CDJ-3000 Professional DJ multi player (Black)

Unlock a world of creativity with our latest multi-player flagship, the CDJ-3000. This powerful device combines a new MPU (Micro Processing Unit) with meticulously engineered components and groundbreaking features, empowering you to elevate your musical artistry. With StreamingDirectPlay, you can directly access and play tracks from Beatport Streaming on your CDJ-3000 player. You can explore playlists based on different music genres and access your saved My Playlist. The player automatically calculates the BPM (beats per minute) and analyzes the grid of the song, allowing you to visualize the song’s progression on the waveform display. Additionally, Beat Sync and quantize features help you easily match and mix beats, making the process intuitive and precise. Connect your CDJ-3000 to the internet using a LAN cable and Pro DJ Link. Export an authentication key from rekordbox to a USB drive. Insert the USB drive into the CDJ-3000 to access your cloud library and stream tracks directly. Cloud Analysis streamlines the analysis of tracks on your CDJ-3000 player. By connecting to the internet, you can instantly access BPM, beatgrid, and waveform data from AlphaTheta’s database. This allows for precise beat matching and mixing using Beat Sync and quantize features, even with tracks from streaming services. Cloud Analysis eliminates the need for time-consuming analysis on the CDJ-3000 itself and is accessible to all rekordbox users.

Effortlessly scratch and smoothly bend the pitch of tracks. We’ve redesigned the jog wheel so it feels slicker than ever, with a reduced touch latency. The LCD screen in the center shows playhead position and artwork for a quick visual reminder of loaded tracks. Get hands-on with the redesigned controls and new features of the CDJ-3000 – all arranged in a way that lets you play the CDJ like it’s a musical instrument. Play music analyzed in rekordbox from USB drives using Export mode. Connect a laptop with USB-HID control for Link Export or use Performance mode for free. Alternatively, connect your iPhone to the CDJ-3000 with a USB cable and Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter (sold separately) to mix using rekordbox for iOS. Easily trigger Hot Cues with the eight buttons located beneath the waveform display. Their linear arrangement makes cue point selection feel more natural. Skip forward or backward within a track from the current playback position. Synchronize lighting, video displays, and pyrotechnics in real time with the audio played on the CDJ-3000 for more captivating performances.

Hey everyone, I will say things like something’s been long awaited or it’s been a long time coming. On this occasion, it’s definitely true. The previous flagship media player from Pioneer DJ was the CDJ-2000 Nexus 2 and that dropped in early 2016. So this new one, the CDJ-3000 has been a long time coming. Now, this is only a first look today. I’ve had them less than a week and they are going back as soon as I’ve shot this video. So I hope Pioneer DJ will get a set to me for a bit more long-term use so I can actually give you my verdict on them. This is purely gonna be my first impressions, but as you can see, there’s lots to get into.

So let’s get busy. The first thing to note about the CDJ-3000 is that it doesn’t play CDs. Many people might be surprised at this considering the name of the product, but it sort of makes sense from a marketing point of view. The XDJ prefix is more associated with affordable home gear. Personally, I might have been inclined to go with XDJ-3000 Nexus and leverage that suffix instead, but what do I know? As for the removal of the CD drive from a functionality point of view, I couldn’t care less. If you still play with CDs, more power to you, I respect your choice, but you have to accept that you are now an outlier. CDs just aren’t a mainstream DJ format in 2020. At first glance, the CDJ-3000 looks a lot like a CDJ-2000 Nexus 2, with a bigger screen and some more buttons, and in a lot of respects, that’s kind of what it is.

The player is clearly designed to offer a smooth transition from the older models to these, and it provides that. I was happily up and running on the 3000 with very little learning curve at all. The big headline as far as Pioneer DJ are concerned is the fact that the 3000 is an MPU-driven unit with two types of multi-core CPU, a dual-core ARM A57 and a quad-core ARM A53. What that means is the player is now running on the same kind of chips as modern phones or tablets and therefore has a ton more power to draw upon. Even when it launched in 2016, I felt the Nexus 2 was a bit sluggish when it came to loading tracks, particularly those with multiple hot cues and track browsing. I’m pleased to say there is none of that here. Tracks load much faster, and scrolling through large playlists is far smoother than it used to be. The whole experience of using the player is a more snappy affair. One thing it still can’t do is analyze files on the fly. You’ll always need to export your files through Rekordbox for the best results. There’s one feature which definitely takes advantage of that new power under the hood, the ability to shift key directly on the unit. The 3000 features an advanced key sync algorithm, which promises to sound very clean, and you can adjust the key manually with on-screen controls. The 3000 is a single layer design, there are no dual outputs here, and it also retains the single top mounted USB port as well as the SD card slot.

I had wondered if they might have put an extra port or two in place of the CD drive, but no, that’s just a blank panel. There’s a slight downgrade in the USB department as the port only provides one amp as opposed to 2.4 amps of power on the Nexus 2. It still works fine with all the bus powered drives that I tried, but it’s worth noting if you use one that is particularly power hungry. The second big headline for Pioneer DJ is the sound quality on offer. The internal processing is all done at 32-bit 96kHz, regardless of the source file quality. On the Nexus 2 that was only done when using higher quality files to begin with. According to the specs, if you only ever used 24-bit 96kHz files on a Nexus 2, you won’t find much difference, but that is pretty rare and there should be some significant improvement with regular files.

I’ll be testing that in depth soon. The display is a definite upgrade being 9 inch as opposed to 7 on the Nexus 2 and it’s much higher resolution also at 720p. There is still no multi-touch on offer here but there’s a lot more you can now do with touch on the device like swiping through playlists and touching to load. The whole usage of the player is much more touch focused than it has been in the past. The display looks crisp and clean from the front, the refresh rate is clearly improved so the movement of the waveforms is much better. screen is also noticeably brighter than on older models which will be a blessing at outdoor events. There’s lots of stuff in the display and the operating system in general which we’ll have to save for my full review.

Features like the shortcuts, the track filtering and the touch previews. But Pioneer DJ have made good use of the extra real estate on offer, particularly when browsing. You have the choice of different font sizes, full track artwork and waveform previews for each track if you want them. There’s a three-band option for waveforms, allowing you to have a better idea of the frequency content of your tracks, and that applies to the overview as well as the moving waveforms. And there we move on to what is my headline feature on the 3000, the stacked waveforms. When Pro DJ Link is set up, as you mix in a new track, the waveform of the master track appears on the screen. This is useful not just as a beat matching aid, which it certainly is, but also as a way to time your mixes perfectly, as you can see what’s happening with the track you’re mixing into.

It’s certainly far superior to the setup on the Nexus 2. I’d be interested to see how smoothly it works with 3, 4 or even 6 players hooked up, but with just 2, it was great. Looking at the body of the players, much of the layout will be very familiar to Nexus 2 users. The position of the cue and play buttons, the traditional loop in and out and re-loop buttons, the pitch fader, all of this is, quite rightly, unchanged. There are some new controls, dedicated beat jump buttons, the length of which can be adjusted in shortcuts, and an extra 8-beat loop button as well as the 4 found on older models. One huge change is with the hot cues. There are now eight physical buttons as opposed to four with two layers on the Nexus 2.

It should be noted that they are just hot cues. They aren’t multi-mode performance pads. They just do that one job. They’re nice and responsive and it’s great to have easy access to all eight. The positioning of them will, I suspect, be controversial. On the one hand, it’s cool to have them so close to the screen for that visual feedback, but there is also a concern that if a DJ was getting busy hot cue juggling and is a little clumsy, there are a lot of buttons and a jog wheel close by, with potential for accidental activation. In my initial testing, it feels like there is enough room to be comfortable, but we’ll see how it is long term. Moving on to the jog wheels, Pioneer DJ’s mechanical jogs have always been my favourite static platters on the market, and that continues with the 3000, perhaps even more so.

The upgraded mechanism is quieter and feels more smooth than those on previous models, and the touch sensitivity is perfect. The central display has been overhauled and is now much higher resolution, artwork, a great visual cue for those who use that. It’s not quite as busy as those found on devices like the XDJ-XZ, but I kind of like that, and there’s no doubt they’re a huge improvement over the Nexus 2. The rest of the build overall feels very high-end and premium, with a full aluminium top panel and refined play and cue buttons, which Pioneer DJ claim will be much more durable than those on older models. Around the back there are a couple of upgrades with a lockable IEC plug for power and USB 3 for connecting to your computer.

As well as working with Pro DJ Link that way, the players will also work in full HID mode with Rekordbox straight away and Serato DJ Pro support will follow later. Otherwise, the connections haven’t changed a lot with the regular analog and digital outputs, although the ethernet port is now gigabit speed, which could well be needed if playing lossless files across up to six players with the DJM-V10. The 3000s can be assigned to any channel between 1 and 6 now when using that mixer, which is great. Another new link feature that comes with the 3000 is the ability to use the player’s standalone alongside the RB-DMX1 to control lighting. That side of it will still need a computer to run it, but the actual DJ playback can be done with USB drives or SD cards.

I’ve been doing something similar with SoundSwitch for a while, so I’m intrigued to see how this compares. One notable thing which is lacking from the 3000 is Wi-Fi of any kind, with the Ethernet port being the only networking option. This goes alongside the lack of any streaming options within the players. If you want to use streaming services, at least for now, you’ll need to connect up to a computer running Rekordbox in performance mode. I do like the ability to connect up an iOS device via USB though, it was a bit of a faff with older models, and it’s much more straightforward here. With the cloud aspect of Rekordbox 6 taken into account, that could end up being the playback method of choice for many DJs.

One final thing to mention, and that is the price. With a street price of just under $2,300 in the US, there’s no doubt that the CDJ-3000 is a pricey bit of kit, the most expensive media player on the market by quite some margin. But it’s also only $100 more than the street price of the Nexus 2s, and by comparison, you’re getting a lot more for your money with these. As always, value is subjective, and I suspect for the target market of these players, that sum will seem pretty reasonable. So there you go, first look at the new CDJ-3000 from Pioneer DJ. It must be very tricky to be that company and kind of walk in on this tightrope between DJs, on the one hand, who are calling for new and exciting features all the time, new bells and whistles, and the people who are actually buying this product, which is not generally DJs. It’s rental houses, it’s big clubs and venues, and it’s, you know, big festivals, people who kick those out, that kind of thing. That’s the actual target market for this device. So it may seem a bit conservative with a small C, but that’s what it needs to be to fit into the existing ecosystem that Pioneer DJ have built as basically the industry standard media player. So I’m very intrigued to get to know these better. There is a lot of potential with these. There’s a lot of power under the hood. That’s what Pioneer DJ are promising. And the sound quality side of things as well, that’s what they’re really pushing. It’s not about fancy new features. It is about build and sound quality improvements. So I’m very intrigued to see how these cope with a bit of long term testing a bit further down the line.