famous faults

preface

An introduction for prospective buyers, users and manufacturers of mixers with "famous faults".

First of all you shouldn't worry to much, if you want to buy, already own or manufacture a mixer that appears in the famous fault section. If a mixer would be absolutely useless rubbish, it wouldn't appear in this section, because nobody cares for the faults of rubbish. Mixers in the famous faults section have been found just worthy enough to obtain a fault correction. Either they feature unique fittings that aren't available with other mixers (e.g. the effects section of the Pioneer DJM-500). Or the faults are easy avoidable and could be put right at minimal costs, while their presence kills the professional potential of the whole mixer (e.g. the PFL section of the Pioneer Mixers and - just new in 2001 - of the Denon DN-X800).

economical background

During a presentation of the (at that time) new Pioneer DJM-600 in 2000, the German Pioneer product manager was asked, why Pioneer missed the chance to include proper electronics for all the push-buttons while developing the DJM-600. He respond that "some DJ's can cope with that and some don't." The way this "response" was given shouldn't be judged here, we're all just humans and we all might have a bad day sometimes.

Put in appropriate words, this point is unfortunately absolutely obvious from the manufacturer's point of view: If there are enough buyers for a product, there is no economical reason for a change. Mass production companies earn their money by selling to a large number of consumers and not to the small(?) group of ambitious and experienced DJ's, that the site mischpult.de has in mind.

Here we would normally leave the world of mixer design, now it would all be just about the economical rules of mass production. But because the "famous faults" are so tiny, their correction should at least be cheap enough to be done during major revisions or when following generations of a product are designed. And at that point at the lastest mischpult.de would like to offer support and ideas for the design of comsumer products, too.

mischpult.de | famous faults ( warnk@mischpult.de)