Turntablists should look elsewhere, though. Thus the jogwheels cleverly serve two functions, and this is a big plus of all Vestax controllers over the competition. It’s worth bearing in mind that with this unit pro “scratching” is hard due to it’s not being instantaneous (unlike the more expensive VCI-300 for instance), but this is not going to be an issue for most mixing DJs. If you touch the jogwheels at the edge, they instead act as if you’re slightly slowing down or speeding up the playing song, depending again on whether you move in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. Then you can move the wheel backwards and forwards to adjust where you are in the song – a “scratch”. You’ll be using the jogwheels a lot with this unit, and I’m pleased to say they’re high-quality, sharing the same functionality as with Vestax’s other DJ controllers. If you touch the metal part of the wheel, it is as if you are touching and holding a record on a normal turntable – the music stops. It is a funky red and black colour with brushed metal jogwheels, which seems to have divided opinion out there I think it looks pretty good, but it’s a personal taste of course. For both the PC (with drivers supplied) and Mac (no drivers necessary), it is a plug-and-play device, coming with Traktor LE (a cut-down version of the industry-standard DJ software), a USB cable and some quick start instruction. The Vestax Typhoon takes its power from the computer, so no need for a power supply in the vast majority of cases. The Typhoon comes with driver CD, quick start manual and USB cable. As such, this is less of a niche product.

Furthermore, the Spin only controls Algoriddim’s djay software (that integrates tightly with iTunes) while this controls industry-standard Traktor. It is heavily related to the Vestax Spin, however, the latter is Mac-only, while this is for PC (including 64-bit for Vista and Windows 7, but not AMD) and Mac.

There’s a microphone socket too for you budding mobile jocks. This means you just need a hi-fi, some powered speakers (such as good computer speakers) or another way of playing the music, plus a pair of headphones, and you’re off. It has a soundcard built-in, saving you the need to buy a DJ soundcard separately – unlike some other DJ controllers like Vestax’s own VCI-100 and the cheaper Numark Mixtrack.

If you’re looking for a budget way to get into digital DJing, you now have the Vestax Typhoon controller to add to your shortlist.

Vestax typhoon drivers