Ask A Sound Guy

120GB Pacemaker

Ready for DJing culture to go the way of the iPod? Well, the Pacemaker is going to make it happen.

Pacemaker is a pocket-sized mixer and audio player. There’s a 60GB model coming out this month (happy April Fools!) and a 120GB package already out (visit the store for more). Considering what this thing is, the price is pretty okay. 

You can do everything with this that you can do with a traditional CDJ/turntable/laptop setup: cue tracks, blend them, and creatively mix them. There’s even a line-out for a live PA situation.

The auto-beatmatch feature will hopefully be killer. I’ve seen some software try to do this feature with usually very poor results, so I’d be interested in trying this thing out to see how accurate the auto-beatmatch feature is. Even if it isn’t all that great, the Pacemaker allows you to manually beatmatch like traditional DJ setups.

Other major features (source: Beatportal):

PLAYBACK CONTROL

• Auto-beatmatch 
• Timestretch ± 100% 
• Alter speed and key ± 100% 
• Bend speed 
• Set loop, adjust loop, split loop, re-loop 
• Reverse playback direction 
• Alter key and pitch ± one octave 

CUE CONTROL

• Set and save cue point per track 
• Auto-cue 
• Stuttering DJ pause 
• Vinyl mode pause 
• Headphones crossfader 
  

AUDIO EFFECTS

• Colour FX: Hi-cut/Lo-cut, Wah, Crush 
• Beat FX: Reverb, Echo, Delay, Roll 
• Mute and re-engage audio effects 

EQUALIZER

• Temporary 3-band equalizer per track 
• Master 3-band lineout equalizer 
• Master 3-band headphones equalizer 

VOLUME CONTROL

• Normalize sound 
• Temporary gain level adjust per track 
• Master lineout volume 
• Master headphones volume 
• Lineout crossfader

Compatability

All major audio formats supported including MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, M4A, Ogg Vorbis and SND. It’s also Mac and PC compatible. 

Wow. That’s a lot of features for such a small device. The other major bonus to all this is the online community where you can share your mixes and otherwise interact with other Pacemaker users.

Will this be well recieve with the DJ community? Will you soon see your favorite DJs forgoing the CDJs or even their laptop setups for something like this? I don’t think so, but I don’t see why this couldn’t be a completely viable platform for DJing parties and creating mixes all the same. 

You can also file this under my “toys I want but can’t afford” article. :]

Check out Pacemaker’s website here.