Exclusive New Video: Vestax VCI-400 Overview

I managed to grab product supremo Reishi Mizumoto from the heaving Vestax stand at the BPM show last week, and escort him to a quiet room, prototype VCI-400 in hand, to talk me through some of the finer details of this new all-singing, all-dancing controller.

We particularly liked the VU meters built into each channel fader (a truly cool way of keeping an eye on your gain staging, and a way for anyone else in the DJ booth to see if you’re driving into the red at a glance!). However, while its clear this unit has monstrous potential, you may want to consider the lack of any booth output (even a record out would have been better than just master, even if master is spread across RCAs, TRSes and XLRs), and also the fact that it seems the external inputs don’t mean, as we first guessed, that this unit has true standalone mixer functionality.

We’re expecting a test VCI-400 very soon, so all will be revealed when we get a chance to hammer the thing in our workshop, but for now? we hope you enjoy this detailed talkthrough.

• Thanks to Neil and Dan for their help in making this video.

So, is this the controller you’ve been waiting for? Or has Vestax not quite got the balance of features right for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments…