Tonium P666 Pacemaker Very good engineering, pretty easy to use and a whole new way to interact with my music
By N. Katsilometes
Just got my Tonium P666 Pacemaker a few weeks ago and I'm really enjoying it! I had a couple of Numark (monster) TTX tables with a Stanton xfader when I was younger and the biggest pain was just getting the things around. Even with CDJs its pretty tough to move gear around. So the Tonium P666 Pacemaker works out really well as far as portability goes!
Loading MP3s is not too hard, beware if you have a lot of older iTunes tracks, you'll have to *upgrade* them to the DRM-free format for $0.30/track to get them on to your Pacemaker, just something to consider. That can set you back hundreds if you have a good sized music collection tied up in iTunes.
You've really got to know your music because when you scroll through the tracks, you only get track titles and BPM displayed. Once you start playing the track, you get all the info. I havent played with the mix editor software too much but it installed easily seems easy enough, not as intuitive as iTunes but it shouldnt give you too many headaches if you're just trying to get music on the Pacemaker.
As far as "gigging" with it, if you're going to a party with a bunch of your friends and want to entertain, this is good but you're tethered to the thing all evening, you might be better off spending the $500 bones on some good music, making some really great playlists on your iPod and just letting it go to shuffle. Then you can hang with everyone at the party.
If you got really sharp with it (I am not...working on it though) its pretty reasonable to play 3-4 hours of play with lots of different music using pitch bend and effects to really get some unique flavor into what you're playing. After using it LOTS the past few weeks, I'm pretty confident it wont lock up on you in the middle of your set. It hasnt ever locked up on me and i've done some pretty impressive combinations of inputs that the folks at Tonium probably never counted on.
The auto beat matching is stupid easy, but if you sync a 85 BPM hip hop track with a 130 BPM dance track you'll get just what you ask for ;-) The pitch bend is a cool tool too but depending on the bit rate/compression of your MP3s (i guess those are fancy words for 'quality' of your MP3s) your music will sound really degraded as you slow it down.
So Im not going to pretend that it replaces the feel of vinyl or the slide of the fader but as far as just getting hours behind your music and getting to know it and thinking up good mixes, this is a great player.
Sorry for the random thoughts, I really love it though and its becoming my go to MP3 player just because of the ability to get into my music in ways that I only used to be able to with my old gear. $500 is something to think about but dont fret about the quality and finish of it, its just as sharp as anything Apple's put out (and i loves me some Apple stuff). Hope this is helpful!
