is the s8 worth it

Wow Nick, unreadable text m8! Just a long slur of words with the odd period, comma in it. No Caps and no paragraphs. Please see the tips and tricks sticky at the top of each forum. It’s there for a reason 🙂

On-topic:

If you don’t know if you are getting the right controller, you are clearly not ready for any of them!

The way to pick a controller is by first determining your (desired/intended) workflow, then picking the software that goes with it, then setting a budget and only then selecting two or three controllers for your shortlist.
By this time you will have figured out what features are must-have and which are nice-to-have.

If you don’t know if you need jogs or not for example, you clearly haven’t thought about the impact having cogwheels (or not) will have on your workflow. Stems are something you should consider when you have mastered the basics of DJ-ing and are ready to move on to bigger/better things. Those things MIGHT not be stems though. But you won’t know til you have a good grasp of what it is you like to do.

As I said, a choice that comes before picking your controller (after your workflow), is software choice. Particularly true in the case of Traktor software as it pretty much dictates Native Instruments/Traktor gear. But Traktor software is not the best for every type of DJ. Buying any of the controllers you mentioned before determining that Traktor is indeed the software that will fit your style of DJ-ing best, might have you ending up with a controller that will not (fully) support other software in case you find out that Traktor is not for you.

Hey Justin,

If you’re asking what workflow is, you really should consider downloading any software you can get for free first, use it and figure out a list of everything you need to do to get the result you want (workflow).

If you’re considering producing music, then the list will be different then if you just want to DJ. You should determine if scratching is important to the end result. If scratching is important, then jog-wheels should be considered. If scratching isn’t important or has little to do with creating the end result, then jog-wheels aren’t necessary.

There is no such thing (at least not that I have seen) as a free or trial version of Traktor. So this should make you ask yourself “Do I want to pay money to find out if Traktor is the right software for me?”. You may decide that you don’t want to pay for something when there are other solutions available. Traktor sells for about $100 per version. Tracktor can be found here.

Serato is probably one of the biggest names in the DJ world. If you walk into a retail store that sells DJ gear, you will see Serato plastered pretty much everywhere. The nice thing is Serato has a free software download. Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know much about their software, because I haven’t ever used it and may consider downloading a version and playing around with it. I would suggest you go to their site, read about the software and if you think it will do what you want it to do, then download it and try it. The Serato website can be found here.

Ableton advertises it’s Live software as “music production software”. You can download a free 90 day trial here. I have never used the software and personally it’s not something I’m interested in. That being said, this might be what you are looking for. Again, the best advice I can offer is to go read about the software and see if that’s software you want.

Virtual DJ (VDJ) is very similar to Serato software, but it really is intended for the beginner DJ. I first found about VDJ a few years ago. I downloaded the “free home version”, played around with it a lot without a controller (I still don’t have a controller by the way and I’ve been DJ’ing without one for a few years).

I can tell you that the home version will do pretty much everything you need it to do in order to DJ (clubs, mobile, etc.), but the software has limitations. Some functionalities that I needed weren’t available in the home version. However, by the time I figured that out, I wanted to buy the “pro version”.

The pro version unlocks every conceivable piece of the software I could ever dream of and for me (at the time) it was a no-brainer. $300 for the full version and a lifetime of free version upgrades was well worth the price tag and it works with many different controllers. VDJ has a great forum with people providing controller mapping files and so on.

I really like VDJ, but it’s not meant for producing music. If you want to find out more about VDJ; visit their website here.

There’s a few other pieces of software out there like djay and mixvibes. These seem to be aimed more toward people who want to DJ from an iPad or similar device. You may want to at least look at them and decide if either one are something you may or may not want to use.

Anyway, hopefully this all helps you figure out what you want and doesn’t confuse you.

@ DJ Vintage

The Djay & Mixvibes software both have laptop versions. Djay is exclusive in it’s laptop version to only Mac. Where as Mixvibes has versions that are Mac and Windows compatible. I just briefly looked at the Mixvibes website and it just looks like it’s aimed “more towards” a tablet user. Personally, I haven’t used Djay or Mixvibes, so I’m glad you shed some light on the subject.

I’m a pretty happy VDJ user (if you couldn’t tell – lol). The only thing I haven’t gotten to work well on VDJ is the iPad “link” feature. VDJ has a downloadable app for iPad (I think they added Android devices now also). You have to pay for the app, but I think the price tag is around $10. I only tried to get the app to work a few times messing with it, but never got it to function quite how I was hoping for it to work.

I pretty much gave up trying because my kid got a hold of my iPad and I have yet to get it back. I really want to buy another iPad strictly for DJ’ing and hide it from my wife and kid so it doesn’t end up loaded full of garbage (games), but it’ll have to wait for the time being.

Justin, I can almost ensure you that if you buy a high end controller now, you will be limiting your options later on. It’s gonna be a lot harder to admit to yourself that this 1.000+ controller you got was not all that suited for a starter and that becoming more experienced it might not be what you actually need/want. Get a used S2 and start working with it (it should come with a Traktor license if memory serves me correctly, so be sure you get that serial with the purchase – the old owner needs to unregister his key!).

Depending on your time and tenacity, a year or so down the road you won’t believe how far you have come and wonder what you were thinking at this time. By then you will have far more relevant (to you) information that will help you decide how to move forward.

Selling your S2 again then and getting something better/bigger/more modern that suits all your needs will be a lot easier.

Hey Justin,

I just Googled for a used Native Instruments s2 controller and the cheapest one I could find was around $300. So this again brings up the budget question of how much do you want to spend to find out IF Traktor or one of the controllers is right for you?

Since you seem to be rather intent on producing your own music; I still suggest you at least look into Ableton Live software. Look for whatever you can find online for free first (YouTube tutorials for example) and after you have a pretty god idea of how the software works download the 90 day trial. This will give you the most bang for your time (cuz you haven’t spent any money yet). If you try Ableton Live and it’s not for you, you can still always buy a version of Traktor from their website for $100 and use it without a controller.

Getting to know your software and being really comfortable with what you want to use will help you decide what hardware you want (controller).

You mention Stems in your original post. While Stems has the potential to be incredible (especially for someone that wants to produce music); I would offer some cautionary advice:

Stems is brand new and it may become incredibly popular or it may not. With a big name company like Native Instruments behind it; Stems has a really good chance of being the next “big thing”. However, Stems depends greatly on the rest of the music industry (namely bigger record labels) jumping on the band wagon and providing content.

If you can spend the next year getting really comfortable with the software you want use like DJ Vintage suggests (and I agree), then hopefully by the time you are ready for something like Stems; hopefully it will be far enough along for you to be able to actually use it.

The bonus for you here is you will be able to look at the newer controllers that come out at the time you feel you are ready and narrow the list down to 2 or 3 really solid choices that will do what you want it to do. Where as if you buy one now and have no idea of your workflow; you’re only going to want something else later and regret spending money on something that didn’t really work for you or potentially worse get frustrated and quit all together.

I’m offering you my opinion so that the latter doesn’t happen. I used to DJ 15 years ago, got frustrated with it and quit. The only reason I got back into is because my wife knew I used to DJ, mentioned it to a friend and the next thing I know I was being asked by someone to DJ and slowly hodge-podged a system together. Now I pretty much want to swap to a controller based system and really kind of need to start over. I can trade 1 piece of gear for a controller and get by for now, but that’s me (don’t be me is basically what I’m hinting at here).

If you’re on this site doing homework, you’re further ahead of the game than I was 5 years ago when I started piecing together my system and didn’t know the first thing about controllers or the software options. So, don’t get upset if the software you like doesn’t do what you want it to; that probably means you need to look for different software.

By the way, mo one else will probably ever tell you this, but IF you want to mess around with a really cheap controller just for fun in your room (stress relief); you could always consider the Numark DJ2GO – it’s a tiny controller, extremely basic and comes with a version of VDJ and sells for about $35.

This will at least give you something to play around with if the mood strikes you and it’s not a big investment. You also get some jog-wheels (although they’re not good for much other than track search). Here you would get the bonus of having what barely qualifies as a controller without the expense. It may help you at least blow off a little steam if you get frustrated.

Although, my advice is that if you get frustrated, go do something else for a while. I find that going for a walk seems to help me the most. I have a tendency to let my mind wander away from DJ’ing and look around my walking environment and then I’ll just get an idea of something I want to try. If my idea works, it’s awesome. If it doesn’t, I go for another walk -lol.

The biggest key here is for you to slowly figure out what works best for you. If you can do that, then there’s no limits on what you have the potential to achieve as a producer / DJ.