I’m no DJ, but I know cool tech when I see it, and when I was sent a Tonium Pacemaker to review, I had a good feeling I’d like it. The Pacemaker is essentially a music player with dual outputs, a large hard drive, and mixing capabilities crammed into a tiny package. It’s like a DJ’s travel kit. Having mostly no clue how to really DJ, I decided to enlist the help of local musician and club DJ, Brian Forge for this review.

(check out the full photo set here)

It’s got the look
Part of being a DJ is your image and who doesn’t want hardware that looks cool? From the pacemaker itself right down to every detail of the packaging, Tonium put out a great looking product. When you open the box, everything in it is in it’s own special place and in it’s own smaller black box, including the user manual which is also black and made to look cool. This thing oozes cool every step of the way. The Pacemaker is all black and it’s small… like, cell phone small. Well, maybe a little bigger than my iPhone, but for DJ equipment, that’s not much of a footprint.

Immediately noticeable are the two main components of the Pacemaker on its face: the display on top and the touch control on the bottom. The color display packs in a lot of information while you’re mixing, and looks pretty good. The touch interface is pretty smooth after you figure it out. Before you figure it out, it’s pretty frustrating trying to make anything happen, but it doesn’t take long to learn. Between the display and the touch pad is a touch slider to control the blending of the left and right tracks and with it are some more controls. On the side is a button that you can slide up for the headphone output. One end has the output and power jacks while the other end has the power button, a menu button, and the USB port. Inside this tiny package they’ve crammed a 60GB hard drive and I’ve seen other reviews with claims of 120GB drives.

The software and community
Speaking of the internal hard drive, that’s where the software for your laptop or desktop is kept. No CD needed. Just plug the Pacemaker in and it prompts you to install the mix software on your PC. Don’t try it on Windows 7 RC1, though, because Brian did and it did not play very nice. It’s not an official release of the OS, so I didn’t expect it to. On XP, however, the software installed and offered some pretty cool features. It did have some problems dealing with us loading up the same track multiple times and trying to overlap it, but it also smartly prevented us from adding conflicting affects to the same spot on the timeline. The software, like the Pacemaker, is well-designed and has a lot to offer the rising DJ.

Better still is the mix community. Tonium is plans for this device to not replace all the expensive pro equipment, but rather to provide an open doorway for amateur DJs and those of us who just want to play. One of the great things about the device is that, aside from the obvious loading of tracks onto the Pacemaker, you can import and export mixes, completely layered with the cue points and blends you or another mixer created. So let’s say you throw down an awesome mix and you’re proud of it and want to share. You can export the mix to your computer and upload it to the mix site where others can listen, download and rate it. How’s that for community interaction? If it’s good enough, your mix might get featured and linked to from the newsletter. The mix site is a great idea that will surely help some newbies feel more comfortable with the Pacemaker.

Forge to the rescue
When found this thing in my mail box, my first thought was of how cool it was and if I could keep it (sadly, no), and my second thought was, “I’m not a DJ. How am I going to really review the capabilities of this thing?” So I called in a DJ. Brian Forge has been DJing for a long time and has been asked to guest DJ in other cities and over the weekend, he was nice enough to drop by the office for a few hours and try out the Pacemaker.

The Pacemaker is a great little piece of equipment. It features many, if not more, features than you find with standard CDJ units. All the basics are covered and there are many other FX available to play with. The interface does take some time to get used to though. I only had a short time to familiarize myself with the features and functions but as I caught on, I was able to navigate rather well. I could easily see myself using this while traveling. Whether to practice certain mixes, experiment with ideas, or even practicing and keeping myself entertained, this would come in handy. I do feel there are certain limitations though. I was not impressed with the way their cue system is set up. It makes it difficult to properly set cue points. It is a bit cumbersome to navigate a track once you set a cue point and even more difficult to reset one once it is laid. As with CDJs, you can only lay down one cue point at a time. Because navigation is a bit tricky, controllerism is a moot point with the Pacemaker. You will not be able to scratch or bring in FX on the fly. You have to hit the switch, and perform the most accurate of finger movements to just bring up the right FX, let alone control them. However the touch interface does seem to work well for basic DJing. Especially the crossfader. With proper practice, the sensitivity allows for some clean and accurate cutting between tracks.

Overall, I think this is an amazing little device. The limitations I have seen I believe are purely because of how hard it is to pack everything in to such a small, sleek little package. I definitely see myself wanting to pick one up as a “toy” and as a backup device, should my primary decks fail. I could easily see this being used by DJs on the road, by rising DJs honing their skills on the fly, and even people that host parties who want a DJ without going through the effort of hiring a professional.

Thanks, again, to Brian for his insight.

Conclusions
The first thing I think about is the price. It’s not exactly cheap, but it’s not expensive by comparison, either. For an aspiring DJ, it’s a pretty good price and a nice portable device. For a pro, it’s a great travel companion, like Brian said. If nothing else, you could save a mix and DJ a party at the drop of a hat. The usefulness of it seems to stop just short of professional needs, but is pretty complete for a beginner and I really enjoyed the amount of attention Tonium payed to details ever step of the way. Definitely worth the money if you have it to spare.

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