Slow jumping into this thread since I got back from the Expo on Wednesday and then left very early Thursday for a destination wedding on Martha's Vineyard.
I agree with Steve's assessment of the expo floor. Even when they had DJs exhibiting in booths you could barely hear them. Trayze performed in the Pioneer booth and I was standing right there but couldn't tune the noise out.
Funny additional note - Pioneer had their own speakers set up wrong. They were running XPRS 10s over their 15 sub. But the tops were set in Bass+ mode so they were clipping the crap out of them. No need for Bass+ with the sub, but I didn't feel comfortable fixing their speaker for them.
The highlight of these events, and why I still go... are the evening parties. The BPM Supreme party was amazing. Buck Rodgers has incredible finger drumming skills... I could watch that guy forever. I didn't know of Chris Karnes, but his set was crazy good. I was familiar with Miles Medina, but had only heard his battle sets. He played a really cool set of music. Q-Bert is amazing, but didn't play long. And then watching Z-Trip and Biz Markie?!?!
What was crazy about Biz and Z-Trip is that Biz isn't really doing anything fancy at all. He's there because he's a big personality and well known for his MC work back in the day. So Z-Trip basically put that show on his back and carried Biz (figuratively, dude is huge). But he never made Biz look bad doing it either. Total class - and as usual, Z-Trip went off.
The level of DJ talent that was in that room was just incredible. So much fun.
It's a tough thing on how they could improve the Expo. The reality is... not that much is changing in gear right now. New controllers are cool, but even the new Pioneer Serato controller is kind of similar to other stuff they have out. It's not worth moving from my SZ2 to the 1000 SRT even though I'd love to have the better set of hardware effects.
Mobile DJs that want a smaller controller should look at the Roland 707. Roland wasn't there - but BPM had three of them set up in their booth. That is a VERY robust controller in a very small package. It's also got zone outs and all sorts of I/O options. Very cool looking hardware.
But other than that... I'm not inspired by anything new. My uplights are fine, my movers are fine, my controller is new-ish, my speakers are new-ish. It would have to really blow me away to replace any of my current components. And I bet a lot of DJs feel that way.
I have no idea what the next wave will look like... but a show like this probably won't be revived until you see something like the passive to active shift again.
