Xone K2 - one controller commanding two laptops

[Lanz the joiner]

You can attach two Xone K2 controllers together using an RJ45 cable, thus creating one controller with two USB connections.

I tried this the other day, and it worked. I had to plug in the USB cables first, then the RJ45 connection. From there I could manipulate two sets of Traktors with one controller, as well as utilizing both sets of audio outputs of the controllers.

It wasn't completely without confusion. Whenever I performed certain actions, one or both Traktors would start to spasm out like crazy.

This was because the Xone K2 controllers share a MIDI message between two functions: to illuminate something in red, and to activate a switch or button. So to tell the top left switch to light up in red, you need to program your software to send out the C3 note. Likewise, when you press that very same button, your controller will send out the C3 note. So any time my software (on laptop X) told the controller to light up an LED in the colour red, the other Traktor running (on laptop Y) would interpret that message as me pressing the button or switch.

Unless I'm mistaken, this opens up some new possibilities. Pre-fader level, post-fader level, or beat phase information can be used to rhythmically trigger any function in a totally different software. An example that comes to mind is programming sidechain or gate type setups.

[Stewe]

Sounds like a fun

[zestoi]

does sound pretty cool the end result is the kind of thing i do with my midimasher software. the beatphase is pretty useful - tho now i use the midi ticks from traktor which gives u 24 ticks per beat to do crazy stuff with mostly just been using the midi sync'd beats tho to trigger a remix deck ala maschine. pretty fun...

[Lanz the joiner]

Well I've not been able to explore this any further - the day after I got my second laptop, its motherboard departed this transitory stage of existence. Luckily the sellers seemed cool and are replacing it for me (it's a refurbed Lenovo X220)

What did occur to me is the idea of using the beatphase to sync two instances of Traktor together using the 'Tap' function. I'm looking forward to experimenting with this to see whether Traktor will detect the exact tempo sent through the phase data. If this works then once the MIDI mappings of both laptops are set up, I imagine it could be one of the easiest and quickest ways to sync two Traktors on PC.