Introduction
DJs are a conservative lot, so so when Tonium’s Pacemaker hit the shelves the cries of alarm, anger and consternation were loud and unrelenting in their scorn.
Here was a company with no discernible pedigree in the world of DJing that didn’t just eschew the established DJing convention of evolution in favour of revolution, they were proud enough to declare it too.
No spinning wheels? A touch sensitive crossfader? Two decks and an effects laden mixer crammed into a unit the size of a Leprechaun’s Y-fronts? They were always going to upset people. And yet, if you’re open minded enough to overlook the lack of a Pro X-Fader and tone-arm, the Pacemaker has a lot to recommend it.
Controls
Weighing somewhere in between a Gameboy and Simon Cowell’s wallet, the Pacemaker packs two decks, a two channel mixer, an effects module and a hard disk recorder in an object no larger than an 80s cell phone. Everything you could do with a traditional set-up you can do with a Pacemaker, via 8 push buttons, a circular touch pad and a 1.7”(diameter) screen.
There are four transport controls: fast forward, fast reverse, play/pause and cue. Only one set of transport controls is required, as two separate push buttons switch between the two channels.
On the left-hand side of the Pacemaker is a switch (the p-switch) that when engaged in either the ‘up’ or ‘down’ position causes the other controls to perform a different function. When the switch is engaged in the up position, for example, the fast forward and fast reverse buttons can be used to set loop in and out points, with the cue button being used to exit the loop. As a further example, with the switch in the down position the crossfader can be used to mix the cue signals for the headphones.
The circular touch pad is used to traverse the Pacemaker’s menuing system, adjust EQ and effects parameters, and select tracks. When traversing menus the touchpad demands strict vertical and horizontal finger strokes to make selections, and this does take some getting used to due to the urge to make sweeping, circular motions, as you would with an iPod.
Somewhat confusingly, the opposite is true when adjusting EQs.
To change the bass frequencies of a track, for example, you must start with your finger in the centre of the touchpad, drag it down vertically to engage the bass adjust screen and then sweep you finger one quarter of the way around the perimeter of the touchpad, either left or right to increase or decrease the bass frequencies respectively.
To momentarily adjust the speed of a track, so as to keep beats in sync, you sweep your finger across the entire perimeter of the touchpad either clockwise or anti-clockwise. To adjust the BPM of a track as if with a pitch slider you must engage the p-switch and sweep your finger across the perimeter of the touchpad.
Confused? You will be, especially if your fingers are more used to pushing platters and faders than thin air. And yet, within a couple of hours, you adjust to the Pacemaker and can pull off credible blends and mixes without effort.
Mixing
Although you can conceivably drop all manner of bombs with a Pacemaker, it is geared more towards the Electronic Dance Music crowd than fans of hip-hop and this is reflected in the crossfader and deck controls.
As it’s only a two channel affair, all that is required to blend two tracks is movement from one side of the touch-sensitive crossfader to the other. One understandable fear when using a touch-sensitive crossfader is the ease with which it can be accidentally moved, but this doesn’t happen with the Pacemaker, probably due to the deep recess into which it’s been placed.
The crossfader possesses only one curve, although it does feature some digital assistance in the form of two effects:- Bass and Filter.
There will be many for whom the lack of an emulated TTM56 or DJM909 crossfader is a cardinal sin so severe it can only be punished with loud tutting and a 10 hour scratch solo, but why implement a sophisticated crossfader when the decks are limited to forward movement and pitch bending?
As mentioned above, increasing a track’s BPM for the duration of a track and momentarily, to pitch bend, are controlled in the same way, by sweeping your finger around the perimeter of the touch-pad, albeit one action requires the use of the p-switch. This system works well and beats can be brought into sync quickly, making fast transitions from one track to another easy.
To assist the beat-matching process the Pacemaker features a ‘beat graph’ which shows the mismatch in phasing between two tracks, in a similar fashion to the phase meter seen in Traktor.
Although, unlike Traktor’s phase meter, the Pacemaker’s beat graph is an innacurate and unreliable tool – unless the two tracks have a highly discernible 4/4 kick.
As an example, you can have two tracks in perfect sync as testified by the beat graph, but if one track reaches a breakdown the beat graph will fluctuate wildly, even though the beats are audibly in sync with each other.
The beat graph isn’t unforgiveably dire but as with most things in DJing – use your ears rather than your eyes, especially if you plan on purchasing a Pacemaker to learn the craft.
The beat graph can be switched off in the Pacemaker’s settings screen if proves too distracting.
Cueing
The cueing system itself switches between vinyl-style cueing and CDJ.
In both instances the track must be paused to set a cue point as pressing the cue button whilst it is playing will redirect you to the last known cue point.
When set to vinyl cueing the track can be scrubbed back and forth until you find your cue point, somewhat unsurprisingly like finding a cue point on a record.
In CDJ mode the track stutters a frame of sound at the point at which the track is paused, supposedly affording greater accuracy.
Sadly, only one cue point can be set and even that cannot be committed to persistent memory. Nor is it a hot cue, meaning that a press of the cue button will return a track to the cue point and cease playback, unlike a hotcue which will instantly start playback from the cue point and can be used to good effect.
One transient cue point is better than none, but the Pacemaker is crying out for three or more hot cues per channel, persistent cue point storage and real-time setting of cue points.
Sound quality
The quality of sound pumped out by the Pacemaker could never be described as audiophile. It has a slightly tinny quality to it, it’s a little flat and it lacks warmth. Not to the point where you’d throw the unit to the floor in disgust and listen to a Nokia ringtone instead, it’s just that the sound quality doesn’t lend itself to pro use and the EQs do little to remedy this.
For a hand-held unit the sound is perfectly adequate and can be likened to a first generation iPod Nano, but when in the mix the Pacemaker did drop or stutter the odd beat, presumably due to a drained audio stream, and at times the tracks did sound as if they had a flanger effect applied even though they didn’t.
Is it adequate for pub/club use? Well, the Pacemeker could definitely rock your local boozer as most pubs and some bars are content to play music from an elderly laptop with an AC97 soundcard, so the Pacemaker would be a step up.
Certainly, there’s no technical reason why you couldn’t run a Pacemaker through a large PA system but it would exacerbate the problems noted above and the audio signal would be transmitted through unbalanced 3.5mm jacks.
Nor is the output signal particularly powerful, even at full volume.
Outputs
The way in which audio is output from the Pacemaker is dependent on how you use it. If you use the internal mixer then the master signal is output through one 3.5mm jack with the other used for headphone monitoring.
If you use the Pacemaker with an external mixer then both jacks are used, with each jack transmitting the signal of one deck.
The latter method would be an exciting glimpse into the future of Pacemaker-style devices were it not for the fact that it disables effects, looping, pitch shifting and cueing – all essential elements for mixing.
Music is transferred onto the Pacemaker via a USB cable using the included Editor software, as described later.
That really is it as far as Pacemaker I/O is concerned, just two 3.5mm jacks and a USB socket, which will no doubt disappoint the type of gear geek for whom no sight is sexier than the back end of a mixer, except perhaps the naked form of an FHM cover girl getting intimate with 12 inches of plastic. With the Pacemaker it’s all about the beauty within.
Effects and EQs
The Pacemaker boasts the typical three band EQ system seen on most DJ mixers and either shaves 26dB off a frequency band or boosts it by 6dB. There is also a gain control which somewhat confusingly offers the same level of cut and boost as the tone controls. Surely there should be a symmetrical level of cut and boost for the gain control?
Tone and gain controls are activated by swiping a finger from the centre of the touchpad to one of the four compass points. You can then move your finger clockwise or anti-clockwise to increase or decrease the tone.
The effects are accessed in a similar fashion (except that the p-switch must be held in the up position).
And what a pant-wettingly upfront selection of effects they are. The pacemaker boasts no less than 9 effects, the cohort comprised of Delay, Transformer, Reverb, Echo, Roll, Hi-Lo filter, Crush, Wah, Key Adjuster, all the effects beloved of mix DJs, all of which will be familiar to anyone that has used a Pioneer mixer in recent years.
Every single one of them is a credible effect with no shock increases in volume, interruptions in playback or degradation of sound quality. The roll effect is particularly slick in its performance and you can quickly cut the sampled beats into and out of the track as it plays.
Better still, effects can be simultaneously engaged to create some truly abstract noises. When effects are no longer needed they can be instantly cancelled with the ‘kill all’ button, although for some reason this button doesn’t cancel the Key Adjust effect.
Speaking of key Adjust, it might actually be a useful effect if it wasn’t for the unintentional echo effect it introduces when put to use.
Each effect features a dry/wet control and nearly all of them feature a time control which is accessed by double swiping from the centre of the touchpad to the relevant compass point and it might just be the over-sized digits or inherent clumsiness of this reviewer, but this is where the limitations of the Pacemaker’s control system are reached.
Engaging the time control can take a couple of attempts and, worse still, it’s all too easy to adjust the BPM of a track when trying to engage an effect, with disastrous consequences if mid-mix.
One false move and your set morphs from hip-hop to happy hardcore. These control problems don’t inspire confidence and makes you reluctant to use the Pacemaker as a primary performance tool.
Screen
The Pacemaker’s dimunitive screen is 1.7” (diameter) of luminescent magic.
The sharp contrast between colours and their black backgound aids the eye rather than tires it and the Pacemaker’s interface engineers have made the best use of the small screen size. There is no clutter, no superfluous elements and screen changes are made with an elegant fluidity.
One element of the interface that is missing – and something most will look forward to seeing in the next incarnation – is a waveform display for each channel, with a progress indicator denoting the current position of the track.
Editor Software
Within the entry level Pacemaker is a 60GB hard drive, a paltry figure for a laptop but a mammoth amount of space on which to store nothing but music.
But if you’re expecting to plug the Pacemaker into your PC and drag and drop those sonic bombs onto the Pacemaker you’ll be disappointed, especially once you’ve booted up the included Editor software.
Yes, the Pacemaker can function as a regular portable hard disk but to use it as Tonium intended you must transfer all your tracks via Editor, a tune transferral application that also doubles as basic mix software.
Unless you transfer tracks with Editor you won’t be able to spin them. Within Editor you can create playlists, export recorded mixes and browse your music library. It need only exist to serve that purpose but for some unknown reason, probably novelty value, Tonium have seen fit to include a panel onto which waveforms can be thrown in an effort to blend them together harmoniously, along with a smattering of effects.
Why you’d want to waste time with Editor when you have a Pacemaker in your hands is a mystery, especially since the colour scheme of dark fonts on a dark background makes the use of Editor such a miserable experience.
It might look ‘cool’ but an unintelligible interface is an unusable interface.
Connections in High Places
The Pacemaker is a revolutionary all-in-one product and unashamedly so, but one industry alliance does exist in the form of Pioneer and their next-generation multi-format player, the MEP-7000.
When Editor imports tracks it scatters them around the Pacemaker’s filesystem and whilst this might be efficient it makes searching for tracks an absolute nightmare, but by ticking a check-box in Editor that reads ‘MEP-7000 Compatibility’ you can play tracks from the Pacemaker’s library and use it to record loop and cue point data.
You can also search for tracks via artist name, album title, et cetera or search for tracks by tapping a string of characters into the MEP.
This means that you can practice your mix and set cue/loop points using your home MEP and Pacemaker, travel lightly across town with only your headphones, the Pacemaker and self-doubt weighing you down, and then perform your set in the club flawlessly without the need to re-set loop points or search for CDs in a darkened DJ booth. As the Pacemaker is hub-powered it’ll continue to play tunes long after the MEP’s been switched off.
Using the Pacemaker in this manner has the added benefit of freeing you from a laptop screen to study the crowd and concetrate on the music.
Admittedly, in comparison to first contact with alien life or exchanging bodily fluids with a rabid polar bear the above sounds unspectacular, but the exciting aspect is not the interaction itself but what it represents: All the benefits that computer technology brings with none of the hassles.
The Pacemaker-MEP connectivity may be rudimentary but it paves the way for future generations of Pacemakers as laptop replacements, dedicated hand-held Traktors into which you can plug Evo 5/4D-esque controllers.
Surely this kind of integration is inevitable?
Conclusion
So will the Pacemaker replace two wheels and a mixer? No.
Not because it isn’t a well engineered, brilliantly executed bit of kit but because of all the inherent quirks of control and the limited, sequential way in which you must carry out basic operations.
With the traditional set-up there’s no impediment to tweaking an EQ whilst simultaneously pushing a fader and using a foot switch to engage effects. With the Pacemaker you must do one, then the other and that does impact on the quality of mixes you produce.
A further, more subjective, criticism is that mixing with a Pacemaker is a bit clinical in comparison with a traditional set-up. It's all a bit too easy and even though one can marvel at the technical brilliance of the Pacemaker it doesn’t offer the the thrill, excitement and sense of achievement you get from using two wheels and a mixer.
But as a supplementary device and iPod replacement it has no equal.
There is also no reason why mobile jocks shouldn’t have a Pacemaker about their person, especially given the aforementioned MEP-7000 connectivity.
If you need a portable music source or want a relatively inexpensive means of dipping your toe into the warm waters of DJing, but don’t want a VCM-100 or BCD3000 style controller, then the Pacemaker could be for you.
Ratings
Build Quality
Any fears of toy-like plasticity are completely misplaced. The Pacemaker has a reassuring solidity about it and although light it’s heavy enough to remain in your hands when engaged in frantic use.
Sound Quality
Not audiophile by any means, more akin to an iPod, but good enough for personal use and small parties. Audio drop-outs and stutters do occur, as does a weird flanger effect.
Features and Implementation
Slick interface, slick controls, slick features make a slick, cohesive unit that does exactly what it promises to do without tantrum or issue, something of a rarity these days. Top marks to Tonium.
Value for money
It’s now retailing at £299 which is a more justifiable price. The Pacemaker has no competition so it’ll retail for whatever people are willing to pay.
Highs:
Bright, colourful, well-designed interface
Many Killer Effects
Ability to output channels to an external mixer
MEP-7000 connectivity
Lows:
Over-sensitive touchpad
Editor software
Audio drop-outs and stutters
No hot cues or persistent cue storage
No bundled power adaptor
Bottom Line
The Pacemaker isn’t a replacement for two decks and a mixer – yet.
It is, however, a great way of practicing your set in private or on the move.
