Lunchbreak jaunt leads to confusion
Hey all,
I decided on a whim while on a lunch break to stop into a local guitar center and actually check out some gear that’s current and just to see what they actually had in stock. I was actually expecting them to have a DJM-850 so I could have a look at it in person. I’m trying to incorporate my Maschine and external Synth with Traktor and my CDJ-400’s but can’t do much with my DJM-400.
To my surprise they don’t stock any mixers anymore besides one made by Numark. The rest was all controllers. A clerk came up to me and chatted me up a bit, rather laid back, we talked a bit and he asked me what I had currently and when I told him the first thing he said was, “wow, old guy”. I did not take offense I laughed a bit and admitted that yes I have a old way of thinking and I had not fully adopted to the all-in-one controller/laptop mantra.
He took me around and showed me the S4 Traktor hardware which did not work on the in-store demo and was sadly beat to death, missing knobs and faders. Then he brought me over to a unit called the NS7II by Numark and this ran Serato. That worked, well one platter worked at least and I fiddled with that for a bit but got frustrated as I did not know my way around the unit or Serato either. The entire unit seemed to have been fiddled with so things that should have worked, to me, did not, like the pads for the roll effect, pushing them activated the effect but you had to hit the same pad again to turn it off otherwise it would keep playing.
Anyways he came back and asked me what I thought and I honestly said I had wanted to just get a 4 channel mixer that I could use with Traktor so I could incorporate my synth and Maschine to not only layer beats and effects over tracks but also to use my own productions in mixes or use remix decks.
He explained that it was going to get very messy very fast and that I ultimately would be better served by a controller for Traktor or Serato but the question was which one. Since I have Maschine and use that in production, I mentioned that I’d like to use it with Traktor, however the two controllers I was shown, NS7II and the DDJ-SX both use Serato.
I reverted back to my original question, why can’t I just use my CDJ-400’s and get a DJM-850 that would allow me to use Traktor and Maschine and my Synth all like one big happy family? I was again told that the effects on the DJM-850 are the only ones I can use and not the effects in Traktor.
Perhaps I’m just afraid of change or that I just don’t want to have my eggs in one basket, decks/mixer in one unit with no expansion ability after a new software release comes out and renders the deck obsolete. The price for either the NS7II or the SX were the same and admittedly they would give me more options but I would not be able to use Traktor with either one just Serato and from what I used of Serato, 30 minutes, I did not quite like it, however I did like the vinyl feel, memories! 
I have however been on CDJ’s for years and years now and the DDJ-SX layout seemed more familiar to me with my CDJ-400’s and DJM-400 mixer including hard clicky buttons rather than the soft ones on the numark but that’s being overly picky I think.
Has anyone been a particular situation like this, what helped you made a decision if any at all needed to be made?
