MY REVIEW:
Imagine your 60GB or 120GB iPod. Wouldn’t it be great if it could mix tracks together as well? Well that’s exactly what the Tonium Pacemaker is, a pocket-sized DJ Mixer! In this Tonium Pacemaker Review, I will let you know all about this exciting gadget, what’s good about it, what’s not so good about it and whether or not it’s the right choice for you.The Tonium Pacemaker is great for being on the move and wanting to play or practice on the bus, plane, trains and those boring long car journeys. The simple fact that this little device squeezes so much in the way of performance and functionality into a space no bigger than a handheld game device is incredible.
The touch pad and buttons on the Tonium Pacemaker respond at lightning speed which will make your latest top brand touch screen phone seem slow. The portable DJ Mixer even comes with Tonium’s very own software for Mac or PC which will let you refine mixes created on the Pacemaker and save them or share them to the community.
You would think that this hand held, 4 Channel DJ System would consume a lot of power and not last very long with the amount of features it has. However, the Tonium Pacemaker can last up to 5 hours of mixing tracks and an astonishing 18 hours of playback only. It also only takes 2 hours to fully charge using the AC adapter included in the box or , if you use the mini-USB connection, it can last a full- take 4 hours.
Loading a tune to each “deck” I decided to dive in and try and get to grips with it. First of all by default the Pacemaker is set to CD Style cueing, which if you don’t know is when it stutters the cue point, and you can adjust it back or forth. I personally found this very difficult to work with, though for some reason the compulsive in me was determined to get to grips with it.
After a modicum of success I soon found that you can change the cue setting to “vinyl” mode which is much better in my opinion. This is much like CDJs Vinyl mode, and unsurprisingly more like vinyl itself where you manually wind the tune on until you find your desired cue point. Press cue to set it, and you are away. Once I had this sorted the fun really began.
It really is impressive the amount of control that you have in such a small device. To put it in perspective, this little gem has more features than my more expensive, much bigger dedicated iDJ2 console. Naturally though what you get in features, you lose in work area. The Pacemaker for example comes fully loaded with EQs, gain control, hot looping (with loop splitter) and EFX. The EFX themselves are pretty impressive. Choose from Hi/Lo Cut, echo, roll, reverb, crush, delay, trans and wah. See, that’s an impressive list by any ones standards.
The control surface is similar to that of an iPod jog wheel, cleverly divided into north south east and west. This means you tap from the center out to one of those four points to access the EFX or EQs, and then roll your finger round the side to adjust the amount. Tapping twice in the centre then doing the same allows you to adjust other parameters for that effect, such as roll amount etc.
This clever use of space is really what gives the Pacemaker the edge. It would have been easy to cram in the basic pitch controls and mixer interface and leave it there, but they really have made the extra effort in making it as close to a pro DJ console as possible.
The ‘decks’ are accessed by a select button on either side, and once pressed, anything you do (apart from cross fade) will affect this channel only. This keeps things tidy, but the only downfall is that you have to be very careful to remember which side you are working on, else it can go horribly wrong!
The bundled software is slick and easy to use. Great for organizing your DJ library too to make it easier to find tracks once they are on the Pacemaker with it’s not too large screen. You can also record mixes with the Pacemaker cleverly through the use of Meta data, which can then be transferred to the software, and exported as an audio file all very efficiently. You can also edit the mix on the software to tighten up that wonky mid set mix.
Easily the best DJ gadget on the market right now and if I am honest for the foreseeable future too. The new 60gb version is £299.99 most places, and while that may seem a lot, once you feel the quality, and have a go, it’ll soon seem like a bargain.
Thoroughly recommended.
Awesome, however maybe you could ask them why they have completely abandoned such a promising product and couldn't find funding for something with such universal appeal.
ReplyDeleteTonium is now simply let's mix and has abandoned all support for their famous Pacemaker, the great product which put them in the limelight in the first place.
I dodged a bullet due to holding back on buying one but sincerely wish like thousands of other potential customers that they would show support again so we could justify spending our hard earned money on their great product.