Slightly disappointing news about Traktor Remix Decks

[MrPopinjay]

I think they are both crap. I'd respect them more if they said "At first we're only opening it up to those with official hardware as a thank you to those who bought it and an intensive for others to purchase it and later we will be opening it up to other controllers" rather than making a ridiculous comment about about the technology not being there.

[zestoi]

The way multi colored LED's work is that they are 3 LED's in one package. Without getting too technical, the color variations happen when they are turned on at different amounts. So basically your controller would have a midi note for all it's possible colors, and assigning different colors would just be like assigning to a different LED on typical controllers.

that's not the way it usually works - the only exception i can think of atm is the K2 which uses different octaves of notes to select the colour. i.e: Note.A1 may be red and Note.A2 may be yellow for the same button. this kind of implementation is very odd tho.

on any controller like the launchpad or apc's it's just the 3rd byte that determines the colour, i.e: the velocity for a note message. this gives 128 options for colours and most don't need as many as that anyway.

the launchpad for example only has two led's (red and green) per pad (so not full rgb) and breaks the 3rd byte down into 2 bits per led giving you off, low, med and high for each led. two other bits are reserved for clear/copy that u can use to control it's internal buffering for "apparent" instant updating of all leds at once and for flashing colours.

Multi-color LED feedback would probably not be implemented in this way, because it would be confusing to the user and would needlessly take up available messages. I would expect the last byte of the associated note message would determine color - just like it does for many current controllers. With an RGB LED, yes there are thousands of colors available. But remember why this color system is used - to differentiate between buttons and associate colors with clips. So defining 20-30 colors that are easily discernible would be all that's needed to uniquely identify every clip in a deck, and this even lets us define solid, blink, and dim states for every color and still stay under the 128 values available to us.

exactly but seeing your post didn't stop me from geeking out and taking the chance to talk midi

[lethal_pizzle]

The Dicer also has 2 LEDs, they've shoehorned 8 different colours at 16 different brightnesses into the 128 velocity levels no problem.
To be honest though, the LED colours are not mandatory in order to be able to use a 16 pad sampler, as evidenced by all those samplers that don't have LEDs. Let the LEDs be 'F1 exclusive' if need be.

[zestoi]

zestoi said:
"different coloured led feedback may or may not be possible for the remix decks via midi"

ok now i feel a bit insane as i'm basically replying to my own post but... what i meant by that statement was that i had expected all the remix decks functionality to be midi mappable *but* didn't know whether they'd extend the "specific colours for different samples" to be also extended to midi. that's not to say that they *couldn't* but would be more complicated since different controllers would need different values to select the different colours and that may have been a bit of a nightmare for NI to integrate into their "colour selection for each sample" part of their gui.

ofc this is a mute point now since we know they didn't even go as far as making the remix decks mappable

[zestoi]

The Dicer also has 2 LEDs, they've shoehorned 8 different colours at 16 different brightnesses into the 128 velocity levels no problem.
To be honest though, the LED colours are not mandatory in order to be able to use a 16 pad sampler, as evidenced by all those samplers that don't have LEDs. Let the LEDs be 'F1 exclusive' if need be.

tho with only two led's i'd bet that you can't tell much of a difference between most of those different colours/brightness levels.

i went thru all options on the launchpad a while back trying to work out what colours actually make sense, just by firing off all possibile values to it and came up with this list: red (lo/med/high), green (lo/med/high), amber (lo/med/high), orange (lo/high), yellow (lo/high) and all of those in flashing mode. more than enough and even some of those are a bit hard to tell apart

you can also tweak the contrast/brightness on a launchpad via midi - but i find the default is about the best anyway.

[rotebass]

I can see it coming now and quite often.....

User: Hey, can someone tell me where I can get a mapping for my (APC, Maschine, Midifighter C, Pro and 3d, etc.) controller to control the new Mix Decks in Traktor?

Answer: Sorry buddy. You're going to have to buy NI's F1, if you want complete control the Mix Decks.

User: Aw, gee. That sucks!

This is a valid point, in that case we need to make sure to direct those people to email NI and complain. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

[scamo]

I've already asked my friendly neighborhood NI support staff member to get me an answer for this question.

Scott

[mostapha]

Anybody else wondered why Traktor has a retail of $89? NI moving towards the software being dongled to their hardware? Remember that Itch is "free"...

I'd much rather have to have an A6/X1/F1/whatever connected to run Traktor or Maschine connected to run Maschine than ever have to start Service Center again.

I can see it coming now and quite often.....

User: Hey, can someone tell me where I can get a mapping for my (APC, Maschine, Midifighter C, Pro and 3d, etc.) controller to control the new Mix Decks in Traktor?

Answer: Sorry buddy. You're going to have to buy NI's F1, if you want complete control the Mix Decks.

User: Aw, gee. That sucks!

Heh.

That answer had never really been the case before.

Except with sample decks right after the S4 was announced. Anyway, I think it'll go more like this:

User: Hey, can someone tell me where I can get a mapping for my (APC, Maschine, Midifighter C, Pro and 3d, etc.) controller to control the new Mix Decks in Traktor?

Answer: Sorry buddy. You're going to have to buy NI's F1, if you want complete control the Mix Decks.

User: Oh. Okay. I didn't want to, but the F1 works at least as well as what I was planning and has another MIDI layer I can map to other things…making me rely even more heavily on it and possibly making me need 2.

They should be above this kind of maneuvering.

When the NI/Stanton partnership ended, I was told by an insider that the next DVS would use the same sound card. Nope. Almost $700 down the drain. They've locked functionality to specific pieces before temporarily (sample decks & s4) or permanently (DVS to their cards) as a matter of course. This is nothing the least bit new.

You want something open, support FOSS. There is no alternative. Unfortunately, this software is hard to make work right on so many systems with so much hardware and no real open standards……so I don't think mixxx is anywhere near good enough to be considered a Traktor replacement. Unless you're going to do that…bend over and take it. Or just wait until they sell enough F1s to make the venture worthwhile and 2.6 will have MIDI mapping options for the remix decks.

I just find their "we'll only license soundcards/mixers that have been tested to meet our standards" excuse slightly more valid than the "depth of integration between the F1 hardware and Remix Deck exceeds what is possible through regular MIDI mapping" one.

I don't. There are a lot of sound cards that perform at least as well as NI's cards. They limit it to people who've paid for certification and whom they think they're going to get a good ROI on.

The DB4 isn't certified not because the sound card is too limiting. It's not certified because as it stands, they'll sell an A6, Audio 8, or A10 to every DB4 owner who uses Traktor…all 2,000 or so of them. The DJM850 and 900 are certified not because they're better sound cards or even because Pioneer paid for exclusivity or anything…it's because they make enough money from the 500,000 or so of them sold that they don't need to sell another sound card to every Traktor user.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a Behringer mixer that's traktor scratch certified before a high end A&H…they sell better. I know the 2d/3d/4d had it (or some of them did), but I honestly believe that was more a matter of trying desperately to get people who would be using Live otherwise attached to Traktor from not having to have a sound card. It may h ave been nothing more than a preemptive strike against a leaked rumor about the Bridge.

I'd respect them more if they said "At first we're only opening it up to those with official hardware as a thank you to those who bought it and an intensive for others to purchase it and later we will be opening it up to other controllers"

The problem is that there are a lot of people who will buy the F1 this way and not your way. Making that statement would take a lot of money out of their pockets.

I'm convinced it's true. But it's not in their best interest to tell people about it.

[lethal_pizzle]

But it's not in their best interest to tell people about it.

I suspect you are correct.

[zestoi]

You want something open, support FOSS. There is no alternative. Unfortunately, this software is hard to make work right on so many systems with so much hardware and no real open standards……so I don't think mixxx is anywhere near good enough to be considered a Traktor replacement. Unless you're going to do that…bend over and take it.

it's not yet - but doesn't mean it won't get there. mixxx has made big improvements recently and 1.11 will have point and click midi learning ableton style. the mixxx development team seem fairly open to new ideas.