Yamaha DJX

What the world needs... another DJX review. With that being said, I found about half of the preset sounds to truly be worthwhile. In my setup I do not forsee myself using very many of the DJXs sounds. I will moreso be using it for some of the "controller" style properties that it has - like GROOVE QUANTIZATION, and some cool Ribbon Controller effects.
They were correct when they said that there were useable styles. Unfortunately alot of these are cliche.
The only redeamable factor is that all, and I meant ALL of this information can be sent out via MIDI. Which is a big plus in my book. I can use my workstation to kick off some of the key maps that are built into the DJX, or even some of the samples that I have placed on it.
The manual is very helpful, or at least it was to me tonight. The DJX does not use standard MIDI mapping, so I used the manual to help me figure out the program changes.
For its own intuitive useability, I rate it a 10. For getting it to "PLAY NICE" with other gear that you are using I give it a 5. No one is going to remember the MIDI mapping for all of its voices, and not all of us rely on Cakewalk or Cubase.

I think people have done an adequate job talking about the technical aspect - let me touch on some other important aspects.
From a feel perspective, it is a very useable board, effects are lousy, no expandability - but it is just so cool. It does have an on board sequencer, but I doubt I will ever use it.
The coolest features lie in the assignable controllers (knob/slider) These will let you change panning on the fly, cuttoff, resonance and many others. My workstation has a foot controller attached, I also map polypressure and aftertouch, the mod wheel and the pitchbend wheel. Now I can use the 2 knobs on the DJX to transmit 2 more controls. That is a good feature in itslef. I do not think that this was intended for professional use, so they skimped a bit.
I think the arpegiator goes 3 steps shy of truly being useful. I use it more with sounds from other modules than with those on the DJX, and then I find myself doing it moreso for rhythm (drums) than anything else.
I haven't tried out the sampler yet, but I never in the past have done a great deal of sampling - and the things that I have sampled have been extremely short phrases.
Some people have complained about the DJX being noisy. I hooked it up through my mixer and monitors tonight and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.

The Yamaha patches are good. I think it has an excellent DX7 sound. Like I said earlier - very few sounds thrilled me. I purchased it mostly for the pre-sets and the samples already on board. Some are just plain cheasy. They say that the sampler is low res. I wish I had checked to see if it allowed for re-sampling of its own sounds without any nasty feedback.

I think it's dependable, but I would never gig without a backup.

I have dealt with Yamaha support on multiple levels. They are usually very good about calling back if you leave a message, or have a question.
I always use a local dealer for repairs.

I like this board, but as you can tell... I rated it slightly lower than alot of other people who use this. I think what I have said has been reasonable. If it were lost or stolen, I can't say that I would replace it. I might consider trying to find a used QY70 or a third PMA-5.
I have been playing for about 5 years, and own A Yamaha QS300 as my primary workstation, more PMA-5s than you can shake a stick at. A shiny red AX-1 to control 1 PMA-5, and A PC200 MK2 to controll the other. Alesis Wedge, Digitech Vocalist Workstation, a couple guitars, Yamaha DD50 digital drums rounds out the list of my frequently used gear.
I like this becasue it transfers everything via MIDI. I returned a BOSS DR-202 becasue it did not.
I wish it had a more effective arpegiator.

This keyboard is a breeze to operate. All the knobs are within easy reach, and the part control and pattern control keys are nicely laid out. The only problem is that changing some functions takes a while digging through menues.

The biggest thing to remeber when you look at this keyboard, is the price. Some of the stuff it does is somewhat limited, and some parts are real "cheap." But for the price, its a great piece of equipment. The DJX has 32 note polyphony, but the drum, bass, and phrase parts will use up some of the 32 notes. The keyboard action is about the same a most keyboards in the $200-$500 price range. It has a built in 6 second sampler that can be backed up by MIDI. (You need to have batteries in to remeber the samples when you unplug the wall adapter.) You can adjust the end point of your samples and set them for looping. If someone writes a program that lets you work with the sample MIDI data on a computer, then the DJX's sampler will be much more useful. It has a single MIDI in and out, but I haven't experimented fully with everything the MIDI is capable of. You can use a sequencer to play all the internal sounds, but many people seem to have setup troubles with this. There is a simple on board sequencer, and the Demo song seems pretty impressive, but I haven't worked with it that much yet. There are also some on board effects, but they are extreamly limited.

It sounds really nice, especially for the price. It can put out a lot of low end, so if you have some subs in your system, you can really get some strong dance beats going. A lot of the voices don't sound like much at first, but with the arpeggaitor and the cutoff and resonance filters, you can make some real phat tones. I like a lot of the bass lines, but a lot of the accompianment phrases arn't very creative, and I usually just turn them off.

Well, I had mine in the back seat of my car, and I locked up my brakes, and the DJX flew forward and hit the back of my seat real hard. It even knocked the Cutoff knob off. But I just popped the knob back on, and the thing still works perfect. It doesn't come with a power adapter, (you have to buy a special Yamaha one seperate.) Since I didn't want to spend anymore money, I decided to try to use one of my adapters from at home. A 12V, 300ma adapter isn't very stable, and the DJX constanly resets every half a minute. Right now I'm using a 12V, 1amp adapter, and I haven'd had any problems, but my adapter gets pretty hot. I think a 12V, 2amp adapter would work better. I'd suggest buying the Yamaha adapter so you don't have to go through any hassle.

Haven't dealt with Yamaha yet.

For the price, this thing is great. Some synths are designed to be programmed and sequenced, and then all you do is hit play and sit back. The DJX is laid out in such a manner that it allows you to perform with it. It seems to have the perfect balance of complexity to allow for live use. Hopefully Yamaha will see that a lot of musicians are digging the DJX, and they'll make a more powerfull DJX2.

I got this primarily as a"toy". It's a home keyboard and priced rightfully so. As a home keyboard, or for just fooloing around, it's quite easy to use. But to dig deeper and change some settings reuire several button pushes. For example, instead of dedicated sliders for the volumes of the voices, it's buried under several functions. Same goes with effects editing. Same goes with sample editing. Plus it's hard to choose the function category.
Overall, as with any other instrument, you only go as deep as you want. For creating instant music, the ease of use is there.

There are a million features !!! Of course, some , like the sampling feature -- six seconds total---and the limited sequencer, are rudimentary, but are well worth the price.
The arpeggiator is almost identical to my CS1x, only more limited.
The ribbon controller is great -- it sends out a lot of different kinds of midi data. Makes this a great controller when you get tired of the toy features.
You have knobs for filter and resonance, although the filter itself is quite lame. Plus you get one assignable knob.
the sampling feature is a great bonus, and sounds quite nice too --- definitely better than the Casios and the old Rolands (MKS?). Plus you can apply effects on the samples and the murder them with the filter and resonance knobs. Looping is possible, although quite limited.
MIDI is certainly adequate, although the patterns are sent out in mumbo-jumbo ways. the drums, for example do not follow the GM standard excatly, so it may take some work uploading your sequences to a better sequencer.

Pads are great (Wave2001). Drums are great. Some sounds are emulations / copies of the factory presets in the CS1x.
THE PRESET PATTERNS ARE GREAT. 100000000000 TIMES BETTER THAN THE ROLAND MC-303. THIS IS THE BAG LADY'S TECHNO MACHINE !!
Basses and lead synths are average.
GM bank sounds lame, although comparable to the sound canvas for SMF playback.

it's a yamaha. they build motorcycles. they know a thing or two about life on the road.
really it's quite light, but it feels very sturdy. can't say the same for the roland pc-200 and ax-1.

If it were lost or stolen, I'll track down the thief, steal it back and stick twelve arrows in his / her abdomen. I really like it as an inspiration generator for electronica. And I find the price i paid cheap for this purpose. A reviewer in Synth Site really dissed this keyboard, but I think he missed the whole point about the DJX. It's not a synth. It's not an all-singing all-dancing workstation. IT IS A TOY. An idea genereator, if you want to put it that way. Even then, I won't be ashamed to use it in a gig or display it in my pro studio. My "pro" set-up consists of a Pentium PC loaded with ACID, Sound Forge, Logic, Cakewalk 7.0 and a bucketload of synth emulators, plus I have a Yamaha CS1x, Emu Proteus FX and a Yamaha QY70. I tend to use the DJX as a stand alone unit (speakers and all). I tried integrating it with my set-up, writing instrument definitions for Cakewalk, but I said, what the heck !! I have enough sounds and loops. The DJX will have to just stick to its job as an idea generator.

The presets sound fantastic (if you're into analog/techno sounds, that is.) And both the sequencer and sampler are fairly intuitive. The non-backlit LCD display is unfortunate however. Prepare to go blind.

32-voice polyphony, 16-voice multitimbral. Six second sampler (low sampling rate, but a very good value for a $300 keyboard). And a six-track sequencer. Amazing. There are also about 16 built-in DSP effects (distortion, disco-eq, telephone-eq, etc...) Fun stuff.

The General MIDI sounds are fairly blah. But the techno presets are deep, bassy and rich. Keyboard output is slightly noisy. Velocity sensitivity could be smoother. The sequencer really works well, and is a genuine surprise for a synth in this price range. I can't wait to see how Roland & Korg respond to this new breed.

Seems sturdily built. I wish it had two dedicated outputs instead of a hybrid headphone/monitor jack. That's probably where the noise is coming from. Actually, it's not the noisy at all, but when you see all the pro features of the DJX, you're expectation for every function shoots up. Believe me, this is the best synth value under $1,000.

Too soon to tell.

BUY THIS KEYBOARD. NOW. DON'T BE FOOLED BY IT'S TASTELESS APPEARANCE.

Whoa, this ones a definite keeper! It takes a while to step into ALL the features but it's worth it. First things first, the Yamaha DJX is as revolutionary today as my PSR-85 was revolutionary 5 years ago. Some comparisons between the two, they're really inexspensive, which for most people is an immediate turn-off. No one wants to suffer the shame of someone stepping in your studio and seeing a keyboard that looks like something a 10-year old would play with. But sleek black keyboards run only skin deep. The DJX has guts! Tweakable guts at that! Turn a knob for cutoff, resonance, bass, groove, plus an arpeggiator. Ohh I think I'm going to cry.

32-note Polyphony, adjustable note velocity, chorus+reverb, and MIDI. And what spectaculor MIDI at that. Every knob fiddle, arpeggio, EVERYTHING is sent through MIDI. I haven't even messed with the on board sequencer yet.

First things first: I nearly wet my pants when I head the drum kits. As for the rest of the sounds, THANK YOU YAMAHA! It's about time somebody woke up and figured out what ERA we were in!!! This board is VERY good for modern music. The GM bank sounds good, but could be better. Nevertheless, the extended bank more than makes up for it. You know how I'm always talking about presence? I'm afraid about hook up a sub-woofer to this thing cause I might bring down the walls to my house and my neighbors!