Pacemaker Pocket DJ

By Roque Santos, HAWT San Francisco


What You Need to Know

-It's basically an MP3 player with a 120 gig hard drive that has two channels
-You can cross fade between each channel using the line out, and you can cue up each channel with headphones
-This allows you to match beats on both channels and mix
-The Pacemaker editor helps you figure out how many beats per minute each track is
-You drop all your music into the software and it calculates your bpms; the software takes way too long to do this, and it's not the most accurate
-Once you know how fast or slow the songs are, you can do all your mixing from the software
-Visually, it's really easy to match beats by dragging the bpm line up or down to speed up or slow down
-Add effects like filters, loops, and cross-fades
-The software supports all of the functions the Pacemaker itself has, so you can save mixes on the device or upload them to the Pacemaker site
-Select a channel, double tap the touch pad, and call up a song on each
-Each button has a million different functions depending on if you're holding up the pacemaker switch on the side
-Match the bpms, cue the track in your headphones, and play it according to the other channel's beat
-If you want to do effects, you have to know the combination of touching on the pad; it's the same with lots of other functions, and this is where it becomes not a beginner device

Price

-$950
-It's not quite available in the states, but we'd like to see the touch pad turn into a touch screen, more buttons and the price drop to about $600

info provided by www.pacemaker.net and www.g4tv.com