Right, had a good half an hour playing with it, and the basic functions are there, mdcdesign got 2) spot on, the downbeat was wrong every time. I had no previous experience with grossbeat, which was one of the main features that people where really tommy tanking over, so I don’t know what I expected, but that definitely wasn’t it, or anywhere near as good as what I would have hoped. Maybe it’s nerfed for the demo version? It’s pretty much just Traktor’s beatslicer but you can set the exact point for it to slice, although the UI is not noob friendly. I’m guessing the grid is how many beats backwards it jumps? So after you’ve figured that out, it’s pretty much Traktor’s beat slicer on steroids. Mapping capabilities are nowhere near Traktor standards from what I can see, although it is pretty simple to map functions.
No cue on the UI is an odd design choice, but it works fine on my controller. I guess they figured people with a mouse don’t cue, cue, cue, play, they just hit play.
The sync function acts like Virtual DJs, which I find a bit contradictory to the idea of sync. You press sync, it matches your BPMs, but if you drop it off time, it’s still off time, there’s no quantising, you’re on your own.
The isolated FX is exactly how I hoped, but the FX just don’t seem to sound as good as Traktors? I’m messing with a flanger as I write this (oo-er 
) and it’s not exactly amazing. The delay is bit naff as well. I think I’m just spolied by Traktor’s plethora of FX.
All in all, it’s “almost but not quite”. It really does have some great features but they’re not implemented right. Like mdcdesignsaid, grossbeat doesn’t give you real time control. If you could map grid points to a controller, that would be a massive game changer there, and also some linking between the FX and GrossBeat instead of just volume and time (Although given the layout, I imagine this will be a feature at some point). Actually come to think of it, the demo shows that happening. I’m going to have crack the manual open on this.
Latency is good straight off the bat, which was impressive, and I’ve not experienced any glitches or slow downs. The side by side (serato) waveform view is exactly what it says on the tin, also.
To sum it up, NI isn’t going to be bankrupt by the end of the year. But they need to pay attention, because with a bit of tweaking and time, Deckadance is going to be amazing. The core functions are there, it just needs some more real time function to make it killer.
EDIT: Somehow, I completely missed the smart knobs. Holy fuck this thing is ballin’. These Macro FX knobs should have been in Traktor when those ‘macro’ FX came out. I thought this is what NI had put in. I’m guessing NI are putting one in, because obviously the idea is there, they just need to users program for themselves. This doesn’t stop the FX from being so beige though, but it’s really, really cool. Mapped it to a fader on my F1 right now with gross beat on the pads, it’s like Kraftwerk fell into a woodchipper.
2ND EDIT: Hot tamale, make sure you scan and verify your VSTs an use Effector which comes packaged with Deckadance. Now THAT is how you do effects. I’m not sure about the midi mapping ins and outs of VST plugins within the program yet, in fact I think you’re limited to two parameters at a time, but holy crap Effector is great and it sounds good. However, this did give me my first audio hiccup when I was going absolutely bananas on it, which brings back that old “VSTs just aren’t stable enough” argument.
