Korg MIDI Controller
I've been a bedroom producer/ DJ for going on 5 years. My tool of choice is Ableton Live, but for a while now I've realized that my DJ skills were being severely limited by the lack of a proper DJing sound-card. I've been using the M-Audio Firewire Solo, which has been a great piece of equipment for me, but lacks the two separate stereo outputs required for cueing DJ mixes. I've played a couple of parties with my setup, but inevitably screw up a few times as I was basically "playing blind" (or rather, deaf) by not being able to listen to my tracks before I played them for the crowd. That needed to change.
I started looking for 424 USB soundcards, and soon realized that their were a couple of sound-cards with built-in MIDI controllers specific to DJing. I've been using an M-Audio Axiom 49 to control things so far, which is another great piece of equipment, but its not exactly tailored to be the ideal DJ setup. Initially I was looking at the Hercules MKII, but was turned off by its cheap build quality and cramped space. Last week i found the Korg MIDI Controllers
Korg MIDI Controllers promised "pro" quality and build. Looking at the box, I was unimpressed. Its got some really uninspired graphic design that makes it look just like a mid-90's 3D graphics card box. Once I got it out of the box though, I completely forgot about that crappy graphic design and got lost in the beauty of shiny all those shiny knobs and buttons. Right inside the box is the carrying case, which has the DJ Console tucked away inside of it, encased in Styrofoam. The case is a nice touch, but I wish it had some pockets for extra cables and such. I found that although the Korg lacks a proper cover to protect the knobs during transport, I could reuse the Styrofoam packing to achieve this purpose. It would've been nice to have the dedicated cover though… but oh well.
The first thing you'll notice when you take this thing out is it's really heavy. The think looks and feels like it was carved out of a single piece of steel. This may be a disadvantage to some weak-armed people out there, but I think its great as it makes you feel like its indestructible and a real pro piece of equipment. I guess Korg really took to heart the complaints about their MKII being cheap and plastic feeling, as they've completely remedied this issue. Compared to the MKII and Behringer, this thing is rock solid. Its slightly larger than my laptop, and fits nicely on the table sitting in front of it. The weight and hard rubber feet give it a really rooted feel so it doesn't feel like it will slide around during heavy use.