EKS OTUS RAW released.

[zimfella]

Hi guy's

being an otus owner I've been anticipating the raw's release. Here it is.

http://eks.fi/product.php?p=products&id=70

looking forward to some videos soon.

ciao ciao

[djproben]

Where's the porn link? The photos are too small to drool over.... But this does look nice.

[mmauve]

It's not going to be released until September at the soonest, theres a thread on their forum discussing it. Last I talked to their PR guy, he said it would be $799

[The Progen]

Ahhh, conventional faders instead of that touch sensitive finger slides. Lovely!

[DJ Nada]

Oh wow, hadn't seen the details of this before. Kind of expensive, but I might actually buy this... Dammit guys, I'm gonna be blowing all my money on DJ stuff. I love the big jog wheel+pads.

[nem0nic]

The sad fact is that this controller will seem like a good idea until someone gets it home and starts using it with Traktor. The reason the (superior) original Otus has a touch based pitch slider was to handle pitch changes from sync and deck switching in an elegant way. Having a touch based slider gives you a way to control pitch that is never out of sync with the software, while also offering superior pitch resolution.

Because the Raw uses a physical pitch fader, you run into situations where the position of the physical pitch fader does not reflect the pitch on the virtual deck. Soft takeover can be used, but this results in a situation where you can move the pitch slider and not have any result in the virtual deck because the soft takeover threshold hasn't been crossed. You'll also get jumps in pitch, because the soft takeover threshold must be crossed before the pitch fader will work.

Unfortunately, this is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. The original Otus was an amazing product, but people didn't understand the touch element. The Raw will probably have better initial sales, but will see more returns because it uses an inferior system to handle pitch control. Users will complain about it, and in the long run it will do a little brand damage.

[mmauve]

Well, won't know until we try, but in all honesty this product was aimed at people who prefer the manual method to DJ, not with a sync button (no offense to people who use it). I don't foresee tempo differential between the software and controller being an issue for those who use it the way it was intended.

The original Otus was a huge bomb in my opinion (I owned one), I ended up returning it because:

1.) The mouse pad was junky as all hell (couldn't detect diagonal movement at all). This is noted on the review at Skratchworx.

2.) The touch strip for the pitch control had a surface which was not friendly at all (not to mention cheaply applied, it was not appended to the actual surface of the controller). Way too glossy for fingers, alot of drag and stutter for those who use the traditional see-saw method to match beats like you could on a turntable or CDJ.

3.) The build quality suffered a bit too around the area which had the rotary encoders (on the corners), you could plainly see the circuit board between the chassis and encoder, which to me doesn't sit well considering it was a $799 controller.

4.) The jog wheel also had major issues grasping the waveform during quick movements of the platter. This is also noted on Skratchworx review.

5.) Heavy dependency on USB power with no option for external power sources.

They had their fair share of issues with the original, otherwise they wouldn't have also made the Otus Plus which is the exact same thing as the original, minus all the stuff they know they fucked up on with the original lol.

[SirReal]

Yeah, if you notice, EKS now has OTUS+ which is an updated Otus "fixing" the things you mentioned above. After all this waiting, I'm still not sure I want to give my money to a company with little to no support for its products. Their customer service seems non existent. TBH I'm weighing the Otus Raw against the NI S4 & the DN-MC6000 and I know NI & Denon are pretty solid. I guess I'll continue to wait until they're all released and I can actually play around with them.

[mmauve]

Oh yeah, EKS support licks balls - go on their forum and you'll see me and other people ripping them a new ass left and right lol.

[extraclassic]

The sad fact is that this controller will seem like a good idea until someone gets it home and starts using it with Traktor. The reason the (superior) original Otus has a touch based pitch slider was to handle pitch changes from sync and deck switching in an elegant way. Having a touch based slider gives you a way to control pitch that is never out of sync with the software, while also offering superior pitch resolution.

Because the Raw uses a physical pitch fader, you run into situations where the position of the physical pitch fader does not reflect the pitch on the virtual deck. Soft takeover can be used, but this results in a situation where you can move the pitch slider and not have any result in the virtual deck because the soft takeover threshold hasn't been crossed. You'll also get jumps in pitch, because the soft takeover threshold must be crossed before the pitch fader will work.

Unfortunately, this is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. The original Otus was an amazing product, but people didn't understand the touch element. The Raw will probably have better initial sales, but will see more returns because it uses an inferior system to handle pitch control. Users will complain about it, and in the long run it will do a little brand damage.

But surely that's why the otus raw has 2 pitch sliders?

Obviously you would run into the problem you mentioned if using 4 decks but with just 2 you should be fine.