Hey CK, great observation! You won’t find anybody disagreeing with you on this site. 😀
Frankly, going from CDJ/DJM combo to a CDJ-RX isn’t really a move to “the future of DJ-ing”. It’s more of a lateral movement.
Rekordbox is nothing more than a glorified track management system and nothing compared to DJ Software.
So, if you have recent CDJs and a DJM with decent FX, you can already use RekordBox and I don’t see what bonus you get from going RX, apart from maybe the parallel waveforms and a few other bits and pieces.
The R1 will be a let down if you are used to high(er) end CDJs. It’s effectively a pair of CDJ350s with DJM350 mixer. And I worked with that setup (the 350s not the R1) and it’s sub-par at best imho.
So, going by the direction you say you are going in, you might consider sticking with what you have as I really don’t see the price to be paid for this “upgrade” reflected in the added functionality.
Or look into digital DJ-ing in the sense it is mostly used here, which means DJ-ing with laptop software and a controller.
Especially since a 1.000 EURO (not GBP) controller that comes with a full version of Serato DJ has a lot more to offer. If you have a somewhat recent and decent laptop, you are all set to go.
As usual my two cents.
p.s. Obviously you can use the RX as a regular Midi controller, but I think the screen is pretty much rendered useless in that case. So I have written my reply based on using it as a RekordBox enabled device.
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