Denon Engine Prime Software

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Denon DJ Engine Prime Review
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Our First Look at Denon’s Engine Prime DJ Software

The new SC5000 players from Denon DJ brought with them a new version of their Engine software. A management tool for preparing your music to be played on these new players.

Here is a video of our first look at this software. Read below for more opinions and some pro’s and con’s about it so far.

Engine Prime Software First Look

What is Engine Prime?

It is a music management software for preparing your music, such as setting hot cues and loops, plus organising it into playlists to make your DJ sets more intuitive and creative on the Denon SC5000 players.

Do I need the Engine Prime software to play my music on the Denon SC5000?

In short, NO! The SC5000 can analyse any music stored on a USB/SD card within the player itself, allowing you to make use of all the performance features it has to offer. However, the Engine Prime software is recommended so that you can keep an organised DJ library and help plan your sets.

Denon SC5000 above

Can I DJ with Denon Engine Prime?

No, the engine prime software is primarily used to organise, manage and prepare music. There is a dual layer feature which allows you to play two tracks together using SYNC with a crossfader to fade between the two. However, there is no mixer, effects or EQs embedded within the software.

What makes Engine Prime so good?

Firstly, if you’re a Serato DJ user already, you can easily access your Serato DJ crates along with all your hot cues and saved loops. It’s then really easy migrate them over to the Engine Prime software, making for an easy transition between a Serato set up or a Denon set up. This is something Pioneer DJs Rekordbox doesn’t currently offer.

The other great thing about Engine Prime is that it is very simple and intuitive to use. There are pop up boxes that will explain all the different features as you hover over them meaning you can easily learn your way around the program.

I personally like that with Engine Prime and the SC5000 players you can choose to show the camelot notation of keys rather that classical notation. This is also something Rekordbox or Pioneer don’t currently offer without third party software.

Denon Engine Prime screenshot

Are there any downsides to the software?

There are a couple of things we have found. Firstly there is no ‘sync manager’ or equivalent like that in Rekordbox. To update your device you have to keep re dragging each playlist onto the device to update. With Rekordbox’s sync manager this can be done with the click of a button. If you’re a Rekordbox user and want to find out more about the sync manager check out this guide.

I would also love to be able to drag crates straight from my Serato DJ library onto a USB device rather than have to import them to one of Denon’s crates or playlists, but we can’t have everything!

Conclusion

The software itself is very clean and designed well. It feels very intuitive for any DJ to feel right at home with, especially if you already use Pioneer DJ’s Rekordbox. The features are simple and effective. Updating your device could be simpler but that is something I’m sure will be added very soon.

Denon Engine Prime is free to download. Even if you don’t have the Denon players download a copy of the program here and have a good play with it. See what you think! Let us know in the comments if you have any specific questions or if you have any opinions on the software too.

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