MusicRadar

The SCS.4DJ's sparse, simple layout is easy to get to grips with.

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• Review

There have been a few units which attempted to ditch the laptop when DJing, but nothing has really managed to deliver the correct experience at the right price. Now, Stanton are having a go with their compact and affordable SCS.4DJ.

Whipping the unit from its box you immediately see that Stanton have compromised on the build quality to keep the price low. The SCS.4DJ isn't exactly flimsy, but it's slightly creaky and plastic feeling.

The good news is that it's light, portable and relatively compact, comparable to a regular DJ MIDI controller but benefits from both master phono outs and balanced quarter inch jacks. Similarly, the headphone port on the front comes in quarter-inch and 3.5, so no more adaptor nightmares.

"As a single unit you can DJ with, nothing else comes close to beating it at this price."

There's also a simple quarter-inch mic input on the front with volume control. File formats supported include MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF and even MP4.

The central 4.3-inch colour screen is where everything happens. Here you're able to browse you entire library, create playlists, sort by BPM, album or artist and more. The general layout is a familiar two-channel DJ mixer, with three band EQ, headphone cue buttons and faders.

It's strange that Stanton have chosen to leave off any sort of gain control, even if there's a certain amount of normalisation after analysis of the tracks. It means level matching has to be done on the faders and EQ - gain control would add that extra layer of controllability and familiarity.

Track analysis

How does the analysis work? Well, once you stick a USB key in, the software within the SCS.4DJ automatically starts scanning your collection. This is where my first hopes were slightly dashed as this process is very slow.

So jacking in 100+ songs and expecting BPM counts and Sync'd playback isn't going to happen very quickly and certainly shouldn't be done at a gig - preparation is key to getting the most out of the SCS.4DJ. Once you've scanned your collection, small additions could be more efficiently done on the fly.

Tracks that have been scanned conveniently turn white while scanning tracks remain red. Songs that are yet to be scanned tracks can be still played back, but no waveform display, looping or syncing is possible.

Navigating your way around the unit's browse and waveform display is simple, but sometimes feels a bit slow. Just like the track analysing, it's clear it's not the fastest CPU inside the Stanton, but for nearly half the price of a decent laptop, it's not so slow that I can really complain too much.

There's also talk of a fully-fledged library app, similar to Rekordbox by Pioneer, which will hopefully make pre-analysing your collection on your computer, then exporting it to a HDD possible.

Playlists

While mixing tracks, a playlist is automatically created, which can then be saved to your USB device.