5 Unique features on the Denon DJ SC5000 Prime

I am currently digging deep into the technology of the brand new Denon DJ SC5000 Prime media player launched recently and now available in South Africa.

Soon we will offer a comprehensive run down on the pros and cons of this new DJ instrument in a full review.

But for now here’s a list of some of the features that are unique to the new SC5000 Prime and, to the best of our knowledge and research, are currently not found on any other media player.

Dual Decks

The SC5000 Prime is the first media player to offer two-deck control on one unit. Called layers, one can, as the term suggestions play two different tracks simultaneously on one unit.

We have been testing this to see just how practical it would actually be to hypothetically just use one deck to DJ off and while nobody is going to suggest that this is the best solution, it is actually easier than one realises.

Two key ingredients to making this usable are that:

a) When you activate a second layer (a simple press of a button) the second deck colour will be different to the first. So once you’ve committed to memory which deck is which colour, it’s pretty easy to know which layer you’re currently controlling.

b) The screen splits into two and shows both waveforms at once. [See image above]. This makes it so easy to monitor the progress of each waveform as they are stacked on top of each other.

Two sound cards

This feature goes hand-in-hand with the dual deck layers. The SC5000 Prime has two 24-bit/96kHz and sports separate stereo outputs for each. So this means when you are using both deck layers, each deck outputs to a different channel on the mixer, which of course is pretty important, since one needs to control each track’s volume, EQ’s and FX separately when mixing.

Customisable Deck colours

The default green colour scheme you see in the product images and my video below are one of several colours the backlights on SC5000 PRIME can be.

This is just aesthetics but it is pretty cool that different DJs can use preferred colour schemes. What’s even cooler is that the unit will write your settings back to your flash drive and whenever you arrive at a gig and use SC5000, the colour scheme will change automatically when you plug your drive in.

It would look pretty amazing if one DJ performs with the green colour scheme and then when the next DJ comes on the decks change to red, for example.

Album cover on platter

This is another aesthetic feature which may sound like a gimmick but I have to say – when you’re jamming a set and you look down the platter to do a mix, it is way cool to see the album cover artwork staring straight back at you.

It harks back to the vinyl days when, as a DJ, one would often remember a track more by the record cover than by the name of of song or artist.

If album covers are not your thing you can actually add your DJ logo (or any design you want really) and this will come up automatically on the platter when you plug your flash drive in, just like your preferred deck colour scheme.

Performance Pads

This one is a biggie.

The SC5000 Prime is the first media player to mimic a professional DJ controller and DJ software. Laptop DJs often cite the power of DJ software and their controllers’ corresponding features as being able to do way more than media decks, performance wise.

Not anymore.

These 8 performance pads and the corresponding uses of them; Hot cues, looping, roll and audio slicing, can do all that Dj software can and boy do they work well. I’m not going to go into detail as this will be covered in the review but I will say that these pads add a much needed performance dimension to playing off digital DJ decks.

For enquiries on Denon DJ dealers in South Africa and pricing etc please contact Viva Afrika who are the authorised agents for Africa. – 087 236 8518

5 Unique features on the Denon DJ SC5000 Prime