Pioneer CDJ-2000NXS2 DJ Review

[Chr1]

I'd bet the sound is better at a lot of clubs than gig venues these days actually. Especially when it comes to deep bass.
SOTA nightclub sound systems have to be able to play it. Not so relevant with other genres.

 

[Harryharryharry]

+1 to more DJ kit review please? Lots of DJs care about sound quality but there's very little objective discussion it's all subjective.

 

[Chr1]

Same with most "performance" stuff I would bet. Be it for use with guitars, CDs/Flacs or whatever.

 

[Somafunk]

I've never thought anyone really cared about sound quality of DJ equipment. Every time I've been to an event with a DJ, the quality of everything has been terrible. Ten

You’ve been to the wrong events and hung around with the wrong DJ’s, we specifically chose funktion one for our events/festivals and built up a great year to relationship with the funktion one sound engineers who operated the mixing/sound desks.

Same for clubs, Soundhaus in Glasgow had an amazing sound system, so did SubClub in Glasgow with its subsonic floor for extra bass reinforcement - voted top ten club in the world for years n’ years. Same goes for the Arches in Glasgow and the numerous pre-club bars or the bars nowadays who all have excellent specifically tuned systems.

 

[isostasy]

Good to see something a bit different reviewed! I've recently begun a quest for a Pioneer CDJ-500S, one of the earliest CDJs, as I am too lazy to rip my CDs to adjust pitch and tempo digitally for learning songs.

I think it looks great in that boxy plastic 80s way that reminds me of car interiors of that era and Sony Discman players etc. Though far less sophisticated than the reviewed unit.

 

[NielsMayer]

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[Rusk Reeder]

A good review. I found your measurement of distortion at 20khz particularly insightful. Ken Pohlman, when he tested CD players for CD Review back in the 90s, used to measure distortion at 15 kHz, as well as other frequencies. The best that he could get was about 1 to 2% distortion, with many players measuring 5 to 10%. I belive thatvincluding some such measurement in the future might be helpful. It might separate the great ones from the also rans.

 

[amirm]

I belive thatvincluding some such measurement in the future might be helpful.

This is a measurement i perform on every DAC.

 

[NTTY]

The sharp increase even in the good channel above 10 kHz was puzzling to me, causing me to run a bunch more tests. First was to run a wideband FFT at 1 and 20 kHz:
View attachment 476146

Clearly something strange is going on at 20 kHz. Somehow the noise floor goes down but massive amount of sidebands appear.

It looks like ASRC (or interpolator) overload.
An intersamples over test would quickly confirm. I can send the files, if you still have the item.

 

[Nicoff]

Talking as someone who enjoys deejaying as a hobby at home:
- Pioneer DJ equipment is pretty much the standard. You will find their equipment in just about any venue.
- DJs do not bring their own equipment to the venue (see above)
- DJs carry their music in a thumb drive. (They don’t carry CDs)
- Most DJs use Rekordbox (software) to prepare their playlists; however Serato is also used.
- lower priced equipment requires a computer (laptop) connected to the controller (the software runs in the computer).
- higher priced equipment does not need a computer; just plug in your thumb drive and you are ready to go.
- Pioneer sold the Pioneer DJ line (as well as Rekordbox and Serato software) to private equity in the last couple of years. (Not everyone is happy with the change)
- The newer equipment can use FLAC or MP3 files; however the older equipment can only work with MP3 files.
- Most DJs do care about the sound, and try to avoid low bitrate tracks. However, there are a lot of tracks that are only available in low bitrate MP3.

 

[fcracer]

The worst music quality of reproduction I’ve ever listened to was…in discotheque…there music is way too loud, tonally wrong, with so much noise from other customers. So, I guess, it is a box way above the quality required in discos, in spite of its poor measurements. Thank you Amir for an excellent review.

Conversely, some of the best sound I’ve ever heard was at Stereo Nightclub in Montreal. The dynamics and clear sound, even at very high SPL were astounding. I could hold a conversation with someone because there was no distortion.

I searched and found a Reddit user who had some insight on the sound system: https://www.reddit.com/r/Techno/s/cl6nLvth6b

 

[ocinn]

As someone who’s entire career is building designing and tuning large scale PA and club systems which are driven by these players, none of the measured flaws here would matter at all for their use case, as the ambient noise floor of the venue, noise floor of the amps and such, and distortion of the amps and speakers absolutely dwarf even the bad channel here.

The biggest differentiation between a good sounding club/EDM event and a bad one is just system/room design, placement, tuning. Any of the “big 3” (Meyer, L’A, D&B) deployed and tuned correctly will sound fantastic. No one is going to be able to remotely hear the difference between -80db THD+N from the CDJ and -120db THD+N.

Also, when used with digital mixers, these are connected via spdif coax, and skips the D/A step entirely. Good systems engineers will pull the digital output of the mixer and convert it to AES (RDL HR-UDC1, or Hosa CDL-313) , and then feed that into an AES card in the consoles stagebox.


The shows I work on are 100% digital from the usb drive to the amplifiers, with exceptions for vinyl DJs or analog mixers.

 

[Gremlins]

See no point in testing this kind of equipment on this site. Just like the "3125b" wrote above, who exactly goes to a club with all the noise and alcohol and laughters and screams to listen for "hifi" quality music?
And who is going to notice "distortion at 20khz" in a club
No criticism here just see no point in testing this sort of gear.

At some point, the end use or all equipment is listening music that provides emotions..not listening gear

 

[Severian]

I've never thought anyone really cared about sound quality of DJ equipment. Every time I've been to an event with a DJ, the quality of everything has been terrible. Ten years ago my class organized a reunion. I offered to advise and supply the highest quality music wherever possible. Nobody listened to me but instead, a classmate's relative was paid to DJ with MP3 files on a notebook and some cheap powered satellite speakers. It was awful.

on the contrary, there is a significant subculture in electronic music that not only places sound quality at the forefront, but is on the bleeding edge of speaker design/engineering

look up some of the stuff happening with DIY multiple-entry horn designs. that's all coming from DJ culture

 

[nagster]

It looks like ASRC (or interpolator) overload.

Yes, that was one of the bad outcomes.

N

Post in thread 'Review of DJ equipment?'

Mar 6, 2025

Measurements of Pioneer DJ / CDJ-2000 NXS2 and CDJ-3000 playing an inter-sample test signal.
The test signal was generated by Multitone Analyzer @pkane. An RME / ADI-2 DAC was added for comparison.

• nagster

• 

 

[JeremyFife]

Great to see something like this reviewed - awesome looking thing - thank you

Terrible DAC!

It's not a DAC though, and I have no way of knowing what else is going on under the hood that might explain the behaviour. It's not HiFi, but I'd love a pair

 

[Waxx]

I've never thought anyone really cared about sound quality of DJ equipment. Every time I've been to an event with a DJ, the quality of everything has been terrible. Ten years ago my class organized a reunion. I offered to advise and supply the highest quality music wherever possible. Nobody listened to me but instead, a classmate's relative was paid to DJ with MP3 files on a notebook and some cheap powered satellite speakers. It was awful.

Some care, others not. But there is a whole scene of diy PA rigs that are often booked for good sound and who use advanced modern engineered setups. For some clubs and festivals the soundsystem used is also mentioned on the advertisment as they are an act on their own. Some are tuned to a specific sound (most known are the reggae sounsystems, but they are by far not the only one), some are just clean good engineered setups. The picture is such a system (part of it) called Sinai Sound (UK). They play themselves heavy UK dub and oldskool style dubstep, but this rig is also rented out for all bass driven music (and more) and toured the whole Europe this summer for festivals. The people sitting on it are the owner and his wife.

 

[Audioagnostic]

This is cool to see!
I am rotating the predecessor of this thing, cdj1000mk3, as CD player in my living room.
Using Digital out. It is a very nice toy, making loops, playing metal CDs backwards to discover hidden messages...
Very well built solid thing as well.