nick141166

first of all which ever one you do choose out of those 3 you will be getting a high end, high quality built device that is perfect for traktor. the obvious question is are jogwheels important to you? with ddjt running their free scratch tutorial at the moment and steve demonstrating that scratching on an s8 or s5 is not really practical at all. where as you would not have a scratch problem on the s4. if you got the s4 then you would be also looking at spending at least another £100 for an f1 remix deck controller to take advantage of the stems file format. with this setup there is no visual display of the individual stems components which is displayed on the s5 and s8 screens. (not in traktor on the computer yet, if ever on the 2.* versions). i personally do not think having a visual stems breakdown display is essential when using stems once you have learned the track you can control the stems file just as good as an s5 or s8 with an f1. plus it does have its own kind of visual display as the 4 vertical rows of pads on the f1 make a vu meter style display for the sound levels of each stem component. for example a regular stem may have this breakdown, first row for drums, second for bass, third for rhythm and the fourth row for voice. if you play mainly totally electronic instrument genres, techno etc the kind of tracks that traktor can always beatgrid properly and scratching is not a priority then s5 or s8 would be my choice. if you play old skool tunes, hip hop or old vinyl rips where the tune may deviate slightly in bpm due to the recording then using jogs is a more natural feel for adjustment. i recently went to an official product launch of the s5 as i’m on the verge of selling my s2 mk2 & f1 for an s5. after seeing the device i may hang on to the f1 as an addon for the s5 as well. it’s still the only device that can control remix decks the way ni designed them to be used plus it has the four faders for stems control missing from the s5. to wind this up if scratching is a priority then s4 with an f1, if stems compatibilty in one unit out of the box and scratching isn’t a priority get the s5 and if the budget can stretch plump for the s8. also the s4 and s5 are approximately the same size where as the s8 is huge so portability is a major factor. hope this helps you choose.

You say you have started have audio glitches. Does this mean you didn’t have them before? Can you tie this up with any change in software or firmware upgrade on any of your equipment you may have done? Does the audio glitch happen when the F1 is playing on its own with the S4 silent? Meaning can you narrow it down to either one of the two pieces of hardware? Can you hear the audio glitch through your headphones on cue or is it just the speakers or both? Check to see you are running the latest Traktor version and that your S4/F1 firmware is all up to date. Of course follow the previous advice posted but get those essential updates out of the way and if you are still having the problem then at least you will have something definite to rule out of the equation in this problem. Good luck with the gig! Let us all know how it went.