As promised, we are going to dive deeper in all kinds of audio players, not only portable, so it is time to review one of newest CD/MP3 DJ players - Pioneer cdj-400. Unmistakably Pioneer, the CDJ-400 is a design hybrid between the lower end CDJ-200 and the 800/1000 top end, bridging the gap into which it fits perfectly. It’s predominantly plastic, with just the odd splash of metal - but that doesn’t mean it feels cheap. Sure, it’s lightweight and the new smaller 135mm/5.25” jog wheel has the same eversoslightly rattling but familiar feel to it, but all the controls have a reassuring smoothness when you use them. Even the pitch control, which is often added as a flimsy afterthought on other units, slides nicely with a gentle but needed centre click.

If you’re an existing Pioneer user, you’ll be right at home, as the Pioneer layout rule book has been read and adhered to. Controls are where you’d expect them to be and the CDJ-400 also has an LCD screen that’s just about the same as the CDJ-800 MK2. More on that later. The play/cue, track and search buttons sit neatly in the same locations as other CDJs and work just as you’d expect them to. CDJ-200 users will have no issues at all adapting to this if they fancy an upgrade and nor will 800 owner who want to embrace USB and MIDI.

If I’m honest, I’m finding the styling isn’t holding up as well as others in the market. In use, it’s a bit of a multi-coloured clashing light show. There also seems to be a sharp edged clunkiness to the CDJ-400 - but largely this is a personal opinion rather than reflecting the abilities of the deck. Function over style any day for me and in use, this functions exactly as I want it to.

FORMATS

The CDJ-400 can read audio CD, CD TEXT, CD-R and CD-RW. This includes data CDs as well as MP3 disc, so it’s pretty versatile. I tested and burned a few CDs and all worked just fine, complete with all CD text and MP3 tags in place. But here’s the thing, unless burned as an audio CD, the only file format you can used is MP3. Purists will of course be writing letters to Pioneer but then again, purists won’t be buying a £450 unit for DJing, so MP3 is just fine. This isn’t the problem that it once was back in the days of lousy encoding. Keep your encoding rate up high and use constant bit rate (CBR) instead of variable bit rate (VBR) and the CDJ-400 will be happy. I say CBR because that’s what the manual recommends, but I used VBR and experienced no issues at all.

The very obvious key feature of the CDJ-400 over the rest of the CDJ family is the ability to read USB media. This is also only USB 1.1 rather than 2 but it should be more than fast enough for the amount data being chucked down the wire. I’ve thrown all manner of USB keys and various Flash cards at the CDJ-400 and they all worked just fine. But at the time of writing (Nov 2007), there is one limitation - you can’t use Mac formats. Right now, the CDJ-400 is limited to FAT16 and FAT32 formats only. No NTFS either, but with hefty licensing fees that’s not a surprise really. Sorry - being a Mac owner, I have no FATwhatever USB drives to test, but having successfully thrown a number of different USB FAT32 formatted media at the CDJ, I have no reason to doubt anything but solid performance from FAT PC external drives.

As for iPods - obviously, the above Mac unfriendly news rules out any Mac managed iPod right now. I know, I checked it for myself. However, my daughter’s PC managed 1G Nano faired better, giving me access to music based purely on ID3 tags rather than playlists. I did find it crapping out with “E-8305″ errors all the time though. This is possible down to an early firmware issue with the CDJ-400 (this unit has a big fat “SAMPLE” sticker on it) which will be no doubt fixed in due course, possibly in the New Year.