Auto drums beats - yes, straight away we are reminded of the 'cheesy home organ' days where everything sounded manufactured and mechanical, but the DJX just isn't like that. Being able to drop parts of the percussion set out and bring them back in again is a fantastic idea, and puts a more spontaneous feel in the performance. One little gripe I have about this though is that if you want to switch Part Control off in order to play that section of the keyboard, when you put it back on again, all the parts come back on instead of it remembering how you last set it. This is a bit annoying since I only tend to use the auto drums (not the note and chord based accompaniment), although a work around for this is to store different Part Control settings to one of the four Performance Memory controls. Another work around is to keep Part Control switched on all the time and play what you would normally play at the bottom end of the DJX (usually basslines for me) on another synth.

OK, so what about sound quality then? Well, for the money I was generally quite impressed with the factory patches, and to quote Sound On Sound Magazine, 'it's hard to believe you aren't dealing with a £1500 pro workstation'. Filter editing and ability to change A/R setting makes some customisation possible, although I feel that for many aplications it would be nice to have the Decay and Sustain editing parameters available as well. DJX sounds are basically split into two halves. The first half deals with special DJX sounds which are unique to the instrument, and the other half contains a basic General MIDI soundset which makes this keyboard able to playback GM files. Most of the DJX sounds are fantastic and have really helped to spice up some of my compositions, and in particular, one of my favourite programs is the pad chord sound 'Trance'. I tried switching off all the chorus and effects, and noticed that it sounded quite a lot like an evolving pad sound I heard once on a DX7, but apply phasers, chorus and all the bells and whistles and we soon enter real synth territory. On the GM side of the sounds, we return to a more 'home-keyboard-ey' sort of sound in some cases. Some of the string pads are worth trying out, decrease the attack and add some release and you can get some really nice sounding patches. I think my favourite sound in the GM set is probably number 243: Synth Bass + Lead. I use this one quite a lot for synth solos because it has a nice, bright edge and an fast attack which responds well to velocity. I find it a shame that the GM soundset is tuned an octave higher than the DJX sounds. You can lower the octave easily enough through the Funtion menu (Funtion 02), but then if you change to another MIDI patch, the octave will have gone back to the default again. This is a similar problem to the Part Control mentioned earlier, and the only solution is to store the settings via the Performance Memory control panel.

Sampling was a bit of a concern for me as well. Storage of only three seconds maximum sampling time is too limiting for all but the shortest sound effects, and I also found that the sample volume was lower than the factory patches. The work around for this though is to turn all the volumes down to match the sample and then alter the master volume from the mixer at the recording stage.

Clearly, Yamaha have made a good attempt to accommodate for everyone with the DJX. It combines ease of use and functionality even for non-musicians, although this is more of a production or live performance tool for me. For the price, DJX really is a must for anyone into keyboards or synthesizers. I have also recently heard that the DJX contains many more functions and has a larger MIDI + synth implementation than the user manual would have you believe.

So, the verdict: I score the DJX a high nine out of ten (so 4.5 out of 5 on the scale here). My main gripes are basic memory functions with the octave settings and Part Control settings, and possibly the physical appearance of the instrument. The sequencer is also difficult to use but many people who are really serious about keyboards will no doubt have either a hardware synth with a more powerful sequencer, or a computer that can deal with that instead.