Musikmesse 2016: Dave Smith and PioneerDJ cooking up something colourful in the TORAIZ SP-16
A perhaps unexpected collaboration between electronic instrument maker Dave Smith and DJ gear manufacturer PioneerDJ has produced the dazzling looking TORAIZ SP-16 sampler/sequencer/groovebox. It actually looks like the lovechild of a union between Novation and Native Instruments which is absolutely no bad thing. Pioneer DJ asked Dave Smith to provide filters for the machine and he says that they were very excited to be involved in something to help DJ’s be more creative and riskier in live performance.
There are two fully analogue filters taken directly from the Prophet 6 – a 2-pole high-pass filter and a 4-pole low-pass filter with resonance and overdrive. The rest of the hardware is a 16 track sequencer with 16 steps and 16 voices, and over 2GB of Loopmaster sample content pre-loaded. It has an internal memory of 8GB and can be expanded via USB. The 16 multi-coloured performance pads can trigger loops, hits or sequencers of which you can store up to 256. There are 6 rotary knobs for instant control over the available parameters and a side ribbon strip for further creative control. The 7 inch screen is also fully touchable giving your fingers more control than you would know what to do with.
Although the TORAIZ is a standalone unit it has Pioneer Pro DJ Link connectivity meaning that it can sync up to a CDJ/XDJ deck for DJ performance integration – it also has MIDI sync so you can tie in other gear as well.
Will the regular club crowd care about the Dave Smith filters? Probably not but if it inspires more creativity in a DJ performance then that’s always a good thing – and there’s no reason to keep this groove machine exclusively in the DJ arena, it looks like a fun device for any musician.
The (annoyingly capitalised) TORAIZ SP-16 should be available in the summer, price and final specs to be confirmed.
More information: http://www.pioneerdj.com/en-gb/
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