35 thoughts on “KDJ-One Portable Music Studio (Official Walkthrough)”

  1. I remember when they were ‘planning’ on releasing this three years ago, only to drop the ball, with no further notice. Vapourware. I bought a $20 Korg DS-10 & a $30 used nintendo DS. Both seem to have similar functionality(cheap plastic, no midi of course) & yet I don’t regret shelling out 50 bucks for some of the fantastic digital synth sounds I created with the DS-10. Sorry, but I’m waiting for these to flood ebay.

    1. I love Korgs DS and 3DS synths, but this thing is rather different, and I think it looks nifty. Iirc it was planned to cost ca. $800. Pretty high, but if it would sequence external gear, and do a couple of tricks that I would need, I would certainly consider it. There are not that many sequencers available.

      1. on the specs, it only shows a usb host & micro usb connection. why not buy a cheap(& portable) yamaha qy70 for the exact same application?

        1. Because of the interface. This looks NIFTY.

          I also could use samples and audio tracks.

          I’m also not too keen to buy broken second hand products any more.

          1. I agree that it is very hard to trust the functionality of used products, however, lately it seems like too many products are rushed out with an unsupported or unfinished os. Do you want to wait years for a bug to get fixed on your $800 purchase? Out of curiosity, I would check on the KDJ-ONE website every six months(for three years) with a bit of curiosity. It looked like a dead website until last week.

            1. ” lately it seems like too many products are rushed out with an unsupported or unfinished os”

              Exactly, and it is getting costly to the companies who does it. Remember Alesis Fusion?

              It had few excellent features that are rare even today, but it was RUINED with too buggy OS. Completely.

              There were no SYSEX at all, no even CC for ALL parameters (means no editors / controllers). List was longer but I owned it several years ago and don’t remember all annoyances anymore. 😀

              But still I liked it very much. It was love/hate relationship! Loved it’s FM-synthesis and how different it is compared to Yamaha’s FM, good sound quality etc.

              But that hurry to push it out to markets was probably biggest mistakes Alesis have ever made… It could have been success with CC-support, couple extra effects to to FX section and most importantly BUG FREE OS!
              They made some firmware updates but stopped developing it too soon.
              I heard that they pretty much abandoned whole instrument and did nothing for it just few (couple?) years after it’s born. =/

              I hope that KDJ ppl. have used this delayed schedule to finish it’s operating system. =)

  2. In before the flood of ipad owners who will comment just to diss that thing.

    I’m not a fan of the KDJ, but the other thread about it was simply ridiculous.

  4. I was excited when they first announced this and disappointed when nothing came of it, so i’m glad to see it back. I love mobile music devices, it started with gameboy and nanoloop and since then i’ve added just about every handheld you could imagine.

    The problem I have personally is the crowd funding. I feel like every product I am interested in is a kickstarter these days. Does venture capitol exist at all these days? How about business loans? I don’t like to pay for something that I have no idea when I’m going to receive, most of the time the release is delayed multiple times due to normal production issues. I dont have the money or patience for it. I give you money, you ship me a product, end of story. Its not that I’m against crowd funding, on the contrary I think its a great idea philosophically, I just hate it as a consumer.

    Even if you try to wait for the company to get off the ground and the kickstarter is finished, the initial batch (obviously) goes to the early adopters. Then I have to wait months for more stock or do a preorder to get on the next batch (left waiting again). Kerberos 64 was the last crowd funded project I was interested in, and this exact thing happened (next order not shipping until december). To be fair, that one was a more reasonable candidate for crowd funding as a super niche product, Im just using it as an example from a purely consumer stand point.

    1. You’re missing the compactness and portability of carrying one small device that can do what two larger devices can do. Size matters …sometimes.

      1. You really think this thing is twice as powerful as the Electribe? The Korg is just as portable, and has tons of knobs, and pads.. for half the price..

  7. The KDJ is sort of like an OP-1, but different. You can imagine that if the build quality and functionality is on par with the OP-1, then the KDJ should also be pretty popular. They need to do some serious sound demos though. Until then, it’s hard to get past the ‘toy’ factor (especially since it looks like a gameboy) and get to a point where I can imagine spending $800 on it.

    The psuedo-3D Windows-esque GUI makes me want to vomit too.

  9. CPU ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz
    Display 5.0 inch WVGA ( 800 x 480 ) with Multi-Touch Panel
    Main Memory 512 MBytes
    SSD 4.0 GBytes
    External Storage USB Memory
    Battery Lithium Ion Battery 7.4V 3,000mAh
    Connection USB 2.0 host x 1, mirco USB x 1
    Audio I/O Phone, Mic/Line in, Line out, Built-in MIC
    Speaker 2.0 W (1.0 W + 1.0 W Stereo) 250 Hz – 20,000 Hz

    nearly a decade old mobile ARM specs – this will run much better on any current low end phone – how long before they launch the software version of this for £9.99 ??????

  10. I really like the look of this…….instantly I warmed to it.
    I don’t like the idea of a pinch to zoom in a key editor though – they need to think that through a bit more.

    It could be a winner if they get it right.

  11. Interesting, was gonna get iPad air 2nd gen, but I have the air 1, so not sure wether this would actually be a better purchase?

  12. I got interested in this years ago too. As a DS-10/DSN-12 enthusiast, I like a lot the idea of a dedicated DAW machine with physical controls and a touch screen. But I liked a lot more the old design, this one looks uninspired and bulky. It looks cheap. Plus, the multitouch thing doesn’t seem to make sense to me given the small size (neither does the tiny speakers, btw). If I have to use one of those iPad rubber stylus instead of a thin little pencil like in the Nintendo DS, forget it.

    1. I would have also preferred cheaper resistive screen and get ‘free’ stylus and better battery life instead. I would be forever happy with a DSN-10 -like sequencer with audio tracks and a sampler on top of a synth.

  13. IMPRESSIVE: basic functions, velocity on keys, logical button layout, redundant hardware controls with touch controls, heavy fly-wheel jog wheel (!), etc.

    UNKNOWN: audio quality, because the demo audio was from camera & built-in speakers, it wasn’t clear how good the built in synth engine is. Feel of tiny keyboard buttons– hopefully the velocity response feels nice, build quality, flexibility (WRT things like swing, time-signatures, workflow, etc).

    I think comparisons to the OP-1 are fair. And with the potentially small niche of consumers for a product with these features at this price point, make crowd funding an understandable choice. Think of the risk of developing a product like this (and the amount of time and resources it takes) only to find out that Korg or Roland is about to release something similar.

    My main attraction to it is the combination of hardware controls and a touch screen and the elegant way they have overlapped those in the workflow.

  15. Looks like utter shit! ipad mini and any of the 100’s of controllers will give you much more for less…
    Either do hardware (analog4, OP-1 etc.) or if you are going to rely on a touch screen for operation, make it for android or iOS- a few shit buttons and a crappy keyboard don’t make it ‘hardware’ – a D pad and a touch screen? redundant….

    1. Velocity on the keys is a major thing that sets this apart from the OP-1.

      The hardware interface and GUI seem a bit more straightforward than the OP-1. But that’s just a first impression thing. I say that because even though the buttons were unlabeled in the prototype, everything was logical.

      IF a person wanted a device that was not a iOS or Android device for making music, and had some extra money, why not buy a KDJ or OP-1?

  18. Interesting that the sound was actually coming out of a speaker setup (notice the green jack in the headphone plug at the front). Hope it sounds a lot better than this demo.

    I want to like this but i know it would frustrate me to use it. Comparing this to nanostudio and I really think nanostudio is a more refined version of this.

    I wish them luck though and I can’t wait to see some mad scientist on YouTube making a sick track with this, but it’s not for me, I already have an air with samplr and caustic/gadget/nanostudio and an electribe emx2 on preorder. These guys are entering a tough market, especially when their price is close to the op-1 and more than a used mpc1000 or mpc500

  19. If it has a metal case, included midi cables from usb, no preinstalled ..cannot be removed kind of crap sounds… Id consider paying 200$ tops…. but IF i really need to make music on the go…. or sequence …or just have something I can later port to another setup… an Ipad with some apps… is the more logical choice…. I do own an OP1….. as its own standalone thing… its fun to noodle.. but the use of the OP1 is original…. vs kdj1 makes you feel like your using an iphone… with nothing new..

  22. I don’t know that I specifically like this machine, but if it could kick off a trend for say, ableton or image-line to make a stand alone device that can take existing vsts – I am all for the market opening up

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