Brief Feature Overview:
1) Built in Effects
2) Customizable cross fader (feel and curve)
3) Touch LCD
4) Foot switch connection
5) Pioneer CDJ exclusive options

Images for Reference:
Overview
Front
Back

Getting to know the 909:
At first glance it is easy to become overwhelmed by what is going on with this mixer. The touch LCD screen constantly screams to be touched and played with when first using the 909. Once you get accustomed to the LCD display it becomes your information hub and part of your lifeline. Tap the BPM and this is where its displayed, or it can be set to auto-calculate (which is wrong a lot of the time, as per usual with BPM counters). You also get the quick and dirty view of the current effects you have "hot keyed" and the ranges they effect (hi, med, low). Getting straight to work on the 909 is no problem, but learning to use the effects properly takes extra time and practice.

Faders:
Channel Faders - Sadly, these are your basic line faders. The good thing is that these can be upgraded to higher end faders if you chose to do so. There is nothing special in the channel fader department and nothing out of the ordinary.

Cross Fader - The DJM-909 cross fader is a contactless, optical fader that includes fully customizable fader adjustments and feeling adjustment. The included Allen driver can make the cross fader so light it feels like nothing in your hands stiffer, depending on your preference. Scratching is no problem on this cross fader and its definitely built to last.

Sound Quality:
The DJM-909 has exceptional sound quality as long as it is used correctly. There is no sound distortion until you start to hit the +3 dB level, and even at this point it's minimal and unnoticeable to untrained ears. Either way, keeping the levels around 0dB to +3dB keeps you safe from unwanted distortion, however that number seems low when the mixer has a printed maximum of +14dB on it.

Cross Fader Adjust:
The DJM-909 gives you full control of your cross fader via rotary dials on the front of the mixer. Don't know how the fader is going to react when you start adjusting the cross fader? Just hit the fader curve button on the mixer and view the cross fader curve in a visual, easily understood format.

Foot Switch (optional):
The 909 is the first mixer (as far as I know) that allows the use of a foot pedal. You are limited to simple 2 state pedals as the foot pedal is used to switch effects on and off. Personally I have not used the foot pedal feature, but it is something I would like to explore in the future. It can eliminate having to trigger the effects on and off by hand and leave them to other actions.

CDJ specific options:
The DJM-909 comes equipped with features that smoothly integrate the 909 with Pioneer CDJ's. Since I don't have a pair of Pioneer CDJ's I am unable to test the functionality of these options myself, but they are there to allow control of some options to be shifted to the CDJ's themselves instead of being handled on the mixer itself.

Touch LCD:
This is where the 909 is really set apart from other mixers. The product review before this point can, for the most part, be applied to the DJM-707 as well. The DJM-909 is set apart from its counterpart by the included touch LCD and built in bank of 50 effects.

LCD Response - The LCD screen responds to even the softest of touches and operation is all around fluid. The LCD's display includes the tracks BPM and whether that BPM value has been calculated or manually tapped using the tap pads. It also contains an area displaying a bank of 3 effects per channel, and sets of 3 banks can be switched through quickly by pressing the bank buttons to the right and left of the LCD screen. Each channel has 3 effects banks consisting of 3 effects each, giving you 9 quickly accessible effects per channel within a max of 2 button pushes.

Effects - The effects are best used in an effect specific view accessed by first selecting the effect you want to use from the bank of effects and then pressing the "FX ADJ" button on either side of the LCD screen. This presents you with the associated options for the effect, allowing you to manually edit the effect or select from a menu of precreated options. On this screen you can also adjust which levels the effect will act upon.

Effect Listing:
1) Delay
2) Echo
3) Pan Echo
4) Pitch Echo
5) Reverse Delay
6) Ducking Echo
7) Roll
8) Hold Echo
9) Milti Tap Delay
10) Rain
11) Reverb1
12) Reverb2
13) Reverb3
14) Pitch Shifter1
15) Pitch Shifter2
16) Pan
17) Trans
18) Rhythm Trans
19) Trans Pan
20) Tremolo
21) Vibrato
22) Chorus1
23) Chorus2
24) Chorus3
25) Flanger1
26) Flanger2
27) Phaser1
28) Phaser2
29) Touch Phaser1
30) Touch Phaser2
31) Filter (LPF)
32) Filter (HPF)
33) Filter (BPF)
34) Filter Pan
35) Compressor
36) Fader Roll
37) Fader Multi Tap
38) Fader Trans Pan
39) Fader Pitch Shifter
40) Fader Ring
41) Fader Vocoder1
42) Fader Vocoder2
43) Fader Filter (LPF)
44) Fader Filter (HPF)
45) Fader Filter (BPF)
46) Fader Flanger
47) Fader Phaser
48) Fader Synthe1
49) Fader Synthe2
50) Fader Synthe3

Note on effects:
Any effect preceded with "Fader" is controllable via the channel fader that effect is being applied to. This allows for tight control of your effects and added depth and customization to your actions. Effects cannot be stacked on the DJM-909.

Overall:
Overall the Pioneer DJM-909 provides a solid foundation as a scratch mixer while allowing you to explore the depth of other features it includes. The built in effects, while mostly basic and unstackable, provide you with a wide range of effects options to play with and a tight, polished control system to utilize them under. The 909 is definitely a unique piece of equipment to use and opens the door to a lot of creative freedom without the need for an external effects unit. The 909 still provides external effects unit capabilities for those who eventually outgrow the effects included on the DJM-909.

Pros: Built in effects, polished interface allows for lightning fast navigation to anywhere you need to go. Completely customizable optical cross fader with adjustable feel. Integrates well with Pioneer's line of CDJ's.

Cons: Effects cannot be stacked. Sound distortion above certain levels, this requires careful attention to your levels to maintain a clear sound.

Ease of Use: 5
Sound Quality: 3
Fader Quality: 5
Price: 4
Overall: 5
(Above ratings out of 5)

This semester looks to be pretty light on the difficulty and work load, except for Software Development. Relaxing semester ahead hopefully.

More Music
No surprise, really, is it? As of the last post I made I received my DJ QBert Super Seal battle wax in the mail. From that I jumped back into my love of the Japanese hip-hop scene and the equivalent, but largely underground, funky hip-hop scene here in the states. Made a sizable hip-hop CD purchase from Amazon, heres the list of what I'll be getting in over the next 4-6 days:
Enter - DJ Kentaro
Finding Forever - Common
The Cool - Lupe Fiasco
Foot in the Door - Oddisee
Modal Soul - Nujabes
Donuts - J Dilla
Plug Label - Kero One & Various
Gagle - 3-Peat
I Do What I Do - Kev Brown
Sacrifice - Substantial

I wasn't aware of how MANY shipping facilities Amazon had, so all of my CDs are shipping from separate warehouses except for a single shipment that was lucky enough to have two CDs in it. The UPS guy will be getting to know my house well this week. Once I get all of these in and have a good listen to them all I am going to start posting entries of my thoughts and overviews of each artist and the CD's style. All the CDs above will fall into this as well as the CDs from my previous post. I'm still waiting on my copy of Shinichi Osawa and Fantastic Plastic Machine CDs, and since the were shipped from another country I don't know when they will arrive exactly. The anticipation will make it even better when they finally arrive at the door! If you aren't aware of any of the artists I have mentioned or listed in the post then look them up on MySpace and check out their music. I'm fairly certain that each of the artists I've listed has a good MySpace presence.

Fantastic Plastic Machine is Tomotuki Tanaka's solo experimental music project. Many of FPM's tracks follow the line of hip-hop / nu-jazz that has recently been cropping up around Tokyo in the years after 2000. The song I've picked to feature is one of his many great remixes. The remix of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is a high energy House track that throws in catchy rhythms and slight vocals from the original song and puts them all together into something that so closely resembles, but is also worlds apart from the original song. Tanaka's original work explodes with funky rhythms, hip-hop, and nu-jazz elements. For those outside of Japan the easiest piece of FPM's work to access is his "Live From Tokyo" album, available exclusively through ITunes.

Most people I have introduced to artists such as Fantastic Plastic Machine point out the jazzy elements within the music and enjoy the blending of classical instruments and orchestral performances with dance bass lines. For those new to the idea of Nu-Jazz as a genre, Nu-Jazz is Jazz for the electronic genre and mixes in easily with hip-hop and house music alike. Domestically, there are only a few artists that are recognized in the realm of the Nu-Jazz genre. The lesser known, but more prominent Nu-Jazz artists is Fat Jon. The more well known is DJ Jazzy Jeff, who rose to fame with Will Smith as part of the DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince duo from the late eighties. Some of DJ Jazzy Jeff's tracks have obvious Nu-Jazz influences and sounds. So go ahead, give Fantastic Plastic Machine and the Nu-Jazz genre a listen. If you like it, branch out into more artists and I'll be sure to cover some more in upcoming Discover_Music posts.

Project Jenny Project Jan consists, obviously, of two members. Ironically neither are Jenny or Jan, but they are Jeremy Haines (vocals) and Sammy Rubin (Music Programmer). Its hard to put the duo's unique style into words. It follows along the lines of house in the sense that tracks are driven by vocals and lyrics, but the music itself doesn't always quite fit into the house genre. The rhyme styles of Jeremy Haines alternate between lyrical and freestyle hip-hop vibes. Their sound is definitely unique and you would be hard pressed to find anything similar to their musical style. Looking for something fresh, different, and strangely addicting? Then give this masked duo from Brooklyn a listen.

• Complete portal redesign
  1. Twitter status fetch (portal)
  2. Latest flickr photo fetch (portal)
  3. Latest vlog entry fetch (portal)
• Addition of a Text Blog
• New theme for the Video Blog

If you experience any problems with any of the new features or changes I have made, comment or E-Mail me and let me know.

From now on, this text blog will serve as my outlet for all the things I am forced to leave out of my video blog.]]> Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:02:24 -0700 http://virb.com/unholyknight/posts/text/250942 http://virb.com/unholyknight/posts/text/250941

Good old Nintendo, the original. ]]> Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:02:23 -0700 http://virb.com/unholyknight/posts/text/250941 http://virb.com/unholyknight/posts/text/250940 I've decided on a weekly piece I can do for my text blog to keep it interesting. I opened this with lots of ideas in mind, but none of them manifested into anything. Recently I've been pitching musicians and genres to my friends so I will use these posts as a platform to show everyone the music thats coming out of my speakers.

The first artists of the week, The Pinker Tones, reign from Barcelona, Spain.

Genre: Lounge
Status: Indie
Featured Track: L'HEROS remix
Official URL: http://thepinkertones.com
MySpace URL: http://www.myspace.com/thepinkertones

What is so great about L'HEROS remix? L'HEROS starts unconventionally, leading the listener into a simple breakbeat and bass line. The vocals hit and this lounge track catches you immediately. The funky guitar riff, the bass line, the organ, and the simple yet versatile break make for a great listening experience. Laid out on paper this combination of instruments would lead you to believe that this song was anything but lounge. The originality displayed by The Pinker Tones in this remix makes you wonder where lounge tracks like this have been hiding and when the style will spread into the rest of the lounge world.

L'HEROS remix is currently available for listen on The Pinker Tones MySpace. Head on over there to check it out! May I also suggest listening to TMCR Grand Finale, for a more conventional lounge track.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 showed me that the RPG world can still be rocked by the smaller companies and original franchises to compete with larger franchises such as Final Fantasy. While I consider the Final Fantasy games to be very solid in story, gameplay, and interest, they don't give me the impression of style. I am a big Final Fantasy fan, but with the mainstream games, Square Enix sticks with their system of doing things and that both works well for them and is familiar to the Final Fantasy veteran. In steps Persona 3. From the second you load the DVD into your Playstation 2 until the second you decide to quit playing for the night, Persona 3 bleeds its originality and style. Even the first menu screen you see as well as all of those within the game are carefully crafted to reflect the feel of the game.

So I am ranting on about the style of the game, and if you haven't payed Persona 3 you probably won't understand it until you actually witness or play the game in person. The art team spent a lot of time on developing the world and characters in Persona 3 and one of the lead artists actually commented on how they first created the main character of the game and built the entire rest of the game's art and characters in order to compliment the main character. You play... yourself (well the main character has no default name, so you're expected to use your name), a high school student who just transferred to a new school at the beginning of your Junior year. I don't want to spoil too much of the plot, but one thing leads to another within the first few days of your arrival and you end up on the roof watching one of your dorm mates attempt to shoot herself in the head while a giant shadow monster is approaching you. She is reluctant to pull the trigger and the shadow monster knocks the gun out of her hands, so what do you do? You pick up the gun and shoot yourself in the head of course!

That's right! Did I fail to mention that the characters strengths rely on inner dwelling powers known as "Persona", which can only be released when the user shoots them self in the head with a special pistol called an Evoker. Well thats just fantastic. Shadow monsters roaming around during some time called the "Dark Hour", mysterious things happening within the community and your school, and to top it off high school kids shooting themselves in the head in order to defeat the monsters.

All of this is tied together into a game with original art, story, and gameplay. The gameplay works in a similar fashion to Harvest Moon. If you are familiar with the Harvest Moon franchise then you know that your goal is to bring a farm back to life, usually within one year, but you can also venture into town to pick up goods, learn about the residents, create social ties, and develop relationships. In Persona 3 the main character attends school on a daily basis, except for Sundays, and while in school is able to make friends, increase his knowledge, raise his social status, join one of several clubs, hit on girls, or make after school plans with classmates. These bonds you create with other students help strengthen your own inner power and persona abilities. You are given one year (April 2009 - April 2010) to play the game. You get to go through every day, spending as you so choose, making all of the decisions on your own and not stuck to a static line of events. Taking a couple days off from fighting is encouraged when your friends become sick or tired from battle and need time to recuperate. When you're done with the daily school and club activities and any other errands or things your have planned then you can get down to the fighting RPG side of things and explore the strange tower which only appears during the "Dark Hour" every night. This fighting portion of the game is in essence the game's main purpose and objective, but with all of the other game elements mixed in you have a constant variety in what you can do.

If you're interested in an RPG / life sim hybrid that allows you to control what, when, and how you act throughout the game then give Persona 3 a try. As an added bonus, every copy comes with an art book and a copy of the soundtrack. Remember all of the style I was talking about earlier? The soundtrack is amazing in itself, really sealing the deal on the entire game with fresh music that is rarely seen in RPGs, let alone any games. Have a look for yourself and watch the intro to Persona 3 below.

If you happen to have one do you also have an unlimited data plan? Then you can use your BlackBerry Pearl as a gateway to the internet on your Mac or PC laptop!

For Mac (G4 or Intel Based) - fibble.org
For PC - mobilewirelessnews.com

Two Important Shortcuts

Holding down the * key locks the keypad. Then pushing * and the green call button simultaneously unlock the keypad.

Holding down the # key allows you to quickly swap between your regular mode and vibrate mode, eliminating the need to waste time opening your sound settings through the menu.

Misc. Utilities of Choice

GoogleTalk for Blackberry - Official client for use with the BlackBerry line of phones. It uses your EDGE network access, not SMS, like some of the AOL IM clients available for the BlackBerry.

Opera Mini - The BlackBerry browser is functional on its own, but Opera Mini is a step up. It supports a wider range of browsing options, a better layout, and a fantastic hotkey system for quickly accessing your bookmarks and features. On top of all that it has a network optimization tool that allows for the fastest net browsing possible. In personal tests I have seen better response times in Opera Mini than in the default BlackBerry Browser.

TwitterBerry - Are you as much of a twitter addict as I am? Couple this with your BlackBerry addiction and its poisonous. I recently upgraded my version of TwitterBerry to the latest available and it is finally worth using. The old version was unbearably slow at fetching timelines and posting updates. The newest version is very responsive and I've taken to using it again.

Ramble IM - A free AIM client which uses the RIM network instead of using your SMS version of AIM. If you have unlimited data this keeps from using your text pool to send and receive AIM messages. If you have unlimited texts already then Ramble IM is just a little quicker at sending and delivering messages to your contacts. I no longer use this App since I now use GoogleTalk on my phone as my primary messenger, but this got the job done.

Well Junior year started and I'm taking 5 classes this semester:
-Art Appreciation
-Linear Algebra
-Tech Writing II
-Operating Systems
-Systems Programming

Operating Systems is going to be fun, especially since it is ACTUALLY a graduate level course. It just happens to be one of the few graduate courses that undergrads are allowed to take along side the grads. The professor seems cool though, hell all of my professors this year are awesome so far. This semester is going to be a good one!

Where did facebook go wrong? Everyone knows what happened. They opened membership up to EVERYONE. No longer is a valid college e-mail required to join, Facebook is now an open, global community like MySpace. Many were opposed to this change by the Facebook staff and created groups and demonstrations against it. I saw no harm in opening it up to the public. Facebook was so much better than MySpace. MySpace is riddled with dupe accounts, bots, spammers, and terrible looking profiles that make anyone with any sense of web design cringe. Ever try to use MySpace classifieds? I agree, its a piece of shit. No matter what category I look in its flooded with tons of porn advertisements from the army of porn bots that reside in the MySpace databases.

It couldn't be that bad could it? Facebook does you a favor by keeping you conform to a strict profile. Maintaining this form is what Facebook represents, the quick retrieval of useful information about the person in question. By letting the world into the realm of Facebook they were doing everyone who was tired of the MySpace mayhem a favor. No more profiles full of music, glitter backgrounds, gifs piled onto gifs, and tens of youtube videos playing at once. Now that everyone had jumped onto Facebook (many transfers from MySpace, no doubt), the Facebook team had to feel pressured to introduce more features that appealed to the ex-MySpace users. More segments were added to the Facebook profile. Now add-ons exist to show your favorite games, interactive add-ons such as the zombie add-on, and a gift giving system.

Okay, profiles are starting to become garbled with information that is irrelevant to me as a college user. I still just want my basic contact information and class information. I don't like wading through the extra "features" Facebook ingeniously added to its interface. Profiles are still uniform at the very least and I can still find the information I need to find a lot quicker than I could ever find on MySpace.With all of those small things happening I let it slide.

Last week I started getting friend requests from people I didn't know. So what do I do? I check out their profile of course! Am I in class with this person? A fellow podcaster? Who could this be? A camwhore bot. Fantastic! I never thought I would see the day. When I think of MySpace I think of logging into my account, greeted with the daily heap of spam friend requests and messages. Its more of a chore than anything, and by the time I get done cleaning them up I forgot what I wanted to do on MySpace.

Facebook just became another chore on the social site list. As such I will no longer use the site as much as I did in the past since I don't want to go through and clear all of my spam before getting to the information I want. I can only hope that Facebook steps up their efforts to curb spam within the Facebook community or it may turn into nothing more than a second MySpace.

So I am ranting on about the style of the game, and if you haven't payed Persona 3 you probably won't understand it until you actually witness or play the game in person. The art team spent a lot of time on developing the world and characters in Persona 3 and one of the lead artists actually commented on how they first created the main character of the game and built the entire rest of the game's art and characters in order to compliment the main character. You play... yourself (well the main character has no default name, so you're expected to use your name), a high school student who just transferred to a new school at the beginning of your Junior year. I don't want to spoil too much of the plot, but one thing leads to another within the first few days of your arrival and you end up on the roof watching one of your dorm mates attempt to shoot herself in the head while a giant shadow monster is approaching you. She is reluctant to pull the trigger and the shadow monster knocks the gun out of her hands, so what do you do? You pick up the gun and shoot yourself in the head of course!

That's right! Did I fail to mention that the characters strengths rely on inner dwelling powers known as "Persona", which can only be released when the user shoots them self in the head with a special pistol called an Evoker. Well thats just fantastic. Shadow monsters roaming around during some time called the "Dark Hour", mysterious things happening within the community and your school, and to top it off high school kids shooting themselves in the head in order to defeat the monsters.

All of this is tied together into a game with original art, story, and gameplay. The gameplay works in a similar fashion to Harvest Moon. If you are familiar with the Harvest Moon franchise then you know that your goal is to bring a farm back to life, usually within one year, but you can also venture into town to pick up goods, learn about the residents, create social ties, and develop relationships. In Persona 3 the main character attends school on a daily basis, except for Sundays, and while in school is able to make friends, increase his knowledge, raise his social status, join one of several clubs, hit on girls, or make after school plans with classmates. These bonds you create with other students help strengthen your own inner power and persona abilities. You are given one year (April 2009 - April 2010) to play the game. You get to go through every day, spending as you so choose, making all of the decisions on your own and not stuck to a static line of events. Taking a couple days off from fighting is encouraged when your friends become sick or tired from battle and need time to recuperate. When you're done with the daily school and club activities and any other errands or things your have planned then you can get down to the fighting RPG side of things and explore the strange tower which only appears during the "Dark Hour" every night. This fighting portion of the game is in essence the game's main purpose and objective, but with all of the other game elements mixed in you have a constant variety in what you can do.

If you're interested in an RPG / life sim hybrid that allows you to control what, when, and how you act throughout the game then give Persona 3 a try. As an added bonus, every copy comes with an art book and a copy of the soundtrack. Remember all of the style I was talking about earlier? The soundtrack is amazing in itself, really sealing the deal on the entire game with fresh music that is rarely seen in RPGs, let alone any games. Have a look for yourself and watch the intro to Persona 3 below.