Pacemaker Portable DJ System

... you better believe it! This device is a little bigger than an iPhone but slightly smaller [and much lighter] than a PSP, yet it packs the equivalent of twin DJ decks, a full DJ mixer with multiple effects and enough storage for any DJ's complete music collection. Actually, it's even better than that because it is just as easy to use but, because it is all integrated into one device, it has features that a normal DJ set-up cannot match.Features - The 120Gb internal hard-drive can hold tens of thousands of songs and the device supports multiple file formats. To play them, you get twin media players with the ability to cross-fade from one to the other, just like any DJ set-up. Each side has it's own high, mid and low range EQ as well as access to a handful of handy effects like hi/low cut filters, delay/echo and reverb. Pacemaker features auto cueing and auto beat-matching as well, although it is so easy to do that manually that most people won't bother with it, I imagine. It has both line out and headphone jacks at one end, along with the power socket, and a mini USB connection to your PC at the other. It comes with an editor application for your Mac or PC, which is needed to load/manage music on the device. It will also allow you to update the on-board software and firmware as updates become available on-line. The on-board software allows you to pitch-bend, re-time, re-pitch and beat-match songs. You can record your mixes and transfer them to your computer. You can also set-up mixes on the computer and send them to the Pacemaker to play out later.Ease of Use - I checked it out on-line and was impressed, but a little worried about how hard it might be to use in a live situation. I needn't have worried, it literally took me two minutes to get up and running with the basics and just a day or so to learn the device inside and out. Even though all the controls have multiple functions, they are grouped very logically and I think it would be almost impossible to accidentally do the wrong thing when working with it. The touch-pad works really well and the gestures required to operate different features are easy to learn and reproduce.Sound Quality - This was another area where I thought something so compact might fall down but it sounds great. Played through my hi-fi system it sounds every bit as good as my CD player. I've loaded 320kb/s MP3s onto it and they sound good enough to use live through a PA system. But if you're worried, you can always load uncompressed .wav files or lossless FLAC encoded songs.Construction - the device itself seems very well made. All the buttons seem very solid and both the touch-pads and display appear to be high quality components. The input and outputs jacks are well protected by the strap mount-points and the rubberised feel of the exterior surface gives it an expensive feel and also stops it from slipping on smooth surfaces.Overall - the Pacemaker is every bit as good as it looks and then some. As I mentioned above, it does some things better than a traditional DJ set-up. Namely, it warns you if you are about to play both decks through the line-out at once [when you forget to push the cross-fader all the way across] and the EQ and gain adjustments for each deck reset themselves after each song - brilliant!!! When I bought this, I thought it might be OK for some things but I had no expectations of it replacing a proper DJ set-up. But after only a few days it was obvious to me that I would never bother with any other set-up again. I should point out that I'm not a dance DJ, I mainly do retro/80s stuff, so I don't use a lot of the features of the device live, but I have played around with all of them. I can't recommend the Pacemaker highly enough, it is my new favourite gadget.