Pioneer has just announced the Remix Station RMX-1000, a piece of DJ hardware that allows for greater real-time manipulation than the traditional deck and mixer setup alone. It can be used standalone with the bundled Remixbox software, or used through third-party packages like Ableton Live or Logic thanks to the included VST / AU plug-in. Pioneer highlights four main control features — "Scene FX" lets you add build-up or break-down effects to your song, with five different effects in each category. "Isolate FX" is mainly for tweaking EQ and adding effects to the high / mid / low frequencies, while the "Release FX" lever simply pulls all the music out of the mix and leaves only effects from the Remix Station. Lastly, there's a touchpad called the "X-pad FX" that lets you add in sounds not found in the original song — there are four basic beats by default, but you can customize the touchpad to your heart's content in the included software and load them onto the Remix Station with an SD card.

Regardless of whether you use the Remixbox software or another solution, you should be able to tweak the controls and customize what each control does to make the Remix Station suit your particular brand of music. It'll sell for $999 when it launches in June, so the average bedroom DJ might pass on the RMX-1000 — but it wouldn't surprise us to see this box become standard issue for a lot of pros; as you might expect, Pioneer is advertising it neatly nestled between a pair of $2,100 CDJ-2000s.