Denon DJ SC3900 Digital Turntable & Controller Review

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Vinyl feel, with every digital bell and whistle you could imagine... say hello to the Denon SC3900. We look at the unit and consider the type of DJs may find its charms irresistible and open their wallets... Full review at www.digitaldjtips.com/sc3900

[@StevanDjumic]

Please do so, it would be nice to hear it and to see your setup. Greets!

[@powerbookg4apple]

Can u use with Serato I own the ddjsx midi controller want this to work along side seen as the ddjsx has a 4 way mixer just heard u can audrey iPad that’s awesome as I own the 12.9 iPad Pro be great to hook this up to it

[@robelt.e1017]

ive got an idea for all of you guys and for Digital DJ tips : start to make a review (youtube video) about What and Why digital scratching is better than the good old vinyl, is it for something, what do you mean?

[@ThaUnknownAndroid]

Excellent review!!! I'm seriously considering buying this over the CDJ 2000........I love Denon gear, I have the Denon DN-MC 6000 midi mixer and love the build quality......Do the SC3900 have a metal steel casing???? It looks like it's made of plastic.....

[@djtorchmusic]

CDJ 900s and 2000s cost ALOT more. You would have to compare this deck to a CDJ 850. If a DJ is wanting to move off a 1200 MKII, this is a hard deck to beat. A lot of people don't know, but Denon was making DJ gear before Pioneer.

[@StevanDjumic]

I would really love to see you dj. Is there some youtube video?

[@johnniuila6921]

can we use ipads like Vjay on them??

[@adammdc2]

When I saw Cookie Monster Play I think maybe with Flux Pavilion which he blew out of the water by the way but Cookie Monster made a show out of just exchanging the CDs in the cdjs

[@spvcethvg8462]

R.I.P

[@Phen0mable]

I'm the pioneer guy but lately I switched to allen&heath in terms on mixer and I will never go back to pioneer. Now I want to use and play with this 3900 and see what is like,,,,

[@djchamath]

well always i hear that pioneer cdj 2000 which is comparing this with,.......well thats soo nice to hear......i think then with cdj 900 ,this is wayy better than that....i wanna compare this with 900s,,????

[@FrOsTyBeArKiD]

Does this require the use of time code CDs or Vinyl if I wanted to use this with Serato Scratch Live? If not, how could I make it work with my SL box? thanks!

[@adammdc2]

Just run it thru it it just pics of it just send the code it doesn't actually decipher it but now you can get some fairly good mixers for under $200 that have the Serato sound card in them

[@juanchis.investigadorsonoro]

Hi again Phil! With the new MCX-8000 Denon made a very promising software and I found that this is the first time Engine showed up. But now since some years have been gone by. How is the comparison of Rekordbox vs Engine. I gig very often at places where I use Rekordbox, because it's a standard. But honestly I dislike Rekordbox a lot. Since Engine with MCX-8000 works with Serato and I'm a Serato user, former Vdj, this has a big impact for me. Do you have an opinion about this? Rekordbox or Engine at this point. I have never seen Engine. Thanks! Greetings from Mexico.

[@digitaldjtips]

+Juan Carlos S. Great question - sorry to hear you dislike Rekordbox. We haven't had the chance to review the new MCX8000 alongside Engine just yet, so I can't give an official answer at the moment. Overall, the Denon MCX8000 with both Serato and Engine will be a powerful piece of gear, especially if you want to add video or lighting :) But watch this space for our review in the coming weeks :) Cheers

[@juanchis.investigadorsonoro]

Well as I said bars and clubs have their own lj. But I will have to wait and see how Engine works compared to Rekordbox. On Rek I can't load instantly a track and that makes me lose time. I'm always up to your news I'm suscribed with notifications hahaha. Cheers!

[@DjCalliber]

yeah dude you should really upload some of your own live mixes. DO IT

[@adammdc2]

I would I hate controllers there's a way the jog Wheels feel I really looked at an ns7 2 or 3 or even a V7 but I just like that stand alone and being as how I've always been on turntables. I just don't like that motorized play a lot of places where there more in to see Maybe dubstep or you know things like that so so I've been using the scratching to incorporate more hip-hop and stuff of that nature and then of course not long after I started doing that about 10 years ago we started hearing trap or trapstep as they like to call it

[@johnlott1507]

I still like this better than controller

[@MutantCreature]

I learned on vinyl and although I can't afford them, I'll probably try them sometime

[@djmixin1]

This will be perfect with no computer

[@digitaldjtips]

If you can get your hands on one (a pair) :)

[@irascian]

Since this video review was what primarily persuaded me to purchase two of these units having had a great Denon experience in the early 1990s (when their first CD decks were way better than anything the only rival at the time - Pioneer - could offer) I feel I should chip in and say the video review is very poor in evaluating what really matters to anybody who wants to DJ in the digital age - which should be everybody! A proper and thorough review would have said "The software is early alpha release and doesn't work. If you want to enter the digital age and need basic functionality eg the ability to search your collection to find a track in response to a customer request" this product can't do that because there's a Search function within the program but it doesn't do anything except say "No results found"!" What the review completely fails to do is look at the "Engine" software, which at the time of writing, hasn't been touched in over a year (and has apparently been abandoned) and is just not fit for purpose. In the digital age it doesn't matter how "sexy" the hardware is (which is all this video review focuses on) if the software requrired to run it in a realistic DJ environment is alpha release rubbish as I believe Denon's "Engine" software is. It's not worth buying. Period. If the company's customer support is rubbish, as I believe the new owners of Denon's is, then it's not worth buying the product. I probably need to qualify those statements about the product and customer service being rubbish so here's my experience. I need to play requests. For that reason alone I need software that can help me search my vast catalogue of titles to find what I need quickly. A catalogue that has taken WEEKS of time to enter into Denon's software thanks to its continual crashes and intermittent failures to tag multiple items with basic data like "Year of release" without a restart. Denon's software has a "Search" function THAT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING! You heard me right. It has a Search function. The manual explains how it SHOULD work. But it doesn't. A Mac user politely raised the issue (assuming he was doing something wrong) on the official Denon support forums over a year ago. Nobody replied. Or at least nobody replied until I did, many months later saying this wasn't just a Mac issue - the PC version had the same problem and asking if anybody had actually tested this software before releasing it. My post was deleted a few minutes later. An earlier post complaining one of my two SC3900 decks had arrived with the wrong plug for the UK and had anybody else had a similar experience was similarly deleted within a couple of minutes. No explanation was given for the deletions. I wasn't even informed they'd taken place. Nobody at Denon Official Forums customer support had even the decency to send me a private message to tell me why. I think the reason is obvious: Denon don't want even a sniff or hint of anything negative about their product because they have a ton of this stuff stacked in the warehouse that they need to get rid off. Video reviews like the one above will help them because they've failed to assess the very basic needs of a modern DJ digital deck. To me that's almost as big a sin as Denon's because it's caused me to waste a huge amount of money, and even more importantly, a huge amount of time on a product that is just not fit for purpose because they just did a "rush job" on a review to get page views. Just deleting posts on your support forums if they hint at anything negative is not good customer service (although it does explain one initial query I had which is "Why are their forums so quiet and entries so old?". When I tweeted about wishing I'd not wasted a ton of money on these Denon products which to my view "are not fit for purpose" and wishing I'd bought Pioneer instead Denon Customer Service did contact me to ask why. That's pretty good customer service I guess. I sent them a list. They didn't reply. Pretending you want to give customer service but not actually following up on anything is NOT good customer service, and Denon have it in abundance. They don't care. They'll pretend they do, but at the hint of anything real they'll just turn their backs and hope the problem goes away. The Denon company of the 1990s would have responded as a priority at the CEO level to every single negative point made. The Denon company of 2015 just needs to selll all this old stock they've got lying around, so rely on suppressing any negative reports about the complete unsuitability of these products because of the poor software from their forums and Facebook pages when they pop up. They also rely heavily on video reviews like that one here to give the completely false impression that if you can afford them these are great decks to buy. OK, II'll soften that a little: If you don't want to enter the digital age and can manage without using software to manage your digital collection then I guess the review's accurate because the hardware is fine (if overpriced). But a solid review from even just a couple of days of use in the real world would have pointed out that without software that supports very basic facilities like that of being able to search your collection to deal with requests the products are not only expensive but useless. Buyer beware!

[@digitaldjtips]

Ian Smith Still using ours, agreed it's all gone south with Engine but we could hardly have predicted the changes at Denon when we reviewed these pre-release, we had to take them on their word re Engine and the plans for it. We use ours with Serato DVS & Midi and find them to be wonderful decks to perform on.

[@irascian]

That's all well and good Phil but when searching for SC3900 info when considering purchase this video was right at the top of the list. 2 years on the review should now be "Avoid" rather than "Buy" given the unusable software, poor quality control when shipping, and disgraceful customer service. Hopefully potential customers who hit this review the way I did will read these comments and make a more informed decision. I could cope with the significant financial loss I guess. it's the weeks of entering metadata into software that then can't do anything with that metadata that hacks me off even more.

[@Reticuli]

Ian Smith Wow. So InMusic buying Denon has now ruined them?

[@irascian]

To be honest I think the rot set in before InMusic took over when the company was in limbo for a few months. But nothing's changed in the year since I bought these decks. Really regret buying them now. I won't buy another Denon product again. Their customer service is even worse than their non-working software (how is a mobile DJ supposed to function when the basic Search functionality doesn't work and any attempt to ask when it will be fixed in the official support forums is deleted because they don't want potential new customers to see how bad things are)

[@Reticuli]

+Ian Smith Are you certain Engine is not working correctly in Windows? Other forums have said it works perfectly as advertised in Windows. Also, any issues with running multiple Denon units as soundcards at once?