Traktor S4 and 2x F1's…?

If you want to control 2 stems decks then a second F1 is advisable.

I am not at home with stems, but for stems you need individual volume controls (faders) for each of the 4 stems, per deck. Clearly the S4 doesn’t have that. The F1 does have 4 faders that controlled the volume of each of the 4 banks in the Remix Decks and 16 buttons to trigger all those bits and pieces.

Stems is just the playing track, but cut up into 4 stems giving you the option to redo stuff on the fly. So you can’t start/stop/cue the individual stems. The track either plays or not. All you can do is regulate the volume of the stems.

Totally different concept and as far as I understand, you can use remix decks alongside stems.

The D2 for sure was designed with Stems in mind. The F1 was (as far as I know) designed to use with Remix Decks. You can probably map the faders to do the stems volumes, but you’d have to utilize some kind of switch (mapped button) to go from stems control to remix deck control or you’d lose that ability.

Also the D2 is effectively the deck part of the S8. So 2x D2 with a Z1 would replace your S4 and F1(s). Again, from a money angle and assuming you can do away with jogs you might consider trading your current gear in an getting an S8

That is not true Maja. Just because you can see them in the interface you still need the faders. Yes you can midi map some stuff now into the S4 but it will still be a pain in the ass to operate. So getting a stem controller is still the way to go.

Trust me Jason, I tried this on the S4 and it is really bad. It will mess up your whole workflow.

I am not sure what your point is, it’s essentially what Jason said but in video and does nothing to counter Terry’s comment on it.

Clearly it is good that Traktor looks to get stems users in the S4 community (they stand to win if enough people embrace stems), but this is of course nowhere near the functionality you’d have with an S8 or even S5.

If Stems are to be an integral part of your workflow, you should go for a stems controller, imho. If you just occasionally want to dabble in Stems use, then this will probably have you covered. However, Stems being a creative instrument that does require some practice to get any proficiency at it (not so much technical as much as making it sound good and having your Stems manipulation make sense to the audience), it doesn’t seem very logical to use an S4 as your primary controller if you are deeply into Stems.

Just my two cents of course.