Gear
A first look at Pioneer’s SVM-1000
Beatportal reports that Sander Kleinenberg was involved in the development of the SVM-1000. I love Pioneer’s approach to getting big name DJs to help design their products. Its smart both on a marketing and R&D angle.
The SVM-1000 has an impressive range of effects and 96 khz/24 bit studio sound quality similar to the DJM-800 and also boosts a 11″ touchscreen LCD screen.
Pioneer’s patented Multiple Video Blending Technology makes it possible to mix four channels of synchronized audio and video at once. Beatportal reports that the SVM-1000 is the first four channel AV mixer, but this is incorrect. Create Digital Motion got it right and listed the AVM02 as the first four channel Audio/Video mixer.
Having done some VJing back in the day, my favorite new feature on this board is the AV Touch Effects which allow users to touch and affect visuals directly, as they appear on the panel. The mixer has 12 patterns of Touch Effects including ripple, spot, radiation, twist and cube. The drawback is there is no support for DV or HDMI and that Vegas Video is a much better tool for live video mixing. The ideal setup that I would like to see would be two people, one VJ, one DJ, with one person doing the music and one user running Vegas Video and other sources into the SVM. With that type of setup and the assignable midi knobs of the SVM, some truly amazing performances could be made.
Overall, I don’t think this mixer is going to sell well or really bring VJing to the forefront of clubbing experience, but its nice to see the concept being explored. The kicker, the SVM-1000 will cost you $5400.
With all that in mind, I’d like to recount one of my favorite past VJ experiences. I was lucky enough to see Z-Trip, Aceyalone and Gift of Gab at the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO this summer the same weekend that Daft Punk killed it at Red Rocks. Z-Trip had a full visual setup being run on side stage and Z-Trip, being Z-Trip, played his usual non-stop mashup mixture of hip hop, rock, and even some country (Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire). Every track he dropped was accompanied by its music video and as he made his mixes, the VJ mixed in the incoming music video. Some of the videos were super old and I had to laugh, but some really went well together.
Read More on Pioneer’s SVM-1000:
Create Digital Motion’s Less Optimistic Review
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