For A DJ finding a decent CD player is a pretty hard job there are all sorts of features to consider, Looping, Pitch Bending, Scratching and more. The CD-S6 is feature packed and yet the interface is still clean and intuitive.

First impressions, without even turning on the player I had a good feeling about this CD player, for a start it has a very clean interface, not too many buttons but still looks like it is a professional product. The buttons are chunky but not too big; ideal for mobile dj’s where the majority of gigs have very little light in the booth. The CD-S6 screams build quality; the product feels solid and road worthy something that the other products in the same price range fail to do. The S6 weights in at about 3.3kg’s which is nothing compared to the 6kgs of the Technics equivalent.

The S6 is a tabletop player and has a relatively small foot print defiantly much smaller than its vinyl equivalent and much more powerful too. The load time for a CD is relatively sort taking only 3-4 seconds. As soon as the CD is loaded you are ready to do as you please with the S6. Getting the CD to start is child’s play just hit the huge play button, and it plays, no messing about with settings or anything else. This is a question I always ask when buying kit, “Does it work straight out of the box?” Mobile DJs don’t have the time to be fiddling around with things trying to get them to work minutes before a gig, plug and play is defiantly the way in this business. The S6 outputs to 2 phonos and also has an optical out this is about it for connections other than an IEC socket and also a remote start socket for use in conjunction with Citronic’s range of mixers.

The display on the S6 is of very high quality and is viewable from any angle imaginable, the display also utilises a nice large font meaning no more squinting trying to see which track is playing. The pitch adjust fader is easy to grasp and has a very smooth movement, the faders movement is clean and does not have the gritty feel of many of the other players in the same price range. All the buttons feel sharp and crisp, I have found in the past many buttons do not seem to click when you press them and hence you can never be sure whether you have actually pressed said button. Citronic however have this problem sorted as you can feel the button click as you press it, again it is this attention to detail that makes the S6 stand out from the crowd.

So on to the main feature of the S6, the jog / scratch wheel, the first thing I noticed was that there was no latency (or so little that it was not noticeable), this means that the movements on the platter were replicated at exactly the same time on the track. A fairly small detail but key if you want your mixes to be perfect. The jog wheel only really suffers from one problem; speeding up the BPM can be done by spinning the outside of the wheel and not touching the centre. I found myself scratching at times rather than adjusting the BPM, I am sure that with a bit of practise I would stop catching the touch sensitive pad but it is a slight problem if you just want to adjust BPM whilst being in scratch mode.

Function wise the S6 has pretty much anyone could need and might even have a little too much for the average mobile DJ. The S6 is feature packed and you can just about tweak every element of the track, it even comes with some built in effects that the player adds to the track removing the need for any external effects unit. Whilst the effects may be basic they will be more than adequate for the average DJ and again they work without any user intervention, hit the flange button and flange is instantly added. You can if you feel the need tweak the effects after adding them to the track changing the ratio and also the time in which the effect takes to complete a cycle.  The effects that are included with the S6 are as follows: Scratch, Echo, Filter, Brake, Flange, Phase, Pan and Transform. Best of all the effects are linked to the tracks BPM and hence do not need adjusting when being added to a track. A feature that perhaps doesn’t need its own paragraph but still deserves a mention is the 10 second anti-shock, I have encountered many occasions when previous CD players have skipped due to a very lively dance floor.

Another feature for the Pro-DJ is the sampler with 4 memory banks, each bank can only store a 6second loop but this can still come in very handy when delaying the start of a song or overlaying beats. The banks can also be used instead as cue points with each bank 1-4 relating to a different cue within the track. Again cue points are easily set and deleted meaning you can spend less time fiddling and reading the manual and more time playing music.

Criticisms, overall I do not have any great problems with the S6 apart from the jog wheel as mentioned earlier, but do not let this put you off the S6 is in essence a product every DJ should have.

So overall I would rate this product very highly one of the main reasons for this is the fact that everything works, I had to refer to the manual once and I have never used the S6 before.  The S6 works on 2 levels, it can be a simple tool allowing the DJ to scratch and have a little bit more control over the music. It can also be a complex tool allowing the DJ to do much more than possible with normal CD players. The S6 did really wow me so much to say that I am currently considering ditching my computer based system and buying 2 S6’s instead. As soon as I lay my fingers on the S6 I was back in my vinyl days, having full control over the music I play in real time is something I have really missed. It still however allows me to play chart tracks that are easily available rather than having to scour record shops.  At around £270 each I am sure that you can not get much better value for money either.