New Pioneer DJ USB DJ Controllers for Traktor/Serato

Looks like pioneer have realised nobody wants to pay 1500 quid for a SINGLE CDJ2000 to control (badly) the functions of traktor, which i always wondered why they made a big song and dance about it being HID/MIDI compatible with them.

Also, just WHAT is the point of a club mixer any more when traktor has an onboard mixer that works just as well? If you want to use CDJ's fair enough, but the Kontrol S4 has basically given you an entire dj system for the price of buying a single CDJ2000 (S4 + Laptop) while you are stuck with spending the best part of 4000 quid to go the 'pioneer' way.

This is all well and good if you are a superstar DJ who doesnt have to pay for anything, and can demand a setup that the death star would be envious off, and James Zabelia who can use your 3 grands worth of CDJ2000's JUST to send midi messages to his laptop where all the actual dj'ing is being done on ableton, but for joe public i don't see the point any more

It used to be 1210's and a DJM400 (1200 quid), then it was CDJ1000's and a DJM600/800 (2200 quid), and now its CDJ2000's and a DJM800/DM2000 (4000+) quid ...... erm no thanks

Since these are the days of the DJ's turning up with their own kit (within reason) i see no reason to 'follow the superstar dj setups' anymore.

Just had a watch of that video and that looks well good!

I quite like the integration of the seek bar touch thing to quickly move about tracks, and the familiar pitch sliders and cue/play buttons.

Looks like a serious contender this.

Thats beautiful man.

Imagine telling that to someone looking to get into DJ'ing.

'Don't worry about the kit son, just be in love with the music and everything will just work itself out'

Pioneer ones only just been announced last week at NAAM so i very much doubt they will be out till March or so.

I've not heard a bad thing said about the S4, but not seen one or tried one sadly. I really quite fancy getting one, but since my DJ'ing career is more or less limited to playing to next doors cat when he passes our window .... its getting hard to justify the outlay.

fuck justification brid, DO IT

Yeah but that will ruin my chances of getting the elusive dual laptop setup that Sasha/Hawtin have with traktor routed into ableton for sidechain compression EFX - The Holy grail of DJ'ing.

... next doors cat will never know when one track ends and the other one begins then!

Tried these out today in Guildford Sound and Light.

Very well made. On par or even slightly better than the NI one. Nice solid feel and the pots/faders feel very high quality as per their mixers.

Some things are better laid out - the headphone faders for one. I always mix in my headphones so being able to switch between cue and master mix quickly are very important, as is being able to change the headphone volume. On the NI controller they are on the front of the unit and not on the top panel which is a right pain in the rectum. On the pioneer they are nicely on the top.

Its a standard version of Traktor pro pretty much, and as such feels more simple. Dare i say but i actually think thats a good thing. The NI one has some confusing workflow at times, and i STILL aint figured out how to load a fucking track on the NI S4 with the maximised browser into decks C + D.

Most importantly ......... no sound issues UNLIKE the NI product which has issues in Windows 7. Which ..... is pushing me to the point of flogging my S4 or being forced to get a Mac Powerbook or something, which seems like overkill, and its a massive shame since my old setup had no issues at all, despite being spread over 3 bits of hardware and the cable dick about that went with it.

What about using XP in a seperate partition? Thats what I've got on my HP laptop...

Yeah, i already run my dj'ing software on a VHD that i boot into (32 bit as opposed to the 64 bit host).

It seems the problems are windows driver related, So you'd be equally fucked with XP.