Numark AXIS 9 Tabletop DJ CD Player

Feature:
EFFECTS, this item has a lot of effects that can be very useful in a gig. also can lock the key to mix various ranges of bpm's and can go to a pitch change to 25. Well worth the money

Quality:
other then the pitch control tab this thing is a tank

Value:
Probably the best deal in cd turntables out there

Desirability:
they have enought lighting to make them appeal to the masses

Sound:
Sound great no problems with anything sound wise. all that matters is the cd the player gets it perfectly

Ease of Use:
straight forward with alot of differnt options 4 different scratch modes

Support:
Drivers for updates are all online and simple

Overall:
Great deal and very comparable to a PIONEER cdj and for the price it is unbeatable

Feature:
The only thing it doesn't have is a sampler, and Numark has that built in to some of their mixers.

Quality:
Early units off the production lines had problems. All newer production units and B-Stock of the Axis 8/9 units should be perfect. ALWAYS CALIBRATE YOUR UNITS WHEN YOU FIRST TURN THEM ON. This will realign the lasers, platter, and pitch slider.

Value:
The best values on the market. If you want total vinyl emulation the CDX and X2 should do the trick for a higher price.

Desirability:
People bash Numark because they put out so much stuff and tend to design to price brackets much of the time. It doesn't help that they tend not to have a very good beta test staff who miss a lot. I can name about a dozen different design misteps or minor defects in various of their products off the top of my head that any beta tester who was worth their weight would have caught. They also make crummy tonearms. But sometimes they make products that are true technical marvels for the price. This is one of them. The "Numark" name might bother some people, but when I see it it gives me a feeling of flying by the seat of my paints. Some times you crash and burn, but other times it's a blast.

Sound:
With key correction off they're the best sounding CD players on the market. A close second are the slighty gray-sounding Denons. The Pioneer CDJ1000 has superior key hold when you pitch in the negative direction, but that's it.

Ease of Use:
The Axis series are miracles of ergonomics. Part of the reason for having CDs on hand is if you're in a hurry and you need to mix a track in quickly, which takes a bit longer with vinyl for me.

Support:
Numark has excellent support and there's been more firmware upgrades for their CD players than any on the market. My only complaint is that when the Axis series was young it had a lot of problems. I went though 9 units and 1 additional repair before Numark and I had ironed out most of the defects. But my pain is your gain.

Overall:
I just don't see the point of more expensive units. If you scratch CDs, get a CDX for almost half the price of a Pioneer. Who key holds when they pitch down anyway? The real use of key hold is pitching up, and this does that fine. One of the biggest problems with the CD revolution in clubs is that a lot of jocks now are spinning exclusively in CD and the Pioneers have become a sort of standard. A standard that costs twice as much per deck as a Technics 1200, let alone the price of a $220 Audio Technica AT-PL120 budget table (good gear, by the way). It's just a CD player. The reason the Pioneers have not dropped in price is because they became a standard and quite simply Pioneer can charge whatever they want. No thanks. By the way, learning an Axis series decks will give you essentially the exact same skills you'd get if you were on Pioneers at home. By the way, I own the Axis 8's. They're the exact same thing but without the touch sensitivity or the ability to double up on effects.