Last Friday night was the worldwide launch of Pioneer's new SVM-1000 audio/video mixer at The Met in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley giving DanceNode the chance to get up close and personal with the mixer, and the people behind it.


In an industry that has remained fundamentally unchanged for many years until the recent digital explosion, it can be hard to predict what will catch on and what will be just another has-been. While it's too early to tell if the rising popularity of the DJ/VJ is going to continue it can be seen that manufacturers certainly think its worth investing in.

The SVM-1000 is an attempt by Pioneer to capitalise on their CD/DVJ market dominance and by the looks of things, it just may pay off. Physically the mixer itself is dominating in the DJ booth nearly half a metre square, and twenty centimeters high but it's the presence of a large LCD touch panel in the middle that immediately grabs your attention. The four 96 kHz / 24-bit channels are laid out in a very similar fashion to the DJM series and also feature MIDI assignable functions to give the DJ even more control.

While the mixer is obviously the new generation in the Pioneer series and the design borrows heavily from the DJM series, the placement of the touch screen is in the middle of the mixer with two channels either side struck me as a little odd. Personally I would like to see the layout with the four channels together, and the touch screen and preview screen to the side or above. The video and audio can be affected together or independently which to me suggested the possibility of giving other members of a team something to do while one member was 'on the decks', however given the layout of the SVM-1000 someone else trying to apply video effects would get in the way of the person working the audio.

The touch screen is simply necessary for the level of complex control the mixer provides and combined with live input/output previews the VJ's job is made a lot easier. Australia's world DVJ champion DJ J-Red was on hand to demonstrate the mixer, but even after using it for three days was still confused with the touch interface so the question remains, could it be easier? Although once an effect was enabled changing the parameters was a simple as dragging a finger across the screen allowing for a simply fun experience.

For every audio effect that can be found on the DJM-1000 there is a matching video effect on the SVM-1000. When used correctly the effect was simply mesmerising and with some planning and preparation could be used to devastating effect on the dance floor. The video effects are broken down into three categories: beat, touch or text. There is also a visualisation generator built-in allowing for mixing between the incoming video feed, generated visuals, and JPEG's stored on swappable memory. The Pioneer representative on hand also spoke of future firmware and hardware upgrades to give the mixer more power and features including the possibility of lighting control.

Overall the Pioneer SVM-1000 is a very solid package that opens up a range of possibilities but being the first of it's kind and first generation I feel it has some barriers and design issues to overcome. It will be retailing at around $6000 for release within Australia in February while the launch tour continues across the country, and hits other locations around the rest of the world soon.