I have a love hate relationship with stanton - I owned some of their products with mixed results, I had the Stanton T150 turntables which were kinda awesome, and i had a lot of their older CDJ's in the past that broke down pretty quickly (CD lens died in 3 months - MEH!) and some of their mixers - so Im actually kind of neutral regarding how I feel about stanton products, they do try to do original things every one in awhile (such as the SC System series midi controllers) which is cool
I just realized that something has slipped under my radar, Stanton has apparently designed (to be released soon) a new CDJ/media player/midi assignable controller kinda thing that has an uncanny resemblance to the good ol' Pioneer CDJ400 - with a Twist!
This is the Stanton CMP.800:
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| Hmmm... this looks like something *wink wink* |
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| Hmmm..... again, looks like the black CDJ-400K with that orange ring! |
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| Hmm.. not a bad series of connections! |
Stanton has apparently spied on what people want in a unit, depending on how much they are selling for and how the build quality is, this could be a very well a nice cdj/mp3/midi controller combo - if you click on the pic above to see the larger version, they even added a dual layer (A/B deck) into the midi implementation - CLEVER!
Just as MIDI controllers are on the rise, and becoming more and more common, instead of releasing a plain old cd deck, Stanton kept this in mind and implemented some pretty cool dual layered midi functions into the thing...
So this can act something like the Denon DN-SC2000 dual deck midi controller that also plays CD's and MP3 thumb drives - very innovative! I like how they put a lot of connections into the unit, the long 100mm pitch slider and increased pitch slider resolution (up to 0.02%! that's kinda like the pioneer cdj's!), they even threw in a digital output and a headphone jack!
If you look at the cheapest of the pioneer CDJ series at the moment, the CDJ-350, the CDJ-350 pales in comparison about the features , the stanton unit even has HOTCUES! Something that is normally only found on Pioneer's premium range of CDJs! but the reliability of the stanton unit still unknown, I did have some terrible experience with stanton CDJ's failing very quickly but they might have stepped their game up production wise for their newer products - cant confirm until I actually have a play with one!
I personally have moved to timecode vinyl + Traktor2 + Midi controllers, CDJs arent exactly my thing anymore (other than being overpriced units that plays cds, oh wait... i dont burn CDs anymore!), but this cool little unit if priced right might just be a handy little backup midi controller with bonus cdj-like features!
More details HERE
This will be available around June 2011, Price is TBA (this will be a dealbreaker for many)
