It seems the whole DJing and production world is looking for the ultimate Ableton hardware controller, and Vestax are the latest to rise to the challenge with their VCM 600 Midi controller.
Ableton is a killer piece of software that allows a DJ to add more production techniques to his sets, but it has a few major drawbacks. For example, it’s impossible to use Ableton to its full potential in a live performance due to the amount of navigating involved between clips. And when glued to a laptop, it’s easy for DJs to look like they’re just checking emails rather than orchestrating the crowd.
This is where hardware controllers come into play, but so far very few take full advantage of Ableton and the ones that do aren’t exactly intuitive for DJs moving over from vinyl or CDs to digital laptop systems.
The Vestax VCM 600 is a dedicated hardware controller for Ableton. The first thing we notice when lifting it out of the box is that it’s heavy — not in the hippy sense, but in the excess baggage charge kind of way. And it looks like the bastard offspring of a DJ mixer that’s had a one-night stand with a studio console after the Vestax labs were shut for the night.
The control surface layout is complex for someone who’s more at home with a DJ mixer, but not intimidating, and it’s really obvious where all the important bits, like the channel faders, EQs and master faders are located, so DJs will be up and mixing in no time once the Midi controller is rigged up.
Appealing Pretty much everything about the VCM 600 will appeal to DJs using Ableton for live performance. It’s a Midi controller with no in-built soundcard so an audio interface is required, but think of it as six-channel mixer with the ability to control more channels via the bank switches.
Each channel has a three-band EQ with kill switches, two sends, a mute, a cue (sort of) and some extra bits for controlling Ableton. The additional controls on each channel start and stop clips, swap between the channel views in Live and also provide resonance and frequency control. It’s important to keep in mind that these controls are only the defaults supplied by Vestax but can be mapped to pretty much anything easily and quickly in Ableton using the Midi learn feature. And the VCM can be used with any other Midi enabled software such as Cubase, a VJ system or even a lighting rig.
Lots of buttons and knobs have been set aside for filters or anything else the warped mind of a DJ might wish to control, while the nearby loop controls are a great size and nicely spaced.
The faders and pots have a good quality feel, while the crossfader is of the light-as-a-feather variety, which can be a bit of a nightmare because it’s easy to accidentally brush it in the wrong direction. A curve adjustment for the crossfader can be set-up however needed.
An interesting quirk is that the VCM 600 is lacking a designated cue button. The solo button, however, doubles as a cue, just like in Ableton, and it’s been placed in a slightly awkward spot, right below the mute button, so there is the potential for mis-triggering while in the heat of the moment.
Amongst the VCM 600’s best features are the tempo control slider and nudging buttons. The tempo control slider is basically the same as a pitch control on decks or CD players and the nudge buttons behave exactly like the nudge feature on CD mixers, making mixing into and out of vinyl and CDs nice and easy, complemented further by a fine tune knob to get your beat mixing tight as you like.
Choosing between clips — what Ableton calls tracks or audio loops — is taken care of quite neatly using a knob located below the pitch fader and the play buttons on each channel. This means less time spent hunched over a laptop and more time with hands in the air or where they need to be — on the control surface and wowing the crowd.
Installation Ableton Live users not using the new version 8 or the latest version of 7 will find the install process a bit fiddly. A whole heap of manual midi mapping and assignment of buttons and faders on the VCM to the corresponding buttons on Live is required before you can start mashing up those beats. But with newer versions of Ableton Live installation is easy, as all of the controls are mapped to the VCM 600 automatically. And it even comes with a simplified version of Live 7 for instantaneous start-up.
Overall, the VCM 600 is pretty damn cool and offers lots of control and performance enhancing features and that’s what makes a set more fun both for the DJ and the party animals on the dancefloor. For instance, the EQ kill switches are cool as fuck and light up when in full kill position — great for those fancy bass blasting EQ tricks that rock the discotheques.
Powered by USB direct from your laptop, the unit is fantastic for ‘on the road’ applications or for showing off on the plane on the way to the gig, but it is a little bit heavier than the average laptop and there’s no way it will fit into any laptop or record bag.
Its all-metal construction is solid and the build quality is so sturdy it feels like it could take a full-on battering, and keep on going. The faders and knobs are mix-friendly and the layout is clean, user-friendly and for the most part intuitive despite a huge number of controls.
In a nutshell, the VMC 600 is a cracking piece of kit, which is in a league of its own at the moment. There’s no other product on the market in its price range that has the same number of features and similarly satisfies the needs of the Ableton DJ.
Vestax are a company full of surprises. Having laid down the blueprint for scratch mixers and dared to take on Technics in the turntable market, the digital age seemed to take them by surprise a little. A handful of bizarre folly DJ products followed as well as a few attempts at CD technology, but there was a period of time where I (and the industry for that matter) felt that the once mighty Vestax corporation had lost its way and would soon shut up shop.
How wrong we were.
Out of nowhere, the industry defining VCI-100 MIDI controller appeared. Taking the established 2 turntables and a mixer format, Vestax effectively squished it down into something the size of a book. It succeeded where others failed in that it was built like a tank and actually felt like using a regular full sized DJ setup – just smaller. Vestax certainly didn’t invent the MIDI controller for DJs, but they did define it and establish the rulebook that others have rigidly stuck to like glue ever since.
The Vestax VCI-100 is supported in just about every piece of DJ software on God’s Earth. But MIDI support is a funny thing, in that developers have to fight with the arcane magic of mapping and trying to get things like platters to work properly within the 3 decade old confines of this ageing protocol. But Serato had other ideas, and set about making the software interface as simple as possible – as near to plug and play as is humanly possible. Thus Serato’s ITCH was born and many a manufacturer has been (and will be) won over by the superior architecture that is hidden from the user, but makes their MIDI DJ life so much better – invisible in fact. Vestax embraced ITCH entirely and have made a VCI variant that works primarily with ITCH, but doesn’t forget other MIDI software either.
Overview
The VCI-300 is a Serato ITCH based 2 deck controller aimed at giving you the very best performance from MIDI, and is essentially the ITCH version of their existing VCI-100 offering. It’s broadly the same format and size, with subtle differences in layout and build. Aside from being designed for ITCH, the biggest difference between the 2 is that the VCI-300 has a built in sound card which means simplified ins and outs handling. With the VCI-300, you only need your laptop and headphones, and then you can plug straight into the sound system.
ITCH runs in Windows and OS X, and is directly supported and developed by Serato themselves, so you can be sure that it just works and will continue to do so. Peace of mind has a high price however – the VCI-300 isn’t cheap but for a gigging DJ, having Serato in the driving seat helps you sleep at night.
First Impressions
Putting aside the obvious comparisons with the VCI-100, the 300 adopts a more rugged styling – rounded rubberised corners and rubber knobs are clearly aimed at tactility and toughness, and is just as heavy in your hand too. The VCI-100 certainly screamed quality, and the VCI-300 goes one step further in making it just that little bit harder to damage with the split but full face plastic faceplate. Sure it’s going to get scratched (especially in the fader area), but I’ve seen some 100s with big dents and scratches in the all metal face. At least the plastic can be replaced if necessary. And this also opens the door to full custom faceplates for those wanting to use other MIDI apps. And using these faceplates means that there are no visible screws either – a huge improvement over the 100.
GRIPE: Fine white lettering on a black shiny faceplate is hard to read in darker conditions.
The controls on such devices are often added as a second rate afterthought and wobble more than a jelly in the spin cycle. But the VCI-300′s controls are anything but that – everything is rigid, especially the knobs which if I’m honest are a little too stiff. But they certainly have NO side to side movement at all, but they will at least stay where you moved them to. This does however mean no accidental moving in what is a small working space. And the ultra low profile hard plastic buttons work with a reassuring click too.
Overall, the VCI-300 feels just as rock solid and superbly honed as the 100, but with all the added polish that an update affords. Quality wise, Vestax still sit atop the MIDI controller mountain.
How It Works
Without retreading old ground by going into the nitty gritty of ITCH (which you can do right here, the VCI-300 is driven by Serato’s ITCH software. Think of it like a DJ operating system that drives the hardware, that is specifically designed to run within the framework laid down by Serato. Via the medium of frighteningly high speed MIDI, Serato and Vestax are able to squeeze amazing performance out of the VCI-300, especially from the platters, which owners of VCI-100s will know that it could be better.
So instead of loading in config files or mapping controls within your favourite software, you install ITCH, plug in the VCI-300 and you’re set. The whole point of ITCH is to take away the complexities of MIDI and keep it very firmly under the hood so that you can plug and play. The KISS principle strikes again.
Layout
Having shown that ITCH’s functions are directly and irrevocably tied to the hardware, we’d better hope that it’s all laid out logically. Obviously, trying to cram maximum functionality into something smaller than an open magazine is no easy task, but thanks to good logistical design, colour coded buttons and some compromises, the VCI-300 is a joy to use. Let’s break this down.
Jog Wheels
Visually and mechanically these are very similar to the VCI-100 – touch sensitive 2 part wheels, that come apart via 3 screws to unveil the technology underneath, but just a tiny bit bigger than the 100. This is slightly different in that the metal part of the platter does directly touch the brass wheel underneath, but connects via a small spring. And just like the VCI-100, the outer plastic edge can be used for pitch bending while scratch mode is still engaged.
There are however 3 really big differences over the 100 that puts the VCI-300 in an all new league of controllerism:
Tension adjustment
The jog wheels sit on bearings that freewheeled unabated on the VCI-100. On the 300 however, this can be adjusted via wheels on the side faces, to spin between 1/2 and 5 spins with a good shove. For me, it’s a balance between free spin for juggling and something a little tighter for scratching.
Sensitivity
Being touch sensitive rather than pressure sensitive, this is all about how much actual flesh is touching the wheel before becoming active. At the back of the VCI-300, there are a pair of recessed pots that adjust each deck from the smallest tiny finger of a touch to something like 3 fingers before coming active.
Response
This is where the VCI-300 owns the 100 entirely. You may recall my VCI-100 vid on Youtube where I showed the “waawaa” phenomenon of releasing the Ahhhh sound but it having a double slur effect. The feel of MIDI controllers in general isn’t exactly vinyl like either. And while a pair of 5″ static jog wheels isn’t ever going to feel like 150g vinyl on a platter with sipmats, the actual response is amazing. Yes there is latency, but it’s such a tiny amount that chirps don’t really suffer once you allow for the ever-so slight delay. Releasing the wheel means instant drag free audio – no waawaa like the VCI-100. In fact, it’s a little too instant, and is very much stop or full start. And no amount of scribbletastic scratching could induce drift.
IDEA: Can we have a little software based vinyl pickup emulation please? It would be nice to have some control over how fast the audio is picked up again rather than instantly.
But having established that the VCI-300′s jog wheels are a step up from other MIDI controllers, you’re still going to have to make compromises if you expect the full compliment of scratch techniques. Vinyl intensive techniques that depend on the nuances of hand and wax movement aren’t really possible. That said, getting the best from the VCI-300 depends entirely on your own skills. Rather than post a half arsed set by yours truly, check out this set to see what can really be done on a VCI-300 scratchwise:
This probably goes without saying, but the jog wheels are multi-functional. You get the clearly obvious scratch mode, but when this isn’t engaged, the jog wheel becomes a pitch bender which that operates at very extremes ranges of bending. And provided the scroll button is engaged, you can scroll through your library as well for very quick track selection.
The wheels are complimented by the play and cue buttons. I know some people complain that they’re sat right under the wheels and could lead to accidental pressing, but where else would you put them? I found no issues with having them there, and it’s just a matter of getting used to them really. That said, I would have preferred the cue buttons under the platters, but there is only so much space to play with. Again, it’s a simple matter of technique adjustment.
Additional playback features include brake speed from instant to what feels like around 2 weeks. Feels like an exercise in showing off ITCH’s superior slowing down algorithm more than being anything useful. And for those doing shows to teens and kids, you can still play NWA tracks thanks to the censor button which gives a momentary reverse that re-engages back in the track when you release it. This feature, via the shift button, makes the audio properly play in reverse. And if you so wish, you can switch between 33 or 45 in the preferences.
Faders
The faders aren’t anything special and I suspect are just the same as those in the VCI-100. The crossfader is a 45mm one and has an easily accessible curve control that gives a pin sharp curve as well as a software reverse switch in the preferences. The 65mm line faders have also gained a curve control which gives an on/off sharp curve as well. The lag on all faders is 2mm – not too shabby for a controller.
The faders is surprisingly nice to use and is easily scratchable right up to crab level. I suspect that the VCI-300 will appeal to Hip Hop DJs because of this, which does have me worried that this pretty insubstantial fader set is likely to fail under the excessive hammer of a scratch DJ. 3rd party options to fit into the shallow VCI chassis are slim on the ground, but I have seen a Pro X fade shoehorned into a VCI-100 so there’s hope yet.
IDEA: Why stop just short of the full fader compliment? How about a software fader reverse setting for the line faders? And if possible a lag adjust as well?
Pitch and Key
I’m just going to come right out and say it – the VCI-300′s pitch implementation is plain odd. Across the 60mm pitch slider you get a whole ±6% range. Totally understandable from a control point of view so that you can still get the same level of sensitivity across this short travel. But that is the only pitch range you get. Instead, Vestax have opted for a pitch shift method – you get 2 buttons with move the 6% pitch range up or down in 6% blocks. When I say 6%, there is a variance of up to 1% on that figure in my experience, but seeing as you have to look at the screen anyway, it doesn’t really matter.
So at any one time, you get a 6% range anywhere between -50/+100%, and at 100% you can even stretch it to 112%. But if you find yourself needing a quick return to 0%, you press both buttons to reset the range, or engage the digital quartz lock for a temporary return to 0% while leaving the selected pitch shift intact.
So about this strange pitch arrangement – it flies in the face of any type of pitch control I’ve ever seen. On pressing the up/down buttons, I expected to find the range switching to say 10%, 16%, 25%, 50% and 100%. But no – instead I got this somewhat limited method that really doesn’t lend itself well to accurate wide pitch shifts at all. I’m sure that for regular mixing within an established BPM range, this method works well and gives you the control you need, but I still felt uncomfortable with it. Not because it’s new, but because I found it too limiting. You could have made it 8% given the huge number of potential Technics users out there who may feel the need to toe-dip the digital scene.
IDEA: Seeing as the pitch is controlled entirely by software anyway, how about making the pitch slider operate in relative (like it is now) and absolute (selectable ranges) modes? Have a software switch that allows you to use the up/down buttons either as pitch shifts or range selectors. I know I’d be happier with the choice, and it would be something that no other product would have (although I stand to be corrected on this).
So having established that the VCI-300′s pitch control is left field in its thinking, Serato have also thrown in key locking as well. Now Serato are very well know for their superior pitch n’ time solution, so would expect that the keylocking in ITCH would be of a high quality – and it is. When slowing down, I was happy with the quality up to about -25% – beyond that you’re into double beats territory. But all the way up to +50 is solid and useable, even if it is annoyingly difficult to do a smooth keylock beyond 6%. Above 50% ITCH seems to apply a proportional key lock, but I doubt anyone would use keylock outside of a small range anyway so it’s not a complaint as such.
Update: Like he good hack that I am , I posed my concerns directly to Serato about this unusual pitch method. Bill Mitsakos from Serato came back with the following explanation:
First of all, why 6% instead of 8. The slider part that Vestax provided is approx 3/4 the length of the technics 1200 slider, which is 8%. This way, moving the vci slider by let’s say 1 cm translates to the same percentage change in pitch as on the 1200.
So why the pitch shift buttons instead of a range selector? The thing that sucks about wide ranges is that they come at the cost of much lower precision. The shift buttons give you a huge range of +100% and -50%, without sacrificing any precision. You raise a good point, that there is no way to do drastic pitch changes quickly. This is something we should look to fix in software (like a shift-pitch function type thing).
An important detail is that the pitch range buttons do not shift by exactly 6%. They shift by exactly 1 semitone ( which is approx 5.9%). This value is compounded so the further away you are from 0%, the greater the percentage change (relative to zero). So while u can’t do drastic tempo changes with the yank of a slider, you can do some very cool harmonic tempo changes (especially if u are using autotempo so that one track follows the other).
I do totally understand the reason, but would be so much happier if Serato could make the more conventional pitch ranges available.
Cues and Loops
The VCI-300 gives you 3 saved cues points (the NS7 has 5). Each of these is colour coded and the relevant buttons light up on the VCI-300 if the cue points have been defined – which is a simple matter of hitting the right button at the right time. Deleting the cues is an equally simple matter of shift-cue and it’s gone.
Because of the lack of jog wheel cue points or vinyl stickers, the hot cues really come into their own if you don’t like watching the screen to spin back to the right point. Obviously, this will lead to accusations of cheating from luddites unwilling to drag themselves into this century, but for the type of DJ who is likely to buy a VCI, this is a real godsend. It’s not cheating, but is just a different way of doing things. The VCI-300 isn’t vinyl, so you have to come up with new ways of making music, and if that means getting creative with cue points then so be it. There’s a new world open to you if you want, and a lot of things that you just can’t do with vinyl.
IDEA: for the next versions of static platter controllers, perhaps an LED ring around the jog wheel that simulates platter spin would be really useful in reducing the reliance on the screen.
Things start to get clever with looping. Assuming that ITCH has accurately analysed the BPM on your music library, you get the VCI-300 to autoloop. One press of a button and you’re looping, and you can reduce or increase the length of the autoloop as well from 8ths right up 16 beats. The clever stuff here is with cues – you can automatically make autoloops from the cue points, and they work in just the same way as other loops. Deleting the loops is a simple shift-loop combo.
The latest v1.1 update also brought loop rolling i.e repeat beats or fractions of beats with a key press and picking up where it should be in the track when you release. It works perfectly, and while you can activeate it from the VCI with shift-autoplay, it still requires reaching across to interfere with the keyboard on your computer, as the roll is only what is defined by the keyboard in ITCH. For me starts to impinge on the key beauty of ITCH which is keyboard free DJing. I trust that future hardware accessories will return functionality to the DJ gear rather than the laptop.
Overall, the cues and loops work really well. The colour coding is extremely useful, as is the turning of cues into loops. I think I was spoiled with the NS7′s 4 cue points, but there has to be space saving compromises somewhere. Perhaps when the inevitable ITCH add-ons arrive, we’ll see access to more cue points.
Ins and Outs
As previously mentioned, the VCI-300 comes complete with a 4 channel 16 bit 44.1KHz sound card. So instead of having to buy, carry and configure a separate lump of hardware, the VCI-300 and ITCH has it all covered. Thus, the VCI-300 gets the usual compliment of inputs and outputs that means you simply plug your VCI-300 into the sound system and you’re spinning – or static jogwheeling as it where.
Looking at inputs first – the VCI-300 isn’t simply left to 2 decks. You do get extra inputs via a microphone and aux ports. Both of these are controlled via software, and clicking the MIC/AUX button bring up their own strips. Each has gain and 3 band EQ controls and importantly can be assigned to faders as well. The real gem is that in the event of a system crash, a THRU switch totally bypasses ITCH and pushes the aux and mic inputs through to the master out. This is ideal for those rare times when everything goes tits up and you quickly need to fire up a premade mix from your iPod.
As I keep saying in every review, sound quality is largely subjective, and in the digital domain is dependent more than ever on the quality of the source audio. The VCI-300 doesn’t disappoint at all, and gives you a very punchy sound via the kill to a software switchable +6 or +12dB EQ. No surprises here really. But being an all in one unit, you can only use the built in sound card for output.
Output wise you get 2 outputs – TRS jacks or RCAs depending on your needs (shame it’s not 2 separate outputs though) and of course has its own gain control. The VCI-300 has a single TRS jack headphone port with a full gain control, as well as a master/cue pan control. No split cue though – that would have been nice. And the master out and headphones get an overdrive control for that extra bit of oomph as well.
Metering the output is a 12 part LED strip that gives you post EQ output levels, but only for the channels – there’s no master out metering. Again, I suspect this is a casualty of the economies of scale. I don’t miss it, but others might.
One last software output is the record feature. This can capture your set to 16 or 24bit AIFF or WAV files. Be warned – to do all all this audio work and record to your HD requires unhindered grunt. Make sure you have a fast machine that is doing nothing but ITCH work.
TIP: Now while the VCI-300 is bus powered, if you use multiple USB devices, or worry that your laptop may need a reboot should something go wrong mid set, buying a power supply would be a very good idea to keep the VCI-300 running in THRU mode.
In Use
Bar a few setup options, all you see on screen is just enough to help you play your tunes, which for me is how it should be. The emphasis with ITCH is to give the focus of your DJ life over to the associated hardware rather than staring at the screen to do the simplest of tasks. The VCI-300 is designed to handle almost everything that you as a digital DJ would want to do without resorting to intrusive trackpad or extra MIDI controller sessions.
See that big round control surrounded by buttons? That’s how you browse and select tracks from crates. ITCH, like every other piece of DJ software worth a jot uses files and crates, and also has full integration with iTunes too. And for Scratch Live users, it shares your existing data and is completely interchangeable – make a change in one, it reflects when you fire up the other.
Initially, you’ll find yourself still in the habit of leaning across to your laptop, but in a matter of minutes, the VCI’s controls are second nature. And this extends to general usage too. While some of us have DJed with conventional setups for decades now, using the VCI-300 is a little bit of a culture shock. Rather than operating within a 4-5ft wide physical space, all of your movement is confined to around 12 inches of focussed DJ space. For mix DJs, this isn’t really an issue, but for the more action packed turntablist, it feel like trying to use your phone on a crowded train. You do however get used to it, and you must be aware that the stage presence when using a VCI is lessened, simply because when you’re concentrating, it’s all focussed on an area the size of a magazine.
The one thing I struggled with at first is having to work with the screen to emulate regular vinyl spinning. Static wheels means having no idea where your music is pulled back to. Spinbacks sound great, but you need to look at the screen to find out exactly where your wheel has stopped. For some, this will be a problem, but if you’re scaling down from full sized turntables to a VCI, then you must be willing to make compromises and sacrifices somewhere. And if you’re wanting real vinyl feel, why don’t you just use something more suited to that type of spinning anyway?
Auto Sync and Tempo
I thought I’d give this particular feature a section of its own, if only to stimulate some sort of debate post review. What we’re talking about here is what some (actually seemingly just hardcore Scratch Live users) think should never EVER appear in a Serato product. Indeed, Serato themselves proudly boast that Scratch Live “is the only digital DJ system that stays true to the art of DJing with no auto sync or effects by design”. Well it does kind of have effects via the Rane TTM57SL, but that’s another issue.
So what is auto sync and tempo? Via the calculated BPM, pressing the AUTO TEMPO button on a particular deck makes the BPMs match so that you can easily adjust the music to beatmatch. ITCH shows you the adjusted pitch on screen and is switched off by pressing auto tempo again. I found this incredibly useful for quick mixing breaks in succession in a kind of 10 classic breaks in a minute style. Numark’s NS7 had this as well.
But the VCI-300 goes a step further and offers the allegedly scene destroying auto sync, where pressing shift-auto tempo makes the beats properly align without the need to touch the jog wheel. Well it attempts to do that depending on when you engage it and just how well defined the audio is. It’s never going to be perfect unless you’re using sparse 4 to the floor dance beats, but it’s pretty good nonetheless. Just make absolutely sure that the BPMs are correct before entrusting your mixing to it. But trust me haters – this won’t kill the scene.
Beyond ITCH
While the VCI-300 is designed from the ground up to work flawlessly with ITCH, for some people the solid but comparatively limited feature set doesn’t match up to the lavish spec sheet of software like Traktor Pro. And it seems that you can use other software with the VCI-300 – Deckadance for example has native support, with all controls ready mapped to the respective function, but its the high speed MIDI features where support begins to fall over. The platters for example offer a challenge to any software, even those that claim to support high res MIDI. Some Traktor config files have turned up but nothing that offers the rock solid performance of the VCI paired with ITCH.
Added functionality offered in other DJ software packages usually means effects. And thankfully I can now report that Serato have got busy and via the soon to be released Vestax VFX-1, the VCI-300 (and other ITCH units) will be able to control effects within ITCH. It’s an optional extra that offers a heap of effects functionality to ITCH. This means a VCI-300 is now modular, offering effects if you want them, rather than having to pay for something you might not want. More on this in a future review sometime after September 2009.
Whitelabel.net
A new feature that has been available to Scratch Live users for a long time is access to Serato’s Whitelabel.net side project. In a nutshell, Serato have struck deals with labels to give owners of Scratch Live and ITCH hardware access to a heap of material. Anyone can download it and listen to low res versions, but when played through Serato based hardware, you get the high quality version. It’s extremely clever and expands your crates without even trying. I’m not saying you’re going to get the top 40 for free, but it’s certainly worth having a dig around to see if there is anything that takes your fancy.
The Inevitable (but wrong) Comparison
Living as I do on the world wide web, I travel around many forums, where a popular question is “NS7 or VCI-300?”. I can only assume that because these are the first ITCH based units on the market, people want to draw some sort of comparisons between them. But in my book, they’re entirely different units aimed at diverse DJing styles. I would liken “VCI vs NS7″ to “laptop vs desktop”. Both run the same operating system in much the same way, but it’s the hardware that is key and how you work with it that counts. It’s the kind of DJ that you are that dictates which one to buy.The graphic above should give you a hint as to why I feel they’re very different.
The VCI-300 is very much geared towards space saving portability, whereas the NS7 aims to reproduce a conventional DJ setup. The VCI can be thrown into a laptop bag, whereas the NS7 needs transporting in a coffin. The VCI is adequate as feeling like real vinyl whereas the NS7 is a scratch and juggle dream. The VCI-300 does miss one hot cue and features like fader start, so there are some features that fall off when you don’t go supersize.
There is however a better comparison to make, and that is the VCI-100 with other DJ software or VCI-300 with ITCH. If you want guaranteed plug and play hassle free rock solid performance with superior jog wheel response for scratching and juggling, but with a core feature set, then the VCI-300 is for you. If however you want something a little more hackable to your style where you can fully configure the controls to whatever you want (including all the extra goodies that DJ software offers) and have a choice of sound card, then get the VCI-100.
Summing Up
I’m not a fan of MIDI controllers as such. They do the job, but don’t entirely match my needs. The related messing with MIDI puts me off completely, as does the jog wheel performance on pretty much every unit on the market. But the Vestax VCI-300 with ITCH eliminates both of these stumbling blocks completely. Installation, analysing and crate making is simple. And when you start to mix, scratch and juggle, you soon realise that this is an incredibly easy but superior setup to use. And while it lacks effects yet (but they are just around the corner), the VCI-300 nails functionality and allows you to work a compact controller like never before.
I think the union of the hardware and software still has just a little way to go – both from what can be done with the current hardware, but also in the additional hardware that will come along. There’s a degree of refinement necessary that a few software fixes will address. But from the simple point of view of rocking a broad set of styles and techniques, the VCI-300 totally nails it.
Ratings
Build Quality
Much better than I expected. Ruggedised case and controls, but the plastic face may scratch, and I have doubts over the longevity of the crossfader in the regular hands of a more scratchy DJ.
Sound Quality
Sounds just fine to me. Can be pushed to distortion if you crank up every control. But if you have to do that, you’re doing it wrong.
Features and Implementation
On the whole, Vestax and Serato have almost perfected the small controller. But things like the 6% pitch method are failures. But these small letdowns can (and should) be fixed in ITCH.
Value For Money
In an arbitrary like for like comparison with similar units, the VCI-300 is overpriced. But what you’re actually paying for is the stellar performance, build and feel that ITCH brings to the VCI-300. This kind of feel and reliability has a price, but if you’re a pro DJ, it’s worth every penny.
Highs:
+ Compact size
+ Build quality
+ Plug and play ease of use
+ Jog wheel performance is second to none (in ITCH anyway)
Lows:
- Bizarre 6% pitch method
- Expensive for a controller
Bottom Line
Vestax and Serato have condensed down the pure basics of what it takes to be a DJ into a laptop bag. And it works perfectly. If portability or space are a key issue for you, get a VCI-300 and be very happy
