In my personal opinion, the things that makes a control “professional” are having a decent soundcard, being able to withstand the road, and being light enough to facilitate transport; however, what’s more important than any of those is whether or not you can customise it to suit your own workflow.
95% of “professional” DJ’s – I use this to mean those who are playing clubs/venues, mobile & wedding DJ-ing is something I know absolutely nothing about – use CDJ’s that are already at the club.
Just because a control is built to professional grade (the DDJ-SX) does not make it a controller that you can viably use as professional DJ (big doesn’t always equal good.)
Some artists (Zedd and Porter Robinson are the first that come to mind) use big controllers live (they both use the S4), but both regularly do gigs on plain ‘ol CDJ’s as well.
I’ve had no issues using the Twitch in venues ranging from college parties to 2,000 person clubs.
It’s small, it’s insanely customisable, and it’s perfect for me.
If you want to be a professional DJ, the choice of whether or not you use a controller entirely depends on what style of workflow you’ll be using – there’s no best controller for professional use.
I say, do a lot of research, figure out what you need the controller for, and use it.
I’ve got a close friend who’s been playing shoes to 700+ people, and they’ve only ever used a Mixtrack – hardly a “professional” controller, but it works for them, so it kind of is.
tl;dr – It’s professional enough for me, but gigging with a controller depends completely on what kind of DJ you are and if you can find one that works.
