Sony doesn’t design too much deejay equipment, but wouldn’t it be great if they did? Their Walkman gear and monitor headphones are preferred by audiophiles around the world, so why not just dabble with electronic music too? This absolutely wild MIDI controller concept shows what things could have looked like if Sony built more gear for their music power-users, aka their musician consumers. The gizmo, unnamed for now, is a DJ setup that lets you load music, make mixes, and even sample/edit audio for on-the-fly production.
Load stuff digitally (because that’s how we roll), or slide vinyl into the sides of the controller and you’ve got yourself a gadget that most elite deejays would envy too. It’s sufficiently advanced, yet doesn’t rely on those computer-aided turntables that quantize tracks for you and make the process easier. Whether you’re a novice or someone who believes that scratching vinyl is the only way to mix audio, this Sony gizmo really caters to your whims and fancies.
Designer: The Image
The console is truly a piece of art, with its gorgeous black and red colorway that does two things – firstly, looks incredibly cool to work with, and secondly, allows you to easily see it in the dark so you could be mixing in a club without needing to crank up the brightness to see your interface clearly. There are four screens, two for each deck that handles individual tracks, giving you two in total. The central linear screens show waveforms, so you can load, maneuver, and manipulate audio tracks intuitively. The other screen shows you more granular details like BPM and individual levels.
How do you use it? However you fancy! You can use it to deejay simply by loading songs and mixing between them the way you would with a CDJ. Faders let you swap between left and right decks really easily, MIDI buttons let you trigger effects, loops, and other audio cues for a uniquely personalized mix. Knobs let you play with parameters and envelopes and filters. But what I really love is the fact that the controller is sufficiently analog – which means it accepts vinyl discs too.
The gizmo is surprisingly compact, but it holds discs on each side sort of like the Sony D-88 discman that let a part of the disc hover outside the product’s body rather than completely enclosing the disc for playback. Is it practical? Most seasoned experts would say no – you risk damage, and it doesn’t allow you to intuitively scratch the disc while mixing. However, is it cool? Oh hell yes! I’m kind of bummed that this is just a concept, though…
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