Taken from my reviews on the Serato forums... This is a short review.... I have had this unit for a total of 4 hours now. You can find more detailed reviews over at djworx and a video review by djbooth.net But here is my review and broken down simply. And this is coming from a DJ that loves Technics and use Turntables as my primary set up. I wont switch to controllers unless a situation forces me to. Like space, or equipment transportation issues....... Or I am playing at a house party where I am in close proximity to flying drinks and objects. I use CDJs, High End and Low End Controllers so it can give you a perspective at the things I look for. Weight: Much lighter then my Stanton 150s and a little less then Technics 1200s. The sides are made from a hard plastic that saves on weight, compared to the Stanton 150 which seem like metal wrapped with kevlar and covered with hard rubber. To give you a ball park idea of the weight difference.... Go to your local gym and pick up a 45lb plate..... Thats the Stanton 150. Now pick up a 25lb Plate, the Reloops are about that much, if not a little less. Midi: Works like a charm with Scratch Live 2.5..... Has to be midi mapped to SDJ 1.6 but I am sure Serato is working on an update in the near future.... :-) When using with Scratch Live the Midi buttons light up. With SDJ 1.6 they dont light up. Feel: Feels like a technics turntable... All the way down to the pitch slider and start and stop buttons.... Remember there are TWO start and stop buttons and one of them may become an Opps button where you accidentally strike it and stop the record. This happened to me a few times when I transitioned from Technics to the Stanton 150s.... Response: This thing has Torque...... A lot of power. With technics, if you start the platter and place your hand on it, it doesnt take much weight to stop the platter from spinning. With the torque setting at max, it becomes pretty difficult to accidentally stop this thing from spinning. You have to pretty much consciously make the decision you want to stop the platter from spinning..... Tonearm: No issues, no knocking or loose ends. Overall: Freaking great! Great build quality! Great feel! Exactly what I have been looking for! Cons: It seems that some of the first USA units that came off the shelf did not coming with right angled power cables. A quick email to Reloop USA and a set are on its way.... But me I cant wait so I ended up melting the power cable that came with it and forced it to angle down. Works fine!!! Other then that everything that came with the turntable was well packaged and cared Melted the straight power cord that came with it to angle it downward. Reloop USA is sending me some right angled ones now. And here as another live gig review for anyone that wonders how these perform in real life. Field Testing Reports as follows: Each Reloop RP 8000 was transported in its own individual Flight Case. The Flight Cases were the Odysessy Black Label Flight Cases that used to house my Technics 1210 M5Gs..... 1) The Reloops may actually be a few millimeters larger then the Technics 1210/1200.... I am summarizing this from the extra snug fit that the Reloops gave when putting them into the flight cases. Now this can simply be that the Cases were just formed to the shape and foot print of the Technics. It was a good feeling snuggly fit whereas my Technics kinda just plop in there. 2) Leave everything plugged in. Even though RCA, USB, and Power Cables are removable, it really increased set up time fumbling around with the wires. Miss the permanently attached RCA and Power Cable of my Technics. Remember to make your (Left) or Channel 1 Turntable as the master USB hub and daisy it to you (Right) or Channel 2 Turntable as this is what the Reloops Powerup to by default. You can customize it but its an extra unnecessary step if your just using 2 turntables. 3) The extra torque is incredibly accurate and gives you that extra room of forgiveness it seems when you let go of the record and accidentally hold too much friction. 4) I had the club booth monitor turned up pretty much all the way and aimed directly at my turntables to see if the light weight material would cause vibration and loss of tracking..... Nothing happened out of the ordinary. It took quite a bit of directed bass in order for it to start showing interference. 5) I swapped out different Cartridges throughout the night. Shure 44-7s, Ortofon S120 and Ortofon Q-berts..... They all performed well with the unit. The Ugly: The RCAs that came with the units seemed to fit pretty loosely with my Rane 62. A quick swap with the RCAs that came with my Stanton 150s seemed to have done the trick. If your RCAs are loose, the good thing about disconnect-able RCAs is that you can always swap out. SDJ 1.6 doesnt natively support the midi functions of the Reloops so the midi buttons wont light up making it pretty difficult to see which cue button you are hitting in the dark. They are STILL mappable however. Im sure its only a matter of time before an update is put out to fix this..... Overall the units performed flawlessly IMO during my 4 hour gig. I remained superbly sober the entire night to ensure that I didnt miss a thing.... and sure enough I didnt miss the real ugly.... but it didnt come from the Reloops.... It came from SDJ 1.6 In my Soberness I noticed..... Holy hell SDJ 1.6 audio for some reason sounds like crap.... And it really hit me when I was listening through my booth monitor..... WTF is this what my customers been hearing all this time???? Also.... Why am I have stupid USB dropouts.... I have the most powerfully configured MacBook Pro 13inch Retina that you can get from the Apple Store right now and I experienced Drop Outs with even a lose in latency randomly..... Comon.... 16gb of Ram, 1tb SSD and the haswell processor...
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 13:20:00 +0000
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