Pioneer DJ DJM-A9 mixer (Just released)

As a fully self confessed gadget geek, I’m a sucker when new equipment gets released and have to drop everything to go and investigate. I haven’t managed to get my hands on the new Pioneer DJM-A9 mixer, but like most of you I’ve been looking online at reviews on Youtube etc and thought we can have a chat about it and share our views.

This mixer is a pretty big deal as its predecessor the DJM 900 Nexus become pretty much the industry standard around the world, and this DJM-A9 will probably be the same, so has big boots to fill.

First impressions, they seemed to have bought over many features from the pro V10 mixer, importantly improving the sound quality that was a bug bare with many users of the 900. The faders are apparently from the V10 mixer too, along with EQ on both headphones and booth which is a nice touch. They’re addressing B2B DJ’s with twin Cue for headphones, but also comes in very useful for DJ’s changing over, especially if they are setting up a laptop for example, they can test levers without bugging the DJ playing before.

I’ve never use or been a fan of the fancy pretty fx’s, they all look similar as before (added a few more) which makes sense to roll them over, but understand why they are there to appeal to the masses, so I didn’t really dig deeper into this as they lack any control or quality for me.

One thing I really dislike is that the iPad app that you connect to the mixer (via Wifi) for sound technicians, lighting jocks etc that can display the tracks playing on the CDJ’s, to me thats a read line for many DJ’s like me that spend hours hunting for tracks, have exclusive promos etc that become our unique sound, its our trade secrets just for someone to put the track listing online and probably record the whole set. I hope eventually someone comes along with a hack to disconnect this as its the first thing that I will do. From my experience touring a weak point has always been LAN hubs linking CDJ’s together often clubs buy cheap ones not realising the importance of them that results in problems, I can’t understand why Pioneer haven’t got an integrated LAN hub built in to eliminate this problem? I also would have loved to see a four band EQ, most DJ’s today are also producers and understand the importance of EQ, unlike in the 70/80’s when DJ mixers where born and that had three band EQ as most DJ’s didn’t produce music, things have moved on and evolved, a four band EQ should be standard by now.

At a £500 price hike (in the UK) I feel those additions should be there rather than spend on gimmick FX and toys, but none of these improvements come for free I guess.

P.S. I love all equipment like Denon etc too before asked.