WHY do so many people here use and suggest the S2/S4??

[Ed Paris]

Midi is dope...... if you use quality cable and VERY short runs. (I use gold plated connectors and special one direction flow cables at under 1mtr and the two foxes are connected using 30cm cable)

No problems; been using midi since the 80's, for synths, samples... oh the list goes one and on.

It was the shitty early squencers that where slow......... and caused all the problems...

My faderfox DJ2 and DJx are midi and are quick as fuck......... I use as back up if the club dj booth is too small to use my modded VCI 100 ........

Funny thing is I actually play out a lot in Berlin, the home of Ableton, Native Instruments and have never seen anyone use the S2 or S4.

Timecodes are used by about 80% of the digital djs ... others use .... Allen and Heath or Faderfox or VCI 100.

But I guess ........ Berlin is behind in the world club scene.

The question here is if you are shit... no matter what you use you will still be shit!

Mr Golden cannot map talent for you.

Why do you all keep spending money on the latest new controller thinking it will suddenly make you shit hot......... did you change your Technics every six moths to change the colour?

Nothing is perfect... the imperfections make muisc interesting.

+1!
been using my vci for a couple of years now. was thinking about buying the s2 but, i wouldn´t really use it a lot since i´m an absolute lover of mixers and external mixing.

[trux]

i don't understand how anyone could think the ni stuff is low build quality. i got the masch, f1 and s4 and they are all very sturdy bits of gear, i expect they will continue to last a long time.

what are you doing to these things? if i took a hammer to an s4 i reckon i'd have a hard time getting it to break - i may not even be able to crack it open unless i had a chisel. maybe if i had a sledge hammer...

what is wrong with things made out of plastic? lots of things are made from plastic. like... cars, boats, furniture, most modern technology, jackie stallone's face. why are you all so racist towards plastic?

[Otacon]

I enjoy my S4 and Maschine. Yeah they are made of plastic, but do you not protect your gear and just throw it around when you're not using it? Everyone has their different perspective, and alot of people don't agree with one another. I enoy NI's products personally.

[RockingClub]

Why do you all keep spending money on the latest new controller thinking it will suddenly make you shit hot......... did you change your Technics every six moths to change the colour?

True!

I think comparing the S4 with the VCI 400 (EGE) and the Numark 4Trak in this thread is a bit unfair due to their release dates. But if you want to buy a controller today there will be some controllers offering more here or there than the S4. But as Tommi Bass said this doesn't mean you will automatically be better than all the S4 users out there.

As an owner of the S4 I must say: It's alright. The controller works perfectly, it's the right choice for me but I will respect anyone using some other gear that works better for them. I think there's no use in bashing some people's opinion.

One final thing that really made me angry is that owners of the S4 do have to buy the F1 to really use the remix decks like anyone else out there. As an owner of the major NI DJ product I would definitely have expected to get at least a minor plus of features that users of non-NI hardware don't have. The S4 uses the same protocoll like the F1 so there is no excuse for NI! Very much disappointed... (btw: didn't buy - and don't plan to - the F1).

[Tommi Bass]

If you are a newbie... you are not so gentile with the equipment....... learning can take its toll on the equipment... no matter what build.

I have in my long dj career gone through 2 pairs of Technics, one pair of Vestax.... and about 10 diff mixers.

Now I look after my equipmewnt and it is not taken out to raves in fields ... so its always looking like new.

I like NI stuff............ its just to big for me to take out and use in the clubs............

[Emery]

Yea I feel you on the F1. I never had a problem with NI until they did that. I never really planned on getting one, but I was syncing ableton through traktor a lot at home and wanted an easy way to use loops and one shots at gigs, so it did interest me. Once I saw a clean one on the buy/sell I hopped on it. If im not satisfied, I could probably make most of my money back on resale. Im pretty sure Ill like it though

[despo]

OP is right on the build quality, I had mine for 8 months home use only until the faders started acting up and I had to call NI support. They gave me a brand new one which is just sitting around now waiting to be sold so I can buy a DJM700 or something similiar that's built like a tank and has replacement parts.

[zestoi]

Sir, HID is what they use which is more responsive than midi
Think your mouse for instance, it's HID, it moves when you move it.
Midi suffers from latency issues at times and more midi send/receive and it will be more apparent.

totally untrue. a device driver has to poll a hid device and pretty much gets a packet containing the current status of all controls of the device. with midi the device driver also polls for messages but just gets short packets containing an update for one control at a time (some drivers may also do blocking reads which only makes it even better)

the midi code only has to process this short packet while for hid it first has to work out exactly what has changed - whether this happens in some device driver or application logic - it's still a lot more work.

there are advantages in using hid, it's basically just more flexible, but the advantages have nothing to do with latency at all.

a hid driver may well poll the device less often than it changes and so lose status packets, which probably doesn't matter - while midi data tends to get buffered. if you were really flooding the system with data (that isn't going to happen from a dj type controller) then maybe there'd then be an advantage there to use hid, since with midi you can't ignore any packets as they're all just delta's.

[rotebass]

Midi is dope...... if you use quality cable and VERY short runs. (I use gold plated connectors and special one direction flow cables at under 1mtr and the two foxes are connected using 30cm cable)

Tell me moar about these one direction flow cables

@OP, they are popular because they get the job done and they are inexpensive. If you don't like them, recommend something you do like instead of getting all butt hurt and writing a god damn diatribe about it. Did someone at NI poke your significant other or something?

[Emery]

+1 Seems like an NI bash thread. tbh I almost hate how much I like NI stuff