Since 2016 is meant to be the Year of the Standalone DJ Controller, it’s only fair to mention the GoDJ Plus, a… standalone DJ controller that’s currently trying to raise capital via crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The unit itself is fairly unadventurous in its workflow, save perhaps for the pair touch screens replacing of jogwheels, but the fact it’s completely self-containing, including speakers, should make it pretty attractive to those of you with a nomadic life.
The Indiegogo page claims you can get 12 hours of continuous mixing with the LCD backlight active, and up to 24 hours without. There’s also 14GB of built in storage for your music (plus 1GB for recording and 1GB for system files) so while not somewhere to store your entire collection, the SD card slot should help too.
You can get a decent gist of the unit from the above pitch video, if you can put up with the god-awful music.
MY THOUGHTS
I can’t help but think back to some of the classic Dieter Rams designs when I look at the GoDJ Plus. There’s certainly a retro feel to the design of the unit, with a sort of 70s cassette player / receiver feel to it. I’ve always had a soft spot for the electronic stylings from that era, particularly since my first hi-fi system was my parents’ hand me down amplifier and cassette player from around that time.
In the course of my research for this article, I managed to work out that not only is this hardware from Monster, but so was the unit Mark reviewed three years ago… all roads seem to lead back to the Monster brand. Yes, that Monster brand. Make of that what you will.
Editor’s note: while JD Sound made the original GoDJ for Monster, we’re unclear if this is a Monster backed project as well (the new video appears on the Monster Youtube channel). We’ve contacted JD for clarification but 10 days later have heard nothing back. We need to be clear before unleashing Dan on a tirade about huge companies misusing crowdfunding as a marketing ploy and pre-order mechanism.
Check out the GoDJ Plus on Indiegogo.
The concept is nice but :
– not enough memory : can it hold 64Gb (or more) sd-cards ?
– no usb ? a miss i guess…
– included speakers is stupid, they will never sound good and/or loud : ditch them !
– headphones cueing ? how do you set the source ?
– the dj layout is really akward with those lined controls
– buttons, pads and knobs are simply ugly, very Hercules-esque
They should sold the idea to someone that can properly manufacture that thing. If it’s works in the crowdfunding campaign, the concept will be stollen and enhanced, so better give it to the big boys right now.
Yes it can hold 128 GB too. There is a USB. You don’t have to use the speaker if you don’t want to. There are outputs for the speaker. Yes you can headphone cue. Read the manual. They cannot duplicate touch screen turntables. If someone could, they would have already.
Remember these ? :
– Tonium Pacemaker
– Nextbeat
– Casio XW-DJ1
all of these were highly innovative… did someone duplicate them ?
Do you really think other companies can’t ?
That is a vile looking piece of kit – at least it’s relatively cheap!
Of all the obvious problems SPARK972 points out – what about the total lack of pitch faders? Are you telling me that their beatgridding is so perfect that you’ll never need them? In recent memory, I think it’s only the S8/5 that has ditched them, and even then they’ve got knobs to the the job for you…
Also, you best budget for decent stereo DI with those unbalanced phono outs…
Occam’s Razor.
This would be kind of cool wedged between a pair of decks.
Does it have split cue?
How do you control the pitch?! With the jogwheels?