Virtual DJ actually has very good waveforms, one for each track overlaid on each other in red and blue, and that was always one of the reasons I preferred it over Traktor, but Serato’s are better.
I didn’t realise how much I’d come to love having Serato’s twin waveforms, big, chunky and in full colour to show the sound spectrum, to show me what’s coming in the next few seconds on my tracks. (With ITCH, the waveform – think the way tracks are shown on SoundCloud – has different colours for bass, mid and treble frequencies.) Virtual DJ was my preferred DJ software for years, but I have to say that against Serato ITCH, it loses out for me. Hercules 1, Serato 0…) Virtual DJ 6 vs Serato ITCH The Vestax VCI-300 is made to control Serato’s Itch software
(By the way, you can also plug decks or CD mixers into it too.
As, like the VCI-300, it has a built-in sound card (don’t expect pro quality but it’s OK), this means you can be up and DJing on a piece of kit that doesn’t make you look like you’re playing with a toy for a small outlay, and in that sense I’d recommend it to anyone thinking of dabbling in digital DJing but who doesn’t want to commit more funds. However, I have to say it does everything you need and it is great value for money.
As befits a piece of hardware that you can get complete with bundled Virtual DJ for a third of the price, it just feels cheaper and less precise. There’s no spinning back or scratching on it (well, there is, but you won’t do it twice) as opposed to the Vestax which is great in this respect with its responsive, clever dual-purpose platters and high-resolution Midi. The jog wheels are horrible to use against those on the Vestax, and the Hercules has one or two bad design faults – for instance, the kills (which, by the way, I miss terribly on the Vestax) aren’t lit, so there’s no visual way of knowing when they’re on – but after an hour it was perfectly usable and I played my best set in that particular venue for a while on the thing, so thumbs up there. It is heavy, aluminium, and the buttons are built to last. Some thoughts on the Hercules RMX – It’s actually well made like the Vestax VCI-300, if clunky. The controls don’t send any Midi information until you use them though, so when I moved the master volume slightly, it jumped up in volume about ten-fold – a little scary but quickly corrected! Hercules RMX vs Vestax VCI-300 It isn’t anywhere near as intuitive as the Vestax VCI-300 / Serato ITCH combination, which isn’t surprising as that’s a custom pairing, but it was OK. Having hit the config and set it up for the Hercules, it actually worked pretty much straight away. I turned up at the venue half an hour early to give myself time for a quick practise, booted up Virtual DJ (it’s my backup DJ software anyway, but I haven’t used it for months), downloaded and installed the Hercules RMX drivers, and plugged it in. I thought I’d post a few thoughts after my first night using this equipment. The Hercules RMX: A third of the price of the Vestax VCI-300, and well built to boot.ĭue to my usual Vestax VCI-300 being off to the service centre for some TLC, I find myself currently using a borrowed Hercules DJ Console RMX controller using Virtual DJ 6 rather than my preferred Vestax VCI-300 / Serato ITCH setup.