-SC3900, I always wondered how it compared to this. In 2015, for a reason I can't explain, Stanton SCS series were basically given up on eBay. It was probably the american distributor who got rid of all its left open box stocks. The original SCS.1D was aoove $1200 USD, and you could now get one for less than $100. If you forget about the display issues, and pay $60 for the product as I did, it's probably the closest thing you can get to a Rane Twelve or a Reloop RP-8000 turntable with an interface. I don't think the new Denon Prime-M small turntable can compare to this as it's a world of difference in engineering and product quality, still, can something beat a larger platter to a scratch DJ? Don't think so. The benefits of using VirtualDJ instead of Traktor or Serato are plenty, but being able to easily program things and use VST effects are a good starter. You can program the start/stop time of the platter in a matter of seconds. You can dial in an effect and control it with the top 4 knobs and buttons, feels natural. So to sum this up, this was a product that was supposed to be the new turntable. Idea-wise, this was so promising; imagine having CDJ-like controls over a real turntable! No more needles, tonearm, crates, none of this would matter because you be a club-DJ or turntablist, this got you covered. I'm a little sad thinking about this to be honest. I hate seeing good ideas such as this get discontinued and all efforts, marketing, everything is ruined. But it still works to this day and I still use it in my studio, and even live sometimes.

For more information about the SCS series, please see my SCS.1D review. Like the SCS.1D, the mixer has display issues which caused Stanton to discontinue the SCS series. This 4 channel mixer controller is as innovative as the SCS.1D was; a large dial allows you to scroll your library quickly and precisely, pressing it to enter a folder. Virtual dJ is the perfect companion for this mixer, as it offers native support for it. The crossfader is a once-a-legend Pro X-Fade which is an aftermarket upgrade crossfader. The SCS.1M was the second mixer to sport the Pro X-Fade, after Audio Innovate own's AEM-100 and AEM-100i. It allows for lightning fast cuts, an essential feature to scratch DJs and turntablists. It's also an audio interface, with headphones, booth and main outputs, and rca inputs with phono ground for use with a turntable or other line-level sources. While it's pretty rare these days, it's still an excellent control surface to any DJ software that supports it, or a DAW.

VirtualDJ. To some it may sound like a generic name, and that's exactly the issue. This piece of software disserves way better marketing and it could easily be as popular as Pioneer Rekordbox or Serato Pro. First, VDJ is really stable. If a problem occurs and the software shuts down, it starts right back up and loads the last tracks you've used. Until we get true standalone controllers with built-in DJ software/engine, we're prone to Windows/MacOS woes and such problem can still occur. Better be safe than sorry and use a software that fires back up when shut down by your OS. VDJ supports VST. Now, much DJs don't really care about this and are more concerned with internal effects, but for a producer this is a big deal. It means you can use your flawless Echoboy delay, Vintageverb, Stutter Edit or whatever studio-grade effects you have in VST format. VDJs effects are one thing that's not so great about the software. They work as intended, it's just that with the possibility of using VSTs, the choice here is easy. It is very effective for turntablist duties as well. This was my primary reason to get it; I needed a good scratch solution. And VDJ delivers. Absolutely no delay on even the fastest scratches. Please Atomix, get a better name for that software, rebrand it, and I can assure you you will crush Pioneer and Serato!

GREAT control surface. Well thought and designed, things are where you expect them to be. BUT DO NOT BUY: this is firewire-based, and lost support years ago making them a huge door stopper now.

This is a blast from the past. When ZIP drives were the hype, and MPC was king of samplers. But this thing is another type of samplers. While the MPC was mainly aimed at hip-hop heads, the DJ-70 MK2 offered the same type of specs; up to 32MB of RAM, a SCSI port, and the same sample editing features. You could split the keyboard, use the jog wheel to create a (not so much) scratch-like effect. So it basically was an MPC in a keyboard format. Mike Patton of Faith No More, Mr.Bungle, Fantômas, Tomahawk, Peeping Tom and other famous projects, used one live between 1996 and 2002.