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The first tabletop scratchable CD DJ unit was a dual-purpose version of a rackmount unit by Tascam. That company spent nearly a decade putting out firmware updates for it with great loyalty to their customers. Second was from Numark, which got bitten by the great capacitor plague when their OEM started using "bad copy" power supply caps. Third was famously from Pioneer, which not only introduced the novel touch platter (though it was pressure-sensitive and not capacitive) and superior hard buttons with excellent tact switches. Numark (OEM?) and American DJ (Hanpin as OEM) released early units next with capacitive touch.
While some of my favorite linkable DJ media players right now are Hanpin, other than their problematic tact switches and soft buttons, in my opinion the worst pressure-sensitive jog implementation was on the Vestax CD units, also from Hanpin. Right around when the capacitance touch jogs starting coming out, you had Denon TT platters a go with the lovely DN-S5000 that still gives me butterflies in the stomach. It even had Burr Browns that wiped the floor with the CDJ1000. In my opinion, Pioneer has been playing catch-up with Denon's DAC implementations for a long time, with only in recent years finally getting close.
Enough of the history lesson.
I'd be curious how you made the measurements on the Pioneer mixers' power supplies sagging later in the night, and was it the output line level or the power draw? Substantial power draw sagging should alter the stability of the unit overall, which is hard to believe when it became the club standard.
The Denon DN-x1700 uses a custom-design discrete-component phono stage, so putting Rane's phono preamp above it would need a justification.
The DJM-800 has a 96khz output setting, and all the digital mixers you've been discussing do not process internally at their max SPDIF output, rather they process massively oversampled and either in 24bit or 32bit, depending on the model. Granted, the Denons use a nice implementation of AD's programmable SHARC, but even the reboot of Numark's PPD line that Alesis helped design for them utilized TI single-purpose chips and proprietary Alesis DSPs that oversample -- hence the reason the 9000 sample-rate divided down to 44.1khz for SPDIF even though it inputted at 48khz. The Numark X5 is basically just the PPD 01 without the effects section and with a different crossfader.
Tascam, curiously, also beat everyone else on the first digital mixer front, too, but TI had not yet developed a single-purpose resampling chip, so the Tascam SPDIF inputs had D/A conversion a gain stage with trim pot, and then another A/D conversion. Numark left out the SPDIF ins on the 01 and had them on the 9000 once TI finally invented one... the first ever true digital in & out DJ mixer
The mk2 to mk5 (no G and not the mk6) Technics use a linear electric feedback servo motor that continuously makes adjustments as-needed, and has specially-designed dampening feet that, even now, work surprisingly well on their own -- significantly better than the Hanpins and Numarks' feet, though admittedly most people don't use the Numark ones properly (extended away from the body). The Hanpins and Numarks (no idea about the Denon 151 or the Audio Technica 120) use a pulse type motor, with only a few of the highest-end models updating frequently enough to be considered very low W&F. While other companies attempted to replicate the direct linear electric feedback servo in audiophile tables decades ago (Kenwood, JVC, Denon, etc), the only DJ brand I know for sure who actually attempted it was Gemini, and for some reason those decks did not sell well.
The use of DSP-controlled motor on a very few of these highest-end models has tended to improve things further. The largest issue with any of these decks, even Technics, is the feedback (or optical speed-sensing on the Hanpins) lagging and resulting in the platter fighting slip mat friction. This is one of the reasons the ever-present quartz lock on the 1200 mk2 is sometimes soldered out. You get more W&F, but less fighting against the manipulation of the record by the motor.
I have not seen any indication that the Denon VL12 is copying the Hanpin motor. I have not looked inside this unit or talked to their designers, though. Considering Denon's vast turntable experience, I'm not sure why they would copy a pulse design like that if they wanted to make an audiophile-grade DJ deck.
While the Pioneer turntable is indeed a Hanpin, which, other than it not being a Technics is not the end of the world, it has foam inside the tonearm to help with damping direct acoustic vibration of the cartridge and tonearm, as well as stylus roaring issues, which is most obvious to the ear if you reverse the first downbeat to the silence before it. Technics weren't the worst on that, an honor I believe rests with Numark, though their arms are substantially lower-mass (great for hi-fi and audiophile styli) and improved for scratching. The foam should help the inferior Hanpin arm, though the bearings are still lower grade.
I had the Tascam. It wasn't scratchable. Not in the practical sense.
