American Audio MXR-Series DJ Mixer/Controllers
American Audio has just announced their new line of MXR-Series DJ Mixer-Controllers that are soon to be released to the Digital DJ market. The new MXR-Series Mixer/Controllers come in three different flavors in order to fit many different DJ styles which include the 10 MXR (10-inch, 2-channel), the 14 MXR (14-inch 4-channel), and the 19 MXR (19-inch, 4-channel Rackmount). All of the faders and knobs are MIDI-mappable to the DJ software of your choice and they come bundled with Virtual DJ LE straight out of the box.
The MXR-Series mixers all feature full 4-in/4-out high-quality internal soundcards so that DJ's can easily plug in two vinyl turntables or CD decks with timecode control to playback the the digital files on the computer software. This will work nicely for DJ's with Virtual DJ, Mixvibes, and others but as usual, don't expect it to work with Traktor or Serato as they require proprietary soundcards in order to work with timecode control. However, DJ's can map the mixer buttons, knobs, and faders to Traktor or Serato for standalone playback. It is of worthy note that the 4-channel MXR series mixer-controllers only have a 4-in and 4-out soundcard so you won't be able to run timecode playback for four decks simultaneously unless another soundcard is added. They could have done this with an 8-in and 8-out soundcard in those models, but the price would have been much higher for the end user.
The MXR-Series looks to have pretty good solid construction, 3-Band full-kill EQ, and a high/low pass filter knob for each individual line on the mixer. All three of the mixers have programmable MIDI buttons which can be set to any function the DJ sees fit. By default, these MIDI buttons look to be 3-hotcue points, play/pause buttons, and the highly debated Sync button along with a shift button to layer the functions. A cool twist is the inclusion of a Browse Knob in the middle of each MXR-Series Mixer-Controller along with four navigation buttons which will make it easy to navigate to the correct files at the right time.
The MXR-Series mixers also feature fully user-replaceable crossfaders with crossfader curve control and reverse on the 2-channel mixer or crossfader assign on the 4-channel versions. These faders can be replaced for Innofaders as the publications say that they are fully Innofader Compatible which is good news to DJ's on a budget who still need a really scratchworthy fader.
As it stands, the (MSRP) price of the 14 MXR and 19 MXR is $420 which will probably be closer to $399 as the street price and there is no list price for the 10 MXR but I suspect it will be around the $299 mark. Check out the new release videos and press release for each model below and stay tuned for our review once we get one of these bad boys from AA...
