RX-3 vs FLX-10 — standalone vs controller/laptop
I’m about to purchase one of these in the next few days. Old vinyl DJ since the 90’s who’s been slowly learning the DJ controller digital world the past year. I’ve seen a few posts on this comparison, but nothing new or active. So this post is looking for input for myself, and also just to share what I’ve learned and realized, because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of granular info in one place on the tradeoffs between these two units.
Disclaimer: Please correct me if I got something wrong!
So…. I’ve been set on buying a FLX-10 for months now. That was until yesterday, when I played around with my friend’s RX-3. I’ve spent a decent amount of time on the AZ & on CDJs and it’s just a different experience playing on a standalone versus laptop/controller. It just works for me. But the AZ has been a bit outta my price range for a home setup and a CDJ setup is way too much for now, so I had decided on the FLX-10.
Honestly, the RX-3 just wasn’t on my radar; I think I wrote it off early on because it was only 2-channels and thought I’d get more bang for my buck with a controller since I already had a spare MacBook Pro that runs Rekordbox just fine. And with the FLX-10 I’d get stems buttons. (Even though they’re sub-par on Rekordbox, I had hope that they’d keep getting better with updates).
So now, once my head was thinking about a standalone for around 2K, I realized that I played more when I was around standalones and that the simple act of connecting the laptop or closing work apps… switching into funtime let’s play music mode… was a barrier for me. Sounds incredibly lazy, but I know a lot of people experience this. There’s nothing like turning the power on, loading a track and be playing within a few moments.
Here was the big revelation for me though… since the RX-3 can be used in HID mode (Rekordbox performance mode), I can use that anytime and be laptop DJing with the RX-3 as my controller. Which is exactly what I’d be doing with the FLX-10! So I’m still trying to figure out if there’s anything I’m missing because for my purposes it seems like the best of both worlds.
In the past 24 hours, I’ve now been trying to figure out why not to get the RX-3. My mind has changed that quickly after remembering how much I like standalones and realizing that my buddy (who used to lug around CDjs & a Xone mixer) loves his RX-3.
So playing devil’s advocate with myself, I’m trying to learn about RX-3’s limitations, but you’ve gotta really piece together info to get a good deep dive look at the tradeoffs between these two units. Here’s my issues & thoughts on the RX-3…
- *No stems in standalone mode:* True, but… stems are available in Rekordbox software HID mode, which is where I’d be with FLX-10 anyway; laptop DJ’ing with stems. The stems buttons have to be mapped to the pads on the RX-3 instead of having dedicated buttons like on FLX-10. I can live with that I think.
- *No key shifting in standalone mode:* But… again, available in HID mode if I wanna play with that. Same place as I’d be with FLX-10; controller/laptop
- *Only 2-channels:* Once I really thought about it, I haven’t seriously used more than 2-channels at once in over 20 years. And that was with 2 turntables and iPods/laptops with iTunes/CD mixers, and not playing the kind of beatmatching dance music I’m playing nowadays. I can still throw vinyl in my mix on the 2-channel RX-3 (or anything else line level or aux) with the flip of a switch. I just can’t play 3 sources at once in standalone mode. I can live with that.
- Also, I can actually plug in 2 phonos, a line level media player, an out from my work desk laptop, a spare laptop dedicated to use for HID mode, a 3.5mm tail to have hanging out for a friends phone and still have a spare RCA aux available… all into this 2-channel mixer. That’s 7 additional inputs, 9 inputs total. For a home setup, I can have everything plugged in and ready to go and access them with the flick of a switch on the RX-3. (Or just changing the mode in the case of HID mode)
- *You can’t isolate the Beat FX to specific frequency bands (High, Mid, Low):* this plain old sucks, but frankly I haven’t done this much; it’s not a trick in my bag yet and I’ve done something similar with the channel EQs. I’ll live with it for a unit that’s half the price. Unless I spring for the AZ or a full CDJ setup, I’m gonna have to accept some tradeoffs.
What is really disappointing to me that I can’t get a straight answer on is the limitation on columns in the RX-3 display. It seems insane that this 10”+ screen can’t display track, artist, bpm & key at the same time.
This feels like a ‘fuck you pay more’ from Pioneer, or a drastic oversight. But it sounds like people have been bitching and begging for this since it came out. Also seems like it’d be fixable in a firmware update, but I read someone say that it was a processing limitation? That seems strange when it’s just metadata that’s been analyzed already. AFAIK, best you can do on the main screen is get key/bpm and your choice of either track or artist… but not both. And that takes analyzing and exporting your tracks from RB a certain way, making sure settings are right, so the info is formatted properly on your USB to display 3 out of 4 essential columns on the RX-3’s giant screen.
I would love for someone to tell me I’m wrong on this… please. Because what kind of fuckery is that on a 10” screen?
But again… this track info is all available in HID mode. And since I have a spare laptop that I can leave hooked into my setup, maybe I can use my backup usb stick in the laptop just for display purposes if I need a cleaner display of key/related keys for reference. I’d have to see how practical that’d be or how much I’d really need that workaround.
I know I’ve rambled on, but I’ve been looking for this info for hours upon hours and it’s not all in one place anywhere, unbelievably. Hopefully it helps someone else. And I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts to help me finalize whether or not to completely switch gears… from being dead set on a FLX-10 for the past 3 months… to the past 24 hours of the revelation that I’d prefer a standalone and I can get used mint RX-3 for not much more and it’d do most of what I *want* it to do and everything I *need* it to do.