Help for choosing a first controller

I know both Serato and Traktor and they are pretty far apart when it comes to workflow. So liking both means you have very basic needs and probably play EDM like music only (if you play more stuff with varying beat grids, you’d already have run into the limitations of the Traktor beatgrid system).

Todd is right though. The choice of software trumps that of the controller.

It’s not something you’ll switch easily down the line (lots of your time will go into prepping your tracks, like setting cue points, loops, beatgrid, starting beats, and such and when you switch you lose all that work!).

Another point is that Traktor/NI have dialed down the support on non-NI controllers and gear. Meaning if you get the S2 and decide to move away from Traktor, the S2 is not a real good option for Serato for example (not to mention you also have a choice of Mixvibes Cross for a very reasonable price and VDJ which is more expensive but lifetime free upgrades). The other way around, if you start with a non-NI controller and decide to move to Traktor, the controller won’t integrate as well or be supported fully like an NI controller would.

I think, looking at the list, that the Reloop option would be my choice. Decent starter controller, the extra Neon giving you a longer growth path (and it can be used if you upgrade with other controllers).

That said, both MC2000 and Mixtrack Pro (1 thru 3) have been on our recommended starter controller list for quite some time. So really, whichever you pick from this list, they will all do the job.

I think you made a valid choice. And I commend you for checking here BEFORE buying LOL.

Too many folks come on here having bought gear (because of price, picture, whatever) and then asking our opinion, hehehehe.

Good luck and let us know what you think once you have used it for a while.

Remember with hip hop DJing it’s different to EDM DJing .. if you aren’t really using sync and doing more manual mixing, it is fine on any software. You can make mashups of instrumentals and acapellas in production software like
Ableton, but if you do it live you may want decent beat gridding, especially if you want to get old soul and funk beats (think Chic’s Good Times) and overlay recent acapellas over them. Live drummers are not drum machines so they may not hit at exact points 🙂

As regards electronic music, I’ve seen Edu Imbernon (tech house DJ who plays festivals and regularly at Space Ibiza) using Traktor with 4 CDJs which are all synced up for 4 deck mixing, otherwise 4 deck mixing is a pain to do!