There’s no need to retread the long and fractious relationship between Serato and Pioneer DJ. As partners, and as yesterday’s INTERFACE 2 announcement demonstrates, competitors, the space that they occupy in the market is becoming very similar indeed.
So when the DJM-S9 arrived on the scene at a time when other Pioneer DJ mixers were rekordbox DVS ready out of the box, it came as some surprise to many that it wouldn’t work out of the box as a rekordbox DVS mixer. I suspected that contractually rather than technically it was deliberately disabled from opening up rekordbox DVS to the people who had dropped a couple of kidneys on what is (outside of boutique rotaries) the most expensive two channel mixer on the market.
Now over time, it has been shown that rekordbox DVS will unofficially work with more or less any audio interface enabled mixer you cared to connect up to it. “Unofficially” is the key word here, as it means that you did it without a smidgeon of support from Pioneer DJ if things didn’t work. But given that Pioneer’s newer mixers (including their entry-level DJM-250 MKII) work with rekordbox DVS, it’s a bit weird that the DJM-S9 (you know… their killer DVS scratch mixer) doesn’t officially work with rekordbox DVS. Until now that is.
Our fellow industry hack Mojaxx posted a link on Facebook to the rekordbox v5 public beta release that was put out today, and in it is the following tasty snippet:
[ For DJM-S9 users ]
- rekordbox dj now supports DJM-S9. Please download the beta version of the firmware from the links below and update its firmware for optimized integration.
- Please see the firmware update guide for update instructions.
- Please see the hardware diagram regarding function assignment.
Now there is a nagging voice in my head that reminds me that it doesn’t explicitly mention DVS. But I cannot think of reason outside of full DVS support for making this happen, or indeed one that would require a firmware update. And on that subject, it’s also not clear if this firmware makes it a rekordbox only mixer and essentially closes the door to Serato DJ. If it does, I trust there’s a way back from that.
Will it make a difference?
Well it won’t hurt. Serato still gets paid for every licence that continues to be sold, and can probably shrug its shoulders if a user has an issue after putting Pioneer’s firmware on it. And the ability for owners to have a rekordboxed and fully supported DJM-S9 can only be good for Pioneer DJ to get people to try to hopefully stick with it.
If you fancy trying it out with your DJM-S9, check out this Pioneer DJ forums thread. We’d love to hear your experiences.