And you will say, what does this have to do with video games? Well, little, but it is always good to bring you a breath of fresh air to the hardware and peripherals reviews area and hey, maybe thanks to this analysis the new one will come out of here David Guetta. We get down to business with the DJ controller Pioneer DJ DDJ-200, the youngest of the family.
The box and its contents
The first feeling we have when we take the controller Pioneer DJ DDJ-200 in our hands it is its extreme lightness. It has two different points of view: on the one hand it is a fundamental requirement since this DJ controller specializes in its extreme portability; the other, that perhaps the components are not the best or the qualities are not too large since it is built almost entirely of plastic, but be careful, except for a couple of things that we will comment on in the analysis, the rest more than complies since this DJ controller doesn’t come at a high price point and it really does look like something premium when you put it on the table.
We open the box and find the DJ controller Pioneer DDJ-200, a USB-B cable, a jack splitter, an instruction and warranty book, and a few flyers music subscription services to get free time or demo versions. We miss that the briefcase of Pioneer DJ to carry the DDJ-200 from one place to another, although we can find it quite cheap in many specialized stores. Normally the complete pack: DDJ-200 more briefcase usually costs about 180 euros.
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Installation on mobile or tablet
It is very simple and perfect for taking your DJ controller from one place to another. You only need a tablet or a mobile with a jack connection, now I will tell you why, the included USB-B cable, your jack splitter, some speakers and the DDJ-200 by Pioneer DJ. Except for the speakers, the rest fits in a backpack, making it perfect to start as a home DJ and party with your friends.
We connect the USB to a mains adapter (not included in the pack, but any mobile phone works for you), we activate the blueTooth of our mobile and we pair with the DDJ-200. Ready, we already have the most difficult. Now comes the question kit and the biggest flaw that this has DDJ-200 from Pioneer DJ: we need to use the mobile to get the sound of the mixes. To do this we have to connect the mobile to some speakers and that’s it, but if I want to have a preview of what I’m mixing? We connect the included jack separator and we will have two MONO outputs, one for the preview and the other for playback.
In my case, I had a huge problem since my mobile, a Samsung S10+, it has no jack connection, so I was only able to output audio with a USB-C to jack cable. Perhaps including in the new models the separator, both from jack to double jack, and from USB-C to double jack, would be a perfect solution.
Now we will have to install WeDJ, the mobile app and configure any of the music streaming accounts compatible with the DDJ-200: Tidal, Itunes, Soundcloud, but… and Spotify? Well, it turns out that since last summer this music service is not compatible and I could not make it work except by doing a by pass, I mean, downloading the songs from Spotify to a list.
Once with everything ready, it is as simple as loading our songs in WeDJ and start creating.
Installation on PC
Much easier than if we connect it to a mobile. We simply connect the DDJ-200 to the PC through the USB-B and install the application Rekordbox DJ. We have all the professional utilities and direct connection of our DJ controller to the PC. As in mobile, the connection with Spotify has been lost, so we will have to download our list of music to mix if we have this service contracted.
Here we do have the same problem as with mobile, if we want to preview the mix, we have to use the jack separator from our PC or portable to headphones and speakers. If we want to use the DDJ-200 To emit our mixes, the output will be MONO if we want to have a preview, if we don’t care or we are going to use the virtues of the software to help us in the mixes, we use the normal stereo output.
Conclusions
We are in front of a basic DJ controller, perfect to start in the professional world of DJ as long as you know the limitations of its audio outputs. The strengths of the DDJ-200 Pioneer DJs, such as the ability to mix streaming music, are somewhat overshadowed by the loss of compatibility with Spotify, but if you have iTunes, Tidal or derivatives, you can use this function without problem. On the other hand, it earns many integers thanks to the fact that it has a spectacular value for money and for approximately 140 euros, few rivals have on the market.
The big negative point is that it does not have an audio interface included in the equipment and everything must be done by USB or Bluetooth. If it had that built-in interface, we would be facing an exceptional team to start in the world of DJs. Note: 75.
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