A DJ Controller provides you with hands-on, tactile control over and DJ mixing software. DJ controllers are MIDI controllers or USB-to-analog devices used for controlling, and can typically be installed on a MAC or Windows PC or laptop – or in some cases a tablet device. Many DJ Controllers come equipped with an Audio Interface built in for pre-fade listening, so no need for any additional hardware – Just install the drivers for your DJ controller, plug it in and select your audio output configuration in our and you’re ready to rock the event!
Potential ASIO driver issues on Windows XP x64 (YMMV) - (minor) Have to choose between 2-deck vinyl control or 4-deck software functionality. I just read about the upcoming VMS 4.1 which sounds like it addresses many of my gripes, the most notable being sound quality. But that's for another review.
VirtualDJ 8 – American Audio VMS4 5 CONTROLS A.Mixer The mixer of the VMS4/VMS4.1 is routing and handling the sound internally (hardware), but all the adjustments and movements are visible on the VirtualDJ GUI. Blends audio between the channels assigned to the left and right side of the crossfader. Adjust the Volume of each Midilog/Deck. RobRoy PRO Infinity Senior staff Member since 2012 I`m not shure if this tip can solve your problem, but AA says the the drives of the vms are very 'complex'.;-). To avoid any problems, try these steps: 1. Switch on yout controller 2.
Reviewer: DJ Pegasus. Date: December 2011. Price: £249/$369/€299.
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Link: Initial impressions When I first saw the VMS4 at Musikmesse 2010, what excited me the most is that it's not just another MIDI controller, but also a traditional four-channel analog mixer. Since each channel is individually selectable, it can even be both at the same time!
This is EXACTLY what many DJs looking to transition from analog to controllers have been asking for. Though this ability is starting to become more common, I believe the VMS4 was the very first to do it, and at a good price to boot. Some Hercules controllers have had analog pass-through for years, but it requires software support. The VMS4 does it all internally so can operate as a stand-alone (no computer attached) four-channel mixer. American Audio calls the VMS4 a 'Digital Work Station.' Normally I would chuckle at such a haughty-sounding name, but this thing is loaded with so many useful controls and features that it actually earns it, especially since it could conceivably be used in an audio production work flow as well. Most notably, it has high-resolution pitch sliders and jog dials, touch strips, a small mouse pad/X-Y area, and a wealth of buttons.
Remember that as a MIDI controller, you can assign the controls to whatever application functions you like. So for example, you could map the unit in an audio editing application and use the jog dials to scrub through a time line or fine-tune values. In the US at least, American Audio has been considered something of a budget brand in the past. With the VMS4, it's clear that they mean to shatter that image. It's built like a brick house: stacked with features and high-quality construction. The case is all-metal and has large, thick rubber corners. Its substantial weight (13.2 lbs, according to my trusty bathroom scale) and thick rubber feet keep it firmly in place no matter how heavy-handed you get with the tricks.
(It could even double as a weapon if you're at a gig in a rough part of town.:) ) The audio connectors are gold-plated and there are a full complement of them, including two XLR-1/4' combo microphone inputs and XLR main outs (essential if you're running over longer distances or in an electrically/magnetically noisy environment.) As an analog mixer Setting the channel switches on the front to Analog is all you do to make the VMS4 work like a typical four-channel mixer. (When using it in this mode, you can just ignore the left and right sides of the unit.handy if you're intimidated by those newfangled buttons and spinny things.) It has the standard mixer layout so is familiar to anyone who's ever used one.
The VMS4 has line/phono selector switches & grounding screws on the center two channels so you can connect up to four line-level sources (CDJs, portable music players, newer turntables, etc.) or up to two standard turntables and two line-level sources. There are two fader-start outputs as well, but they're always active no matter which mixer channels you have selected for the cross-fader, so you'll need to be careful in the heat of the mix. The two microphone inputs are totally separate and have individual 3-band EQs, so it's technically a six-channel mixer. All of the attenuation knobs (Gain and EQ) on all inputs are full-kill knobs.
You might also be happy to know that the headphone output is LOUD so you'll be able to monitor well even in a noisy DJ booth. There are no built-in effects as you might expect, since the VMS4 is primarily a controller. The channel volume sliders have a good level of resistance so you don't accidentally mess up the mix.
The stock cross-fader is good and has an adjustable curve from sharp shelf to smooth fade. It accommodates basic scratching well even if not set to the sharpest. It's also hot-swappable (you can do it with the power on, though it's best to power off) and an can be fitted if that trips your trigger. Sound quality In order to produce such a featureful product at this price point, concessions must be made, and they usually come in the form of sound quality, since analog audio is hard to process cleanly as dynamic range increases. This is why high-end DJ mixers (and live mixing consoles) cost so darn much. The VMS4 is definitely not a high-end console, but it is well-suited for most environments in which DJs are likely to find themselves.
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With nothing connected but the power cord and a pair of good-quality prosumer headphones, I systematically went through the inputs listening for internal noise. There is a fair bit of it on all of the inputs (sounds like a 990Hz buzz) and it's worst on channel 4 and mic 1 on my unit (and when the VU meter is lit up.) I assume this noise is coming from input analog-to-digital converters since the EQ and Gain knobs have an effect on it.
(This would suggest that the unit does its internal mixing digitally.) The knobs and sliders seem to have unity (0dB) at their center positions (typical for EQ knobs, strange for volume sliders.) So if you have a channel's gain all the way up and EQs and volume fader all above the center, the signal can actually clip internally (shown when the master VU meters are solid at the peak level,) though the pre-fader level is clean. This further confirms digital internal mixing and it would be nice if a follow-on model could have just a bit more headroom here. The VU meters range from -40dB to +10dB, a healthy one for most intended uses. (Your average mixer levels shouldn't be above about +3dB anyway.) My particular review unit's power connector seems a bit flaky in that when I gently tap or rotate it, there is some noise in the sound output (sometimes a throbbing sound) and it registers on the VU meters. If ADJ makes a follow-on model, it would be great to see a locking power connector that used flat blades for more contact area, especially for something as important and sensitive as the audio interface.
The biggest thing I noticed is that the inputs have limited gain compared to some mixers (Pioneer DJM-500, which admittedly isn't a fair comparison.) Using a recent pop CD source, cranking the gain all the way up barely caused the pre-fader peaks to reach +2dB. Turning up all of the EQs on the channel as well brought the peaks to just +7dB.
(It was better on the phono side, but I have high-output Stanton TrackMaster IIs.) This is bothersome for someone used to professional mixing consoles as I expect equipment to give me a large gain range so I can set the sweet spot for my particular signal. But to be honest, many DJs would instead misuse such a range, and the VMS4 is designed for DJs. (If I had a dollar for every DJ I've seen who didn't know how to properly use audio equipment, I could buy another controller.I need to write an article for you guys that run your mixers in the red all the time.) So with that in mind, the VMS4 is quite well calibrated for its intended audience: you will be hard-pressed to clip the output stage, helping you keep your signal well-behaved and better-sounding even if you don't know anything about analog signals or clipping. As a controller The VMS4 is well-engineered as a controller.
It's class-compliant (read 'plug-and-play') and every single knob, switch, slider and button sends MIDI messages at all times except the 4-out/8-out switch (which only applies at power-up anyway,) and the Shift buttons which are wired to cause the other controls to send different MIDI messages, making it much easier to map manually. The pitch sliders have 10-bit resolution for fine adjustments and the 2000-ticks-per-revolution (11-bit) wheels are plenty for advanced scratching techniques.
Those of us that love Linux can also rejoice: the VMS4 is plug-and-play in Linux too! It shows up right away under ALSA for MIDI and audio, enabling you to use it in just about any audio application.
Layout The knobs and buttons feel good and each rubber button has a distinct click you can hear and feel so there's no guessing whether you've hit one or not. Many of them have multi-colored LEDs so you can tell at a glance what's going on.
It provides buttons for quick-access to often-used software features on each deck: the stock faceplate includes hot cues (4, 8 with shift,) beat sync, loop in/out/reloop (2 loops with shift,) Smart loop, vinyl mode, fast-forward, rewind, key lock, loop halve/double, and pitch bend. There's an Effect control section with a detented, endless and press-able Select knob, a control knob, on/off toggle button and parameter button. The similar Sample section calls the knobs Select and Volume, and the buttons Play and Record. You're also provided a vertical touch strip for each deck and a touch pad area dead-center. The jog wheels feel robust (they're metal) and have a good amount of inertia. They are touch-sensitive as well for scratching effects.
My only complaint is that a couple of the buttons are a bit close to the jog wheels for my comfort (I nicked the wheels a number of times when going for the buttons) and I would have preferred that they scooted the transport buttons and the jog wheels a little lower to prevent fat-fingering mishaps. In Use Before I get into the software, remember that as a controller, it's just an agnostic control surface. The knobs and buttons can mean whatever you want them to; you're not bound to use them as labeled. This means that you can use the VMS4 with any MIDI-speaking software (not just DJ software) to control whatever you like. Think live remixing or audio/video time line editing and you can start to see the possibilities. American Audio (and the DJs that promote the VMS4) are quick to point out that the VMS4 is skin-able: you can order different and even custom faces from to suit your particular needs and taste and thereby even label the controls however you like.
The VMS4 ships with two-deck VirtualDJ 6.1 LE software for Mac OSX and Windows XP and up. I ran into some snags trying to get it to work, though: VirtualDJ on my old XP Home laptop kept crashing on start-up when it tried to use the VMS4's ASIO sound interface, and the Event Log offered no clues. So I tried my 64-bit Windows XP Professional workstation. VDJ installed and ran fine enough, but now the VMS4 wasn't showing up in the ASIO driver settings. (Apparently I'm not alone on this as there's a post on the ADJ support forums about the issue with no official response as of this writing.) The bundled version of VDJ requires ASIO for the VMS4, and refuses to start without it, so that was a no-go. (American Audio's technical support said to make sure to download the ASIO driver specifically for 64-bit Windows, which I did, but it didn't act any differently and didn't solve the problem.) So I tried on my wife's new 64-bit Windows 7 laptop.
'What are you doing with my new laptop?!' 'Pressing it into temporary service in the DJ Army, ma'am!' 'Just don't break it!' I installed the ASIO driver, then the VDJ software, then plugged in the controller and waited for Windows to find and install all of the sub-devices that make up the VMS4, about 30 seconds. No problem there. I opened the ASIO Settings application and the VMS4 was listed.
So I held my breath and started VirtualDJ. Oop, had to enter the serial number.
Did that, held my breath again and clicked OK, and this time it started without a problem. Breathed a sigh of relief. (For balance, I installed VDJ on my Mac and the VMS4 performed flawlessly The bundled version of VirtualDJ, upon seeing the VMS4 attached, switches into a VMS4-specific mode which automatically uses the unit's audio outputs (no audio configuration is even possible in this mode) and changes its appearance to that of an on-screen VMS4, with all controls ready to go. You can't ask for an easier setup process than that. Plug-and-play at its best. The controls all do as they're labeled on the VMS4's face (except that VDJ uses only 4 hot cues, not 8 as labeled on the face plate) and VirtualDJ does everything beat-aligned by default, so it's easy to just start it up and make a good sounding mix with tasteful use of loops, loop rolls (using the /2 and.2 buttons,) hot cues, effects and samples, provided the BPM detection works correctly.
The software comes with a few decent effects and samples (including the obligatory air-raid siren) and the sampler will even match its tempo to the deck you're currently manipulating & follow your pitch slider movements. Having everything beat-aligned can be a problem, however, if the BPM detection is wrong, and it was for me even on many typical 4-on-the-floor commercial dance music tracks. (It seemed to be slightly too low and never got the correct downbeat.) So the beat-timed effects were slightly too slow, smart loops were slightly too long (I had much better success turning off the smarts & setting them myself,) and every time I triggered a beat-aligned looped sample, it was always slightly skewed and I found myself frantically looking for a 'sample nudge' dial that isn't there. (The situation didn't improve with a sample I recorded myself either.) I did discover that if I started a looped sample while playing a loop I manually aligned to the real beat,) the sampler would repeatedly crop as needed to try to stay in time, which is a nice touch but of course no substitute for rock-solid BPM detection.
Scratching performance with the VMS4 in VirtualDJ is good for most uses, but it didn't handle scribbling the best (the track drifted quite a bit when I went really fast.) It does have a nifty backspin effect though in that you can fling the wheel and the track will keep going backwards with the wheel despite lifting your hand, and when the wheel stops, the track resumes its normal forward speed. While trying to figure out the problems with VirtualDJ and waiting on American Audio's technical support, I tested with Mixxx, since there's now a 'Mixxx certified' VMS4 mapping included with v1.9.2. With it too, the controls all do as they're labeled on the VMS4's face, though the Effect section controls Mixxx's lone flanger effect and there are no 'smart' loops or samplers in Mixxx 1.9. The basic looping and 4 hot cues work as expected, and the touch strips are used for needle-dropping, which is quite handy and a nice addition over the VirtualDJ mapping (which doesn't seem to use them for anything.) The scratching performance is actually better in Mixxx than VDJ too in that I could easily do scribbles, though still with a little sticker drift, but that's not a fault of the controller.
Speaking of scratching, I have to say that American Audio really nailed the feel of the jog wheels in my opinion. Being made of metal, there's a risk of them being too heavy, but the VMS4's have just enough mass to have good inertia on backspins, yet are nimble enough such that fast scratching is pleasant and fun. Since the wheels are are touch-sensitive, there are transparent silicone rings on the rims to allow you to pitch-bend, nudge or jog without triggering scratching or having to constantly switch back and forth with a button. Another good decision, since I always find myself needing to immediately nudge a track I just scratched into the mix. My only (admittedly minor) complaint with the wheels is the grooved surface: since I tend to press a bit hard when scratching, the grooves can become uncomfortable after awhile.
A tighter groove pitch might have been more comfortable, but that shouldn't be a big issue in practice unless you're spending your whole gig scratching. Also, the unit's built-in fader-start got annoying since it's apparently hard-wired to the cross-fader, so even though I was cross-fading between two computer channels, the pulses still went out and toggled my CD decks, which isn't so good when you have them connected to mixer channels that aren't assigned to the cross-fader and whose line faders are up. A couple of fader-start disable switches would've been nice. One thing to be aware of is that by default, the VMS4's gain and EQ knobs work on the computer audio internally, just like an analog mixer. (The manual calls this 'Pre EQ mode'.) This means that if the software maps the knobs too, they will be applied doubly (once in the software, once in the VMS4,) possibly messing up the sound and causing it to clip easily. The user manual describes how to toggle this: just hold down channel 4's CUE button while powering on.
(Unfortunately it doesn't also change the volume faders.) The mapping in Mixxx assumes this 'Post EQ' mode, while VirtualDJ assumes the default Pre EQ mode. Which is better is a matter of preference, but one advantage I can see to using Post EQ mode (with software EQ) is that you can adjust the frequency ranges for each knob in the software, as the hardware offers no such adjustments. In any case, the VMS4 remembers this setting between power-ups so once you set it, you don't have to worry about it again unless you change software.
Naturally, if you flip a channel to analog, the EQ and Gain knobs work as usual. (A nice touch for software vendors would be to check the position of this switch and not react if it's set to Analog, since the VMS4 always sends MIDI messages for the knobs regardless.) Audio Channel Choice The only other price-conscious concession I could find was the 4-out/8-out switch. It appears that the built-in sound interface chipset is limited to ten simultaneous (mono) audio channels. Since the VMS4 has 14 physical audio channels, ADJ had to decide between using a much more expensive chipset to satisfy the few gear-heads that want to use absolutely everything at once, or give us a selector switch and a lower unit price. I think they made a wise decision. So it works like this: when you have it set to 4-out (and 4-in,) the computer sees two stereo outputs and two stereo inputs, both on the center two mixer channels, 2 & 3.
This is the mode you would use for vinyl control and it gives you two stereo outputs from the computer to mix with the remaining two analog channels and mics. If you instead set the switch to 8-out (and 2-in,) the computer sees four stereo outputs for 3+ deck software (mixer channels 1-4) but just one stereo input from the mixer's Master bus (for recording.) Since the VMS4 mixes digitally internally, the recording will contain everything you send to the Master output, even the analog sources.
And remember that you can switch any of the channels to analog at any time, so you can still mix in records, CDs or portable players when you're not using one of the software decks. If this isn't enough to satisfy you, then you're looking in the wrong price range. (On that note, it would be interesting to know what price a 10-in X 12-out 'Studio Edition' would be since I am one of the aforementioned gear-heads and do like to have options.) The unit needs to be power-cycled for the switch change to take effect, so you won't be able to jockey back and forth mid-show, unfortunately.
In Conclusion The VMS4 is a great choice for those looking to ease into controllers due to its per-channel-switchable integrated analog mixer. While said mixer has no frills and is a bit lacking in the headroom department, it gets the job done and allows you to keep playing analog sources if your computer acts up. It's also great for mobile gigs where the two microphone inputs are essential, and you can inject songs into your set from portable music players (which can be a lifesaver at weddings.) It performs solidly as a controller, with enough buttons and knobs to control all of the functions you want quick-access to, and the high-resolution pitch sliders and jog wheels give you precision where it counts. Its all-metal construction is road-worthy and should last a long time if treated well.