A quick recap for you — inMusic snapped up Denon DJ, and along with some other things put out the humungous MCX8000 übertroller, complete with 4 channels of Serato DJ and 2 channels of Engine standalone capability. Then came the Prime series, including the lush SC5000 Prime player. This needed a new version of Engine, suitably called Engine Prime. “Hang on a sec” said the MCX8000 owners — “what about us? Can’t we use Engine Prime?”. Well, no you couldn’t, and thus began a persistent stream of torch burning MCXers demanding that they get some love too. After some pressing, we got a response that basically said “it’s coming”. The timeline wasn’t exactly specified (it was over a year ago now), leaving said MCXers with feelings of rejection, as their expensive übertroller was left out of the Prime Club. Boo.
But now, the MCXers can rejoice, for Denon DJ has heard your collective cries. Today, the MCX8000 firmware gets a beta bump to v2, and with it comes the ability to use Engine Prime as your USB library manager. There’s other stuff too, and it’s outlined below:
MCX8000 Firmware v2.0 Release Notes
- Added support for Engine Prime prepared USB drives
- Added Mic 1 attenuation control utility menu option (0dB to -20dB)
- Added Mic 2 attenuation control utility menu option (0dB to -20dB)
- Added Talk Over level utility menu option (-20db to -40dB)
- Added Talk Over resume type utility menu option (fast, normal)
- Added Booth Receive mic signal utility menu option (on, off)
- Added Beat Grid support for Engine Prime prepared USB drives
- Added Beat Grid slide feature
- Added Quantize feature
- Added Quantize options 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1-beat and off for setting/triggering hotcues and loops
- Added Beat Sync feature
- Added 12 o’clock platter LED reset for cues
- Added BPM sorting when browsing songs through BPM Filter
- Fixed issue where <unknown> was displayed for track name in crates & playlists with over 500 tracks
- Fixed issue where device would not register as MIDI device on certain Mac OS systems
- Fixed issue where pitch fader was not reported in the SysEx initialization message
- Various additional bug fixes and stability improvements
Primed but not Prime
Just to be clear about this — the v2 update allows MCX8000 owners to ditch the now elderly vanilla Engine and update the the new and developing Engine Prime. Essentially it means that you can share your USB devices between MCXs and Sc5000 Primes.
It doesn’t however give your MCX8000 a Prime badge. You don’t get four channels of standalone, as this is a hardware limitation. The SC5000 Prime has some serious processing grunt under the bonnet which allows all the Prime magic to happen on two layers. The MCX8000 however doesn’t have that, so even if they somehow programmed four channels of standalone, it probably wouldn’t perform anywhere near what you’d want from such a machine.
Ultimately, MCX8000 owners need to accept that they don’t have a Prime unit, but Denon DJ has committed resource to wedge the door open to the Prime ecosystem — and it’s free to you too. Fingers crossed for an MCX8000 Prime.
GRABBING THE BETA
If you’re an MCX8000 user and don’t mind being a guinea pig for the beta firmware, you can grab it over at the Denon DJ Forum. You’ll need to sign up to get it and agree to the terms, which are largely that you actively take part, and don’t talk about it outside of the Denon DJ forum.