I know Terry is our in-house TM8 specialist. I know he has ridden his hard and often in all kinds of gigs and at home. As far as I know without a hitch. I know him and he has big hands and he is a strong fellow, so I know the jogs can take that kind of “abuse”.
Sounds like you have a unit that gave up, but I am not sure that’s indicative of overall Reloop quality. I’ll leave more comments on this over to Terry.
As for the 7000 and 8000. Totally different “animals”. The 7000 is more traditional and features a dual sound card for back to back DJ-ing (like the SZ). It is a standalone mixer but clearly made for Serato use. Build quality as you might expect from Denon.
The 8000 obviously (much) more expensive, about 50% more. Single soundcard, but it’s double USB ports add some hand-over options. Two screens and a bit of intelligence in the box. FX – if only three – can be used on channels 1/2 even with analogue standalone inputs. There are some odd things for some users, you can read about it on their new and improved forums. I suggest you sign up to them as well. The main drawback currently for standalone USB use, is the fact that Engine 1.5 is not the best software around. We are all anxiously waiting for the new release of the newly developed Engine Prime that will have a save in 8000 format option, not unlike Pioneer RekordBox has for it’s XDJ-RX.
This is expected to come with a new firmware version to make all things work smooth as intended. As Denon doesn’t report intended release dates, it’s a wait til they announce it’s ready. They are aware of the installed base, so hard at work. Hopefully very soon.
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