It's been 3 days since I got this little beast and I must say it's been an experience to remember! It's been excellent addition to my setup and it fits right into the slot of being a third and virtual fourth deck ;) for me that is.

This little creation from Denon is crammed with features and it would probably take all that rocket science that you studied in NASA's tech school to understand this CD player completely. No seriously this unit is packed with features and it would take at least one or two sittings with its instruction manual to come to grips with it!

Having said that it's hard to even think about where this review must start. Please do remember that these impressions im giving are not from the turntablist's point of view but from a mixologist's angle.

I have chosen to start with the most talked about feature of this unit - the motorised platter. The platter is belt driven and aims to please the vinyl addict DJs among us. It feels stable and responds very well when you are cuing up a track however, when I put it through some small scratch routines I did notice that the cue marker on the platter drifted a little. This problem is faced even on the Pioneer CDJ 1000. The platter feels a lot lighter in terms of resistance than a conventional analogue turntable and in comparison with the CDJ 1000's platter it felt definitely lighter/looser. The platter start up and stop times are fantastic, also the platter does not change speed when you adjust the tempo of a track. One thing that I found to be a little bothersome was when I tried to pitch bend using the platter. I found it to be extremely sensitive to touch on the side of the platter and it is tougher to pitch bend up than to pitch bend down. It would be wise to use a light touch with this one. The instruction manual also states that it is not advisable to try and stop the platter when it is spinning else it might damage the unit. I do believe that most of us would find that using the pitch bend buttons instead of the platter would be the way to work, as is with all Denon units. I must tell you that when the platter is set on search mode and the track is playing the platter turns into a more comfortable pitch bend mode as found on the CDJ 1000. All in all I think the platter is pretty decent, Denon has managed to pull off a pretty decent job on it. Only time will tell us if this is the future of all decks to come.

The next feature of this unit that has everyone buzzing with excitement is the alpha track. Basically this allows you to play two tracks off the same cd and mix them. You can use this feature for either preparing tracks in advance or layering a huge mix. When using the alpha track the pitch control has to be activated for it by holding a button down for a second after which the multifunctional knob turns into a rotary pitch control. This as you might imagine might get a little frustrating at times but if you are careful it could be used very effectively. I found that the rotary knob was more exacting than the pitch slider itself. The alpha track controls also have a set of pitch bend buttons which you might end up using a lot if you don't get used to the rotary pitch control in a hurry. This alpha track feature has a pretty nifty function called a mirror mix. This is basically when the unit allows you to play the same track on the master as well as the alpha channel. The alpha channel however lets you induce a delay based on the BPM of the track. Once you play around with it for a while you will begin to understand how simple it would be to create atmospheric build ups and mad breakdowns. The alpha channel also makes beat juggling off just one deck possible! It is quite a mad feature really and Im still not fully into it! It can be loads of fun and if studied properly can be used as a bad ass weapon when doing battle in the DJ realm.

Let's step things up a notch shall we? The Denon S5000 offers you a plethora of looping knick knacks, sampling functions and the much talked about hot starts. All in all the S5000 gives a user up to 4 seamless loops, 4 hot starts, 6 stutter cue points and 2 sample banks. The unit offers a splice function with which you can simply remove unwanted portions of a track. A unit such as this would also require you to be able to edit everything from loops points to sample points to splice points and it does so with flying colours. The onboard sample banks can hold 15 seconds each (20Hz - 20 kHz) giving you 30 seconds in all, which is a lot! This unit goes one up on the Denon 2600 by giving you 4 hot start spot over 2 provided by the 2600. I can see things going pretty insane with this hot start fever. Just make sure you are fitted with an extra set of hands and eyes when using two of these units!

Coming to the actual "mix" value of the unit, it is now one step closer to being the deck to beat. The unit offers a pretty decent pitch resolution. When the unit is set on a +/- 4 % pitch range the resolution is 0.05 % which is enough… although the perfectionists among us might be wondering why Denon did not match the resolution offered on the CDJ 1000 which is 0.02 % at a pitch range of 6%. I do think that 4% might be a little short of a pitch range that most of us would find comfortable. When the unit is set at 10% the resolution is 0.10% while on the CDJ 1000 it is 0.05%. I do think this is one aspect that Denon truly needs to work on.

On the connectivity side of it, the S5000 features full featured digital outputs on the main and alpha track at 44.1 kHz. It also has it's much raved about fader start feature even on the alpha channel. The unit also has an extensive memory for all its memo functions and when connected to either a Denon X800 mixer it has the ability of sharing memory with another S5000.

I must hand it to Denon; they have managed to squeeze an amazing number of functions into a unit of this size. Kudos to them! This unit would feel right at home in any kind of a setup and has enough muscle to do battle with the bad boys in the super clubs. It doesn't make a difference if you are a bedroom jock or a super jock doing the rounds in a super club, this unit will give your routines the knock out punch that you have all been dreaming about. I firmly believe that this unit in the right hands would bring mayhem to world, and if you were wondering, I meant mayhem in a good way!

Tuhin Mehta: tuhin@sudeepaudio.com
The writer is a Chennai based DJ. The comments and views are his own.

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