External Mixer w/ APC40 or X1

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

External Mixer w/ APC40 or X1

I currently own an Allen and Heath Xone:42 and an Akai APC40 with an Audio 4 as my sound card.

I’m really conflicted at the moment as to what setup I should use:

  1. Xone:42 + APC 40
  2. Xone:42 + Xone K2 or Traktor X1 or Reloop Contour
  3. Get rid of it all for a Kontrol S2 or Denon MC3000.

I don’t plan on scratching all too much, so I’m not sure what I need jog wheels for besides scrolling through songs. I went to Guitar Center and played around on the S4 which was quite fun. I really liked the interface, but at the same time… I really like using the Xone 42 for external mixing (plus the AH filter is awesome).

Is there any real difference between the setups I posted? I feel like the difference between the controller and an external mixer + X1 or K2 is just that the mixer + X1 will be more modular vs a full controller.

I’m leaning towards getting rid of the APC40 for an X1 or K2 since I don’t find the APC 40 very friendly for Traktor. Or maybe I just haven’t found a good map yet.

Thanks for the help.

2

Jogs and scratching = Fail.

Its just not the same.

Forget the jogs and get a turntable if you wanna scratch.

3

If you are willing to accurately beatgrid every track you play so they all sync perfectly you can do away with jogs, otherwise you may want them for beatmatching.

4

However, if you route via the Xone:42, you can leave more of the APC functions for FX mapping.

5

Ahhh. I assume Traktor was better at gridding the beat. I’ve been dabbling in both Ableton and Traktor so I spent a ton of time in Ableton warping my tracks.

Is Traktor’s autogrid not really accurate? I see a lot of people here are only using the X1 or K2 which don’t have jogwheels. Sounds like I might want to get the Reloop then for the jog wheel. Or a Xone 1D. I saw Guitar Center had one for sale used for bout 100 bucks.

I’ve finally found an APC40 map that was decent from Subconcussion, but it appears that since I have a copy of Scratch Duo, not a new version, it doesn’t work well with my Traktor :confused: Gonna have to learn how to map this weekend too!

6

The grids are accurate most of the time, but you do come across tracks with odd beats from time to time which it can struggle with.

Plenty of people mix without jogs - you can adjust the phase of the track relatively easily using the X1 in order to beatmatch as BPMs are almost always spot on with Traktor.