The Hot Shit

The Grex MXF8 is one hot MIDI controller. Bit of an investment once you’ve had it shipped from its British maker, I imagine, but its interface has the power and elegance to turn Live into truly usable DJ tool. Build quality looks superb from the demo videos available on the site. Sure would be nice to get my hands on one for testing, but I doubt that’s gonna happen; it’s not the sort of thing one’s local Guitar Center would carry. Still, if it works as well as it seems to it would make plunking down the money for Traktor moot if you already rock Live (and I do).

Only a couple things wrong: it’s old skool MIDI, not MIDI-over-USB, which means you have to buy a USB adaptor for it. Dumb. Because of the lack of USB bus power it needs a wall wart. Dumber. And, pet peeve, it doesn’t try to integrate an audio interface. Can’t blame ‘em for that if it does its job well. We’ll see.