A few gear questions here

3) Oh, you’ll get comments bringing a non-Pioneer CDJ to a booth too. Actually even with a Pioneer CDJ, bringing one of your own will look pretty odd. Don’t worry about the manager, he hasn’t gotten it yet. You are doing well providing backup imho and your for the rest just move one.

2) Not sure what you are saying here. Technics (1200s?), earphones (headphones?), one IN your ear?

1) Frankly, if you are dead set on using Traktor, I’d stay with Traktor gear. Traktor is fast moving away from supporting non-NI gear. And when the new version hits (time is running out on version 2.x imho), it’s fair to assume that there will be no more non-NI support at all. Clearly we don’t know for sure, but watching Traktors direction and decisions over the last 2 years, it’s a reasonable assumption. And I don’t think you want to be caught in a situation where you are comfortable with your controller that you spend some serious money on only to find it is no longer supported by your software. It not too bad if you bought a 300 buck starter controller, but a 1000 bucks SX2 … ?
As for hating sync, I don’t know what there is to hate. Sync is sync. The only thing that can make a difference in sync is the beatgrid. When it’s off it’s off and any brand’s sync will sound like crap (including Traktor). Traktor has the worst beatgrid in the industry, if it’s not tight one bpm all the way electronic beats you can forget it. Serato is way better in flexible beatgridding, this “might” mean it feels like it gets it wrong more than Traktor, but that’s because it can beatgrid much more music properly than Traktor even attempts.

As with anything, preparation is the key. It’s not a matter of throwing a couple of thousand of tracks in your DJ software, letting it analyse the lot and expecting everything to be ready for you. It’s one of the reasons we advocate small core collections, properly prepped, beatgrids all checked and corrected where necessary. Also knowing that collection inside out.

Even then you should expect only 70-80% of the material to be ready for proper synced transitions, meaning you will always be doing manual work as well, making the sync functions a mere tool to help you. No more, no less.

Just my two cents as usual.

True, but you know as well as I do that many manufacturers are not totally forthcoming with midi commands used for example. Especially midi-out (to trigger lights and such) is often a really big problem. They can’t be forced to give information to other (competing) companies.

So you will end up with a “yes, we support generic midi, see if you can make it work on your own cause we are not helping” situation. And while some users don’t mind technical messing about, most DJs want to play music and gear just has to work.

Clearly we are not even discussing jogwheel integration. Why would a company that is (proof is S8/S5 and all modulars) moving away from or at the very least limiting the importance of jogwheels and the controllers they do have that have jogwheels don’t work with midi but a proprietary hid kind of control, go to any lengths to invest expensive development money into building great jogwheel integration (or any at all) over midi into their new software? It’ll be “we have a stable, mature product that works with midi jogwheels, but our new version does no longer support it”.

And whatever the way they dress it up, you will never be able to reach out to the software manufacturer for any kind of support. Pioneer will be less inclined to stick a lot of effort into supporting Traktor now that they have RekordBox DJ that they’d rather see Traktor DJs move to.

While I agree that there will be some way to connect external gear (if only external sample pads and such), the risk of things not working out of the box and requiring either time, knowledge and effort from the controller manufacturer and/or the end-user or the risk of it not working at all would be just too big a gamble for me.

One thing that contributes to that feeling is that, assuming Traktor listens to the marketplace, at no time or place have I seen a statement to comfort current users that they will indeed continue with any kind of midi support for other gear (specifically controllers). Never have they said, don’t worry, if we bring out version 3.0 you can still use your DDJ-SB and Mixtrack Pro 3! It would be easy enough to do, yet not happening (or I missed something, but I don’t believe I did).

My guess is that they are aiming for an NI-only ecosystem with full integration with things like Maschine and such, max. usage of stems, etx. Stay within the ecosystem and the world is a wonderful place, venture outside at your own risk and expect nothing from NI.

As far as I know, what I stated was that it is fair to assume no more non-NI support when the new version hits. I didn’t mean dropping midi entirely, I ment not providing any means of support to anything other than Traktor on Traktor use. Not just towards end-users, it seems that support has already dried up if you are to believe the stories, but also towards other gear manufacturers.

Again, it’s always just my two cents and should be read as such. I don’t own the truth, nor do I have any in-depth knowledge others lack. I do use whatever analytical skills I believe I posses and try to read what is happening in the market place and draw conclusions from there.

Short of the good folks at NI themselves, nobody knows as yet what is gonna happen exactly. I may be wrong, you may be wrong, we both might be wrong. Won’t know til it happens.

The only point that I will continue to stand behind is that I would not feel comfortable buying a 1000 bucks worth of gear to use with software by a company that is currently showing little interest in supporting that controller. And where my only reliable sources of (future) support are most likely a DJ website and the Traktor Bible site. And the knowledge that Traktor will most likely never do anything in it’s software to improve your user experience on that controller nor take your controller into account when thinking up something new.

As I said before, these are interesting times.

I realize that:

“And I don’t think you want to be caught in a situation where you are comfortable with your controller that you spend some serious money on only to find it is no longer supported by your software.”

Doesn’t literally state that they are going to remove MIDI support completely, but without further comment, that is still very strongly implied (I am not saying that you intended the implication, but that it was there nonetheless). I was merely providing further comment, hopefully in a way that was enjoyable enough, as I have enjoyed the thread.

As far as “your 2 cents,” Chuck, you have to give yourself more credit than that – you are an incredibly respected moderator here (and well deserved, you have clearly demonstrated your knowledge), it is not uncommon for folks ’round here to take what you say as gospel. Not your fault, but it IS something to keep in mind. Knowing that folks take what you say as gospel is part of why I may come off as a little argumentative with you, if I do… it’s not meant that way, I’m just trying to counterbalance things a little when what you are saying is sounding a lot more authoritative than you may have intended.

You are one of the primary authorities here, after all.

*smoochy smoochy* or somethin’. hahahahahahah

Sorry to continue the off topic part of this thread, but I need to throw something into the conversation.

“Additionally, they would be a legitimate target of a class action suit from folks who are legally entitled to the upgrade, but are not using NI gear… such as anyone who has an NI audio interface but uses a non-NI controller.”

This is not correct – there would be no possible legal action. A software company isn’t bound by law to make all future versions of a package they develop fully backwards-compatible. If they were Serato would be in court right now fighting SL1 owners. Additionally, as NI uses a paid upgrade business model, you aren’t forced to take the upgrade, so again, no legal consequences whatsoever for kicking every last one of the non-NI users to the curb. Not saying they will or will not do such a thing, just don’t assume they won’t because of “laws”.

@Kappa (and on-topic 😀 ):
1) No idea if those even exist, I am guessing you want a rubber TT-like mat on top of your jogs? Which might by the way prohibit the proper working of the jogs, I think they are touch-sensitive, which they won’t be if you slap a slab of rubber on top of them.
2) No clue. But the colleagues over at DJ Tech Tools offer something called chroma caps. From what I hear good knobs that come in a variety of colors so you can personalize your controller/mixer even more.