Reloop Digital Jockey 2 So far so bad. Build quality +Support Problems,come to a head
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Reloop Digital Jockey 2 So far so bad. Build quality +Support Problems,come to a head Posted on: 28.06.2010 by Kacy Wehrmeyer Reloop - Why not to buy a Digital Jockey 2 from themI checked out a few controllers and decided the Reloop Digital Jockey 2 seemed really good. I liked the feel of it, so I bought one That | |
| Kristofer Krauel 19.08.2010 | hey. You two have just totally restored my faith in the RDJ2!!! Thanks!!! I'm going to get one ordered, use Flash101's mapping and see how it goes. After using CDJ's for the past 7 years i believe having the touch sensitive jogs is essential. Listen guys you've been a great help so i really appreciate it!!! I'll let you know when i'm up and running. Cheers Jon |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 19.08.2010 | cool no probs It took me a while to understand (still not 100% ) the touch sensitive jog sends a midi message when you touch it like as if you pressed a button. so say you have it set to scratch for finding a cue point or something, holding the wheel holds the track. releasing, the track plays I've not used the controller edition. i only understand it in theory. with out touch sensitivity (ie registers something when you touch the wheel) on the controller edition you would have to 'turn' the wheel for it to realise you were doing something 'on' the wheel. i have a gut feeling that the touch sensitivity is important for "feel" if you are cueing tracks etc. not just scratching. its an extra |
| Corrin Penney 19.08.2010 | Personally I'd miss the touch sensetive jogs. I have them mapped to the effects. It feels much more engaging using the jogs to do something creative than mearly pitchbending. check the mapping out here: http://www.djranking s.com/community /showthread.php?t=15903 But you could pitchbend without the touch senseivity, yes. If you do go and get one, make sure you read the instructions and follow the tutorials on their site. Update the firmware, download the mappings, try them out, get comfortable with the RDJ. Hopefully you'll get a good one and wont have any of the issues described in this thread. |
| Kristofer Krauel 19.08.2010 | Hey man Nice one for the reply. I'm really into this controller and i believe i'm just gonna stick with my gut feeling and order one. I just believe it looks like the coolest thing out there at the minute and has everything i want in a controller. i have one more question about the jogs if you dont mind?.... does the lack of touch sensitivity on the controller edition mean that you cant use the jog wheels to pitch bend (speed up/slow down) your track? like i say i'm not a scratch DJ nut i do like the physical aspect of speeding up and slowing down with the jog wheels. Thanks again for your advice man!! Jon |
| Corrin Penney 19.08.2010 | I'd rate the Digital Jockey over the Numark mixtrack or the Vestax typhoon any day. Vestax probably has the best build quality followed by the reloop. I believe the quality of numark stuff is cheap, the faders have a nasty feel to them. It feels like a toy. The reloop has by far and away the best features and layout. I believe if you wanted to go a bit further with a controller and really got into the whole djing thing you'd outgrow the other 2 rather quickly. The touch sensetive jogs on the reloop are a nice feature, theyre good for a bit of fun scratching, but I never used it for that. Scratching on a controller is pants. I remapped them for my own purposes. But the built in soundcard is decent too. I bought an audio 4 recently and its not |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 19.08.2010 | Hi I still believe bang for buck the reloop controller is good,, feels good , looks good. I have returned mine to decks.co.uk today because of the fault. they said they hadn't had many returns. Make sure you feel all the controllers you are considering. you'll get a better idea straight away. RDJ2 controller and interface edition differences are touch sensitive jogs. Ie you don't have to turn the jog to make something happen. like stop a record. then turn. rather than turn to stop obviously built in audio interface. it had a tone control for the headphones. a mic and line input with volumes and a deck ground. and a cross fade curve adjustment. but i thought it was rubbish built in audio, and had a odd volume curve on the headphones when the were too loud or off on the 1st 2mm of turn. cross fade curve knob on front. its just a traktor mapping, so it can be mapped to another feature. and adjust the cross fade curve in the software. the PSU was crappy but i don't use it you can use the controller and audio without Power supply an adaptor wasn't included, sapphires (decks.co.uk) included one that screws on tightly. but i wouldn't trust the weedy wire in a live environment. I don't know how it compares to other controllers psu? I'm still into the controller. even though reloop 'suck donkey balls' also the buttons make quite a loud click when you press them. |
| Kristofer Krauel 19.08.2010 | Hey I've joined this thread a bit late but i'm really glad i found it when i did. I'm in the process of buying my first DJ midi controller and thought i'd found the perfect bit of kit in the Digital Jockey interface edition (i very nearly ordered one this afternoon). I've been looking at 3 controllers... Numark mixtrack, Reloop Digital Jockey or the Vestax typhoon and i was convinced the Digital Jockey was THE ONE!! My question is this... forgetting the problems with Rellops community s and support would you still recommend this controller for light house party use? also would you suggest i get the controller edition and a separate audio interface? and finally (sorry about babbling) what is missing with the lack of touch sensitive jog wheels on the controller edition? Thanks for all your posts on this, you may have just saved me from making a big mistake!!! Jon |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 19.08.2010 | hey Flash 101 i didn't realise you comment on my Reloop sucks thread. I'm posting my vid of the faulty play button on this thread too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iby4FRrvAHU |
| Corrin Penney 31.07.2010 | you need to update the firmware on the controller, thats all. I dont know why they dont ship with the latest firmware, but thats life. I had the same issues and this sorted it right out. also, if you still have the controller, check out my new mapping: http://www.djranking s.com/community /sho...ghlight=reloop fader FX mode FTW! On a slightly different note, i bought an audio 4 the other day to use with timecodes and my reloop. The sound might be very marginally better, marginally. But its giving me more problems than my reloop ever did. |
| Korey Ehman 30.07.2010 | Im just gonna send it back and get a Xone DX now. I was planning on using it out e.g other djs plugging lap tops in.. cant go through this ball ache every time. |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 30.07.2010 | On a personal note the build quality and feel of the controller is really good and its a good compact size with even button and knob spacing for a very cheap price ZERO support but once your up and running with a map you like. I've not found a good one.(I'm making some edits on one and I'll post it.) with the map sorted you'll probably stick with the same map and be laughing. the built in audio was rubbish odd gain structure -headphone too loud even on volume 0.01 poor performance audio so i got an audio 2 Dj still cheaper that vestax - less buttons - fingerprint magnet - good support |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 30.07.2010 | Yeah I had a battle with understanding the reloop DJ2 without any support from reloop they banned me from the community for being a bit honest important Traktor mapping has a cr*ppy little window lord knows why REMOVE the previous mapping with DELETE before adding a new one or it will combine mappings. when you load a map it defaults to the keyboard map (in the view window) save the keyboard map and delete it , so that if you try maps it always shows the MIDI one when your on the page in the options window then load the keyboard map in later --- The shift button on the controller PHISICALLY changes midi control numbers (hard coded on the RDJ2) the others are just traktor modifiers (created in the software) [ |
| Korey Ehman 30.07.2010 | Cheers for the advice.. it was the majority of buttons to be fair.. e.g pressing down the mid or high eq buttons on the left (mapped as kill switches) for some reason either of those activated both upon pressing one! Where as the other side worked correctly. The jog wheel buttons (scratch, search etc) take 2 or more presses sometimes to activate and even then dont always light up. And yes had the same thing with the cue buttons. |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 30.07.2010 | Hi Yeah Reloop suck. And their community can't be trusted, because they edit everything. With the mapping it has odd mapping for the play pause cue. Where the lights stay on after they have been pressed. They are set to inverse. If you mean those buttons, press all of them at the start and then see if they still behave oddly. Or alternatively edit the output of the mapping for each button and set out to normal. Sorry this is brief, I'm typing it from my mobile. The controller is great, I feel like I made the right choice. but reloop suck. Any probs, post back |
| Korey Ehman 30.07.2010 | I ordered the controller edition of the reloop digital jockey 2 which turned up today. I am using a Macbook and Traktor Pro. Read the manual it said to plug it in and it will automatically install. Plugged in, nothing. Had to go on their site and find the driver. So thats problem no 1. So now its plugged in and working, ive got the latest tsi file set up also from their site.. The buttons are now very intermittent.. sometimes they work, other times takes a few presses. Others work but dont light up to show activated. By this point ive really just given up, cant be bothered with this crap. Its a shame because its a nicely built controller, but i could never trust this thing live. Its going back on Monday. |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 02.07.2010 |
Originally Posted by pepehouse
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| Brandon Krugger 02.07.2010 | Just remembered Traktor Freaks page and found a pair of mappings for both versions of the Reloop, try them, the mappings at the page are usually good: Digital Jockey 2 Controller Edition Digital Jockey 2 Interface Edition |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 30.06.2010 | I agree with a lot of what you guys are saying. i tried a few controllers and I really liked the feel of the Reloop controller. The different versions "RDJ2 Interface Edition and Controller Edition" On the controller edition there are no touch sensitive faders as well as no audio card built in. I felt really uneasy with the quality (well buzzing) of the audio card. And the thin wire on the power supply, Euro plug didn't come with an adaptor And Reloop answers to support are never normally a whole sentence As for "what the buttons do" marked on the controller, I assumed everyone made slight changes to the controller mappings to suit their style. and as with this community their are monthly mapping updates with videos. The 4 deck mapping on the Reloop site. have no real relevance to the labeling on the controller. Features like key and pan and filter have been removed to add the 3rd and 4th deck. and shift makes the fx jump round too many at a time. I had to beg the information out of them (not in the 5 page manual) about: the PHYISICAL shift keys -that change the MIDI control numbers and the modifier shift keys for scratch FX search (set up in traktor) in the end the only community user with more than 50 posts (there is like one non-reloop guy who answers post) helped me out. Eventually i found a MIDI implementation chart that was supplied by a USER not Reloop. They still havent bothered to create a MIDI implementation chart. The 4 deck mapping i downloaded on their site had odd multiple entries. I makes me doubt whether it has been created in the same sloppy way as everything else they do. I like the feel of the controller. And i didn't realise how important a tiny bit of support would be. by that i mean, wait a week .... get a 5 word answer. discontent is edited out of their community . If they made the same effort as they do 'community editing' to supply information like a picture of the controller mapping, a store to buy a spare power supply. I sensible (non 5 page manual) with a more in depth explanation of the controller. it would have made the whole thing go down smoothly. I like the controller, but sometime its the little things that ruin the experience. Being a controllerist or Virtual DJ is a learning curve. Reloop make this curve unnecessarily steeper. by ignoring customers Reloop have made exploring and learning about the controller a chore rather than a labour of love. And have hampered by learning at every step with their poor support. I don't know how it compares to other companies |
| Corrin Penney 30.06.2010 |
Originally Posted by pepehouse
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| Brandon Krugger 30.06.2010 | You are right about all the trouble you post here and Reloop being a "shitty" company but you all have made a big mistake: I like the controller, it's not bad for the price and looks better than all the toys in the same range but you just can't expect to get a quality soundcard+a quality controller for the price of the interface edition, whatever they advertise. The obvious right movement is to buy the controller edition and a decent soundcard separately, cheap is never good, is the same as buying Beringher and then complain about the pitfalls of their products, "you get what you pay for" is maybe my favourite English sentence. |
| Omar Nila 29.06.2010 | very true vci was more expensive at dj warehouse in sydney and i did not now about this website i wish i had known |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 29.06.2010 |
Originally Posted by skulpture
Yeah i know what your saying I really like the feel of the controller. if i dont use the buzzy interface or the weedy power supply. But you must admit the manual is poor. No information how the controller really works. or a MIDI implementation chart I'm not sure how this compares to other controllers. But that would be ok if the support community had really good discussions or replies from reloop that aren't like the one below: Myself and few other people asked if there was going to be a picture or an explanation about the different mappings for Traktor. their reply which is typical
Originally Posted by Reloop support
after a short while people stop posting on their community because even reloop dont encourage the debate. also they removed about 36 of my posts and edited everything from the other posts when I expressed dissatisfaction with the product or the support. It makes me question the validity of the whole Reloop Forum. If thats the way they moderate. For all i know there has been a sea of discontent that has been 'moderated' Although they left the sticky post about the guy not bothering with the facebook group. i asked why he was closing the facebook group they deleted my post and locked the topic
I could be closing this group (amongst others i contribute along with advertising reloop on my websites, radio shows and podcasts)
As i feel issues with customer support and products need addressing, I bought my unit to save on space and time as it was advertised as a full 4 deck control unit, this appears to not be possible yet, and having questions answered by certain "guru's" on here telling users how they should DJ and also how "No dj uses 4 decks fully with fx etc" is just wrong. I have dj'd on a pro level for over 30 years and have more credits to my various performing / studio work names than i care to mention, i find this an insult to my intelligence, and i am seriously considering returning my unit to the dealer and going for another company and product that CAN do what they Advertise. Its a sad day, i love reloop products but I, WE, want just what you claim the products can do, nothing more, nothing less. Please feel free to private message me and i will supply you with my contact info so we could address this sensibly. Thank you they locked the topic so he wouldn't discuss this with me |
| Kandra Fagler 29.06.2010 | for a not very diff price you could get the vci100 se tho right? |
| Mirian Gaura 29.06.2010 | This is such a shame. Just to balance the argument out a little.... I have the controller edition so obviously the audio stuff I can not comment on. However I quite like my controller. It worked straight out of the box on my Mac. I don't need the power supply as the USB powers it itself but I do agree that the cable is poor quality. Forums are dead but they are a new company are they not? [honestly don't know] My advise - get the controller but get a separate audio sound card. Thats my 2 cents anyway. |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 29.06.2010 | hey thanks for the reply Yeah I know what your saying about it being for traktor, but i thought I'd try a few other programs first. There's definitely something sus about the audio card on the RDJ2 they told me i couldn't use the audiocard without the power supply? I just assumed that was the case. I like the controller and I know what your saying about keeping the vibe alive. if you do want to post RDJ2 tips on this community please do.... after all I'm banned from the Reloop Forum ..... I'm off to go and sit on the naughty chair |
| Corrin Penney 30.06.2010 | I too own a reloop digital jockey 2 interface edition, and i must say Ive had a few problems. But nothing thats turned me off it. in response to OP, you dont need a power supply to keep the thing going, even when sending audio out. I used mine breifly with the PSU and it made not one bit of difference. Also, why did you choose to use virtual DJ? I understand that people have their preferences, but this controller is specifically labelled as traktor ready. I also understand any midi controller should be cross compatible with any dj software but did you not check out the community s before hand to see if there was any VD mappings? This of course does not excuse the audio problems you had in VD. Which I have not experienced with traktor. I get no buzzing, but I do get the odd pop and crackle, which is irritating & obvious enough that I probably wouldnt gig with it, and I seem to be one of the lucky ones. As you rightly state, reloop support SUCKS. Luckily I have not dealt with them, and I dont believe I'll bother. If it needs fixing, I'll do it myself. Ive also had a couple of sticky buttons. Its gone from the loop button to the play button on deck A now. I find if I give them a good jab they work ok and eventually fix themselves . . . . which is odd. The mappings reloop supply, while basic, are adequate enough to control the majority of traktor. Reloop also supply video tutorials for the mappings in traktor pro directly from their site, which will give any noob a good overview on how it all works. But having said that, the mappings are un-intuitive and clunky. I managed to get round to totally remapping the controller (based on the one from reloop) to include some of the fader FX functions from the VCI and automating some of the tedious multiple button presses into single button process's. The whole mapping from reloop is a bit of a mess and many modifiers are wasted, leaving no mods to play with if you want to add your own stuff. You literally need to remap the entire jogwheel modifier functionality. Which is a complete mind bender. I want to post it up on these community s, but I simply havent had the time or inclination to fully document it. Maybe this'll give me the incentive to do so, because the reloop community is dead in the water & needs support from someone. Its a damn shame that reloop cant/wont support their product, there is no excuse for how they treated you. I believe theyre probably in too deep and as with many companies (AKAI, F**K YOU!) *cough* dont have the resources or knowledge to fix the problems they create. |
| Kandra Fagler 29.06.2010 | i had a friend who was gonna buy a pair of cdj900s but wanted to save sum cash and bought some "high end" (really?) reloop cdjs instead , labelled "the pioneer killer" , 24 hours after buying them he ended up selling the reloop cdjs on the local community
s and nobody wanted to buy them. he ended up selling them 2 weeks later really cheap coz nobody had any interest in them poor guy |
| Amos Gmeiner 29.06.2010 | I have the exact same experiences as the topic starter, except that I've owned a Digital Jockey 2 Controller Edition. You know what? That thing is even worse! It's unusable on Macs, it can't even light op two or more LED's at the same time. It always just lights up just one of the LED's randomly. This is with every program, with every single Mac. And the stupid thing is that in Windows (Boot Camped for example) there's not a problem at all. So I placed an inquiry on the Reloop community after getting an exchange from my shop (which were very helpful and friendly) with the same problems, and got not a single answer. Up until the point where I threatened them to post this information everywhere I could believe of. I suddenly got mails back, but none of them really helped me, and I was already a month away in getting totally frustrated by the device. So what I did was return it, and I've bought a second hand black VCI-100, bought the SE kit here on DJTT, and an Audio 2 DJ, and I couldn't have been happier! |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 29.06.2010 | I just had a look at the Reloop Forum using through a proxy server. they have edited whole sentences out of my posts basically anything less than perfect in my text. I didn't swear or anything bad. Just stuff like "I am beginning to loose faith in Reloop Technical support" that kind of stuff If you read there community , you'd believe i was a fanboy rather than an unhappy customer. I might send them a copy of the book 1984
i didnt even read the manuel i thought it was just some advertising at first glance
I thought the manual was a bit thin, then realised it was in loads of languages!! its terrible |
| Omar Nila 29.06.2010 | i didnt even read the manuel i thought it was just some advertising at first glance i love the shift button ive made numerous mappings trying to find the one that works for my 4 deck 2 deck 4 deck with a foot pedal as a modifier changing the fx section for selection and doing fx on my midi keyboard trying to find one that i can work with comfortable :P wish i had the cash for an analogue setup seems so much simpler its "actually" plug and play sort of :P no mapping errors etc atleast |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 29.06.2010 | I'm still trying out a few mappings I'm probably going to build my own mapping based on either the reloop one or the Native Instruments one. I'm concerned about the quality of the Reloop one, after i found multiple entries for the jog wheel?? i took a print screen, but I'm on another computer. Even though the NI is less appropriate, i feel it may be a better starting point. I'll probably find out the Reloop one is shoddy about half way through changing it. I've downloaded some of the 4 deck mapping from the Reloop community , but they've banned me now, so i can't see if there are any new ones at a later date. I believe once I've mapped the controller, I'll probably stick with the mapping. I'm deciding how I want to use the controller. The reloop controller can be confusing because the shift buttons physically change the MIDI CC numbers it sends out (rather than traktor using modifiers to do it). Which makes it easier than configuring Traktor at this stage of my learning. But can get confusing because the Traktor mapping in the options page of Traktor is a pokey window. Of course none of this is covered in the Reloop 5 page manual |
| Omar Nila 29.06.2010 | very true im believeing of picking up an audio 4 and then seeing how the reloop goes i'de rather sell it before it starts having sed problems ive have some knobs miss fire here and there which im not to happy about. Out of interest are you using a custom mapping or the default? |
| Kacy Wehrmeyer 29.06.2010 | I feel I've got round some of the problems by buying a separate audio card. It means I have audio without the buzz and I can run it all on USB rather than the weedy power supply. The worst thing is that the company don't really have to be like this. I really like the feel of the controller. If they had: a really chunky manual (with a MIDI chart) some very good mapping downloads with explanations. or a lively community you'd probably excuse the lack of support. But they don't have any of this. i don't really know how this compares to other controller companies. i really like the feel of the Reloop Digital Jockey 2, but the stress of having squeeze tiny bits of information from the company is totally annoying. I'm hoping the controller is sturdy, a few people have said after a while the buttons start miss firing. I believe that would be the "final piece of the biscuit" as they say. |
| Omar Nila 28.06.2010 | i have the same problem soon ive decided im gunna sell it on ebay for 400-500 au and buy a vci and an audio 2 just for the customer support and the helpful community. The reloop is good but maybe just for home/bedroom use. |
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