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Thread: Denon MC2000 rotary encoder life

  1. #1

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    Default Denon MC2000 rotary encoder life

    Since I'm fairly new to digital DJing (I've played out in a club using Ableton about 5 times.. immense fun but treating 'real' music to beatgrid quantisation is kinda cruel IMHO). I decided to hedge my bets & opted to buy a 2nd hand controller so I wouldn't have to use the laptop keyboard anymore. I hate gaps & really enjoy using manual controls. I played around using an Android tablet with TouchOSC for a while but although I had every control I needed on there & it was very responsive & usable it simply wasn't TACTILE.

    I managed to pick up a Denon MC2000 controller/soundcard for the princely sum of £100 (silly seller had the auction end at 5pm on a Monday). I figured if anything was wrong with it, it'd likely be a dodgy fader or 2 & would be a relative doddle to put right. No, in fact nothing was wrong with it at all other than a slight paint chip on the left hand jog wheel (why does *every* good quality controller with enough rotary controls seem to have these? Gah).

    Until that is, last weekend when I was playing out at a gig. The playlist navigation encoder (select) went intermittent briefly & then totally packed up. I carried on without it, going back to the keyboard & mouse for navigating around my music tree - then during the food interval I went into Mixxx's controller definition & changed the mapping so that the encoder normally used for 'beat jump' on Deck 1 was the playlist selection control. Whee, back in business.

    Back home the next day I decided to investigate. Oh boy, taking these things to bits is a job & a half! How many screws? I lost count! I've taken loads of pictures & am going to blog about the process when I'm done fixing the thing - it's quite involved. For that read, I think it's very well made. The PCB is only single sided (loads of wire links on the top side) & it's SRBP though :-O. Pffft, penny pinching Denon!

    Anyhoo... it seems all the pots, switches & encoders are made by Alps - not a shabby make I'm sure you'll agree. So surely an encoder wouldn't suffer mechanical failure so early in its life. Maybe it was already unreliable when it was sold, or maybe it had a knock in my DJing bag (I'm building a flightcase for it & my laptop now I know I'm sticking with Djing). The spec sheet for the encoder says it's good for 15,000 cycles. The encoder I'm replacing it with is the same size, pin compatible but has a longer life expectancy and was a fiver delivered from Amazon. The labour involved in changing it is going to amount to a good couple of hours though. Damnit.

    BTW I can't fault the MC2000 generally. The sound quality is brilliant (the USB chip onboard serves as audio & MIDI interface and uses external DACs).. the controls all feel solid - and no worries about the life of the jogwheel encoders because... They're all optical (done with 2 slot encoders per jog wheel - turning the jogwheels breaks beams of IR light) so there's only the bearings can wear out. If only the mic channel had A) EQs (hell even just a LF cut would suffice) and B) an actual ON/OFF switch it'd be perfect & would completely do away with the need of an external mixer. Oh wait.. and balanced outs. Why do so many 'pro' audio devices lack XLRs? (no need to tell me.. profit!).

    All the reviews I've read about the unit say the unit is 'for beginners'. Well I for one don't need more than four hotcues per track, nor more than 4 samplers.. And for a predominantly wedding DJ, two faders will likely be enough for the majority of the time. I'm certainly no 'beginner' either. I considered a Numark Mixtrack effort for a while until I realised the master fader is inbetween the 2 deck faders. WTH were they thinking?! Don't they know *anything*?

    Ultimately I can see myself going for a combined mixer & controller with all the bells & whistles I need, but for that I need to have clocked up a good few more miles on the DJ odometer.

    Anybody else had problems with rotary encoder life on Denons or anything else?

  2. #2
    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
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    Default

    Excellent post there Justin. Thank you. From the limited and unhappy experience I had with mine, I share your views about build quality. ( Although I didn't start taking mine to bits ) The big problem for me was that it didn't like my old laptop, and kept refusing to talk to it.

    My impression of it is that it's high grade, well built kit, with the bits removed which would allow it to be classed as professional, rather than hobby, eg mic EQ, balanced out, XLR socket for mic.

    Since it wouldn't work reliably with my laptop ( which had previously run every other controller thrown at it ) I got the machine I initially wanted, American Audio VMS 2. XLR mic input, basic but effective EQ on the mic, balanced out, and also booth out. For what I want, it's almost perfect.

    Almost?

    The one feature on the Denon which led me to persevere with it for longer than I should have was the third input, which allowed me to use my tablet as auxiliary/emergency playout. It had a rotary gain control at the back, which I used to set at a sensible level, and it would always be a live input for the tablet. Technically, the VMS has four inputs, because each channel is switchable between midi and hardware. I can still input the tablet into the machine, but at the expense of a midi input, which offers the possibility of having a switch in the wrong position when I try to play something. The only negative I have with this machine.
    Excalibur. Older than the average DJ.

    www.excaliburmobiledisco.co.uk

  3. #3

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    Ah yes. The VMS2 was actually my first choice but I couldn't find any at reasonable prices & I couldn't justify buying one new just yet.

    I've always liked Denon gear, well apart from the DN2000F mk3 (dunno if it was a dud batch the group I worked for had or what) - I tired of its unreliability.... Their controls are well laid out & I'd never had any issues with switches or pots on Denon stuff. Til now.

    Anyway I came to work early today & replaced the dodgy encoder. It took me a little under an hour & I didn't even have any bits left over. Everything works again. Result!

    I'll set about blogging the teardown & repair later today I expect.

    Knowing the guts of the mc2000 as I do I'm almost tempted to mod it to give it those features it lacks. There's plenty of space next to the audio board :-D

  4. #4

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    As promised, here's my blog about how I fixed the beastie

    http://www.justinhornsby.co.uk/?p=33

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