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Hercules Mobile DJ MP3: It Got No Strings To Hold Me Down

June 17, 2008

With the new Hercules Mobile DJ MP3, DJ control has never been so wireless. Though not professional grade in functionality, this little piece will at least mysteriously liven up a party and service all of your explosion sound effect needs from afar.

Bill Holland takes an initial look at the controller and the corresponding software in this video. At a street price of a magical $99.00, you can afford to give up your health insurance and buy a new Mobile DJ every month, because when it comes down to it, health insurance is imaginary.

Visit Hercules' official website for more information

Presenter: Bill Holland, Gearwire

Location: Gearwire Studio -- Chicago, IL

J. Irving-Giles is a writer / editor for Gearwire

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Story Transcription:

BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I'm Bill Holland, and I'm looking at the Hercules Mobile MP3 DJ. Now, the controller layout's pretty simple. You got your two decks here, your A deck and your B deck, you've got your jog shuttles which essentially serve as turntables in this situation, crossfader, level controls or pitch controls. They can be changed up with the pitch button here, a sync controller, four effects presets that you can set yourself, including putting in your own samples, so if you want an air horn in the middle of the song, you can go all flustered on the song and do that. There's a 2" stretch button and you've got deck A monitoring info, music, playlist, hold jobs, library button, and deck B monitoring info along with cue buttons and play/pause buttons. And in case you're feeling lazy, as if this didn't do enough work for you already, there's an auto-mix button.

One of the severe downsides to this product is the required use of two C batteries, no optional power supply or bus-operated USB port. Everything is wireless, which is good in the sense that it's a wireless controller but not good if you're looking to actually use it in a sort of normal capacity. If you run out of C batteries, you're up to creep without a paddle.

So, now that you've seen the controller, let's go take a look at the mixing interface and how to mix using the Hercules Mobile DJ MP3 player. So, firsrt off, you're looking at the layout here. You'll notice the faders here apply to both the pitch control and the volume control, and if you hit pitch you'll see that it actually controls my pitch, and if I hit it again it'll take me back to volume. You want to be careful with this because I found myself slipping. And unlike Serato or Traktor, you can't lock this. So, this is actually not just a pitch shifter. It’s also a tempo shifter, and you can lock it. If you go to key lock, you can lock it to stay in the same key. Here, let me play a loop real quick.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYS BACK LOOP USING THE HERCULES MOBILE DJ MP3]

See, you can lock the key but you can't actually lock the tempo and change the pitch, so that is good to know if you're trying to do that. However, you can change up the pitch on the fly.

[BILL HOLLAND PLAYS BACK LOOP USING THE HERCULES MOBILE DJ MP3]

But it changes the tempo as well. So, notice I'm using the play/pause button here. I can also cue from the beginning by hitting cue.

[BILL HOLLAND MANIPULATES LOOP USING THE HERCULES MOBILE DJ MP3]

But here's the weird part. If I want to reset my cue point, I actually .have to go down here.

[BILL HOLLAND SCRATCHING USING THE HERCULES MOBILE DJ MP3 SOFTWARE]

I can use these too to do that. I have to hit tune.