Ahem…
The S4 is perfectly capable of scratching, however it is INCREDIBLY difficult to do so especially when your used to years of using a motorized spinning platter. No visual cues on your platter, so you have to watch the waveforms on your laptop.
That’s regular MIDI with some strong coffee in it 
being MIDI or HID has nothing to do with “higher resolution”. the resolution of any jogs is purely down to the hardware and how many “ticks” are sent out per revolution. in the case of MIDI a tick results in an actual relative midi CC being send out and in the case of HID it results in the controller indicating that something has changed which then causes the software to request full status bytes (ish) for the entire controller.
if a controller seems to have a different latency between running in MIDI verses HID modes then that’s just down to implementation and it’s in NI’s own interest to keep their S4/S2 controllers ahead of the curve there.
only negative is that MIDI has to go thru the midi layer in windows/macosx, tho usually a single MIDI message (usually 3 bytes) is much smaller than a HID one (maybe 20 or 30 bytes even if all that changes is one jog wheel) so that should compensate.
It was more the parts where you were yapping on about buyers remorse and the arrogant way you “Apologised” for me having one.
Technically the jogs might be more “precise” BUT he was asking for jogs that feel like the Pioneer and you tried to make them sound like they were pretty much rap and useless, which is far from the truth
For the record. I paid $750 (AUD) with the roadcase. No where near $1100… or even $900.
Straight from the bottom of http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/dj/traktor-kontrol-s4/?page=1746
It’s not just marketing hype either - midi is limited to 127 steps of resolution because of the protocol vs. NHL which is about 4,000 or so IIRC. Also for midi jogs, you only get “note on” or “note off” information sent to the software which makes a huge difference in feel; the difference in feel between a VCI-100 (standard midi) and an S4 is night and day for the jogs and faders.
As for the midi vs. HID - HID is non-standardized, so implementation of it in a controller requires cooperation between the manufacturer of the controller and the manufacturer of the software. When both of those parties are the same company, it makes things much easier. DJTT had a writeup about HID on the blog a while back as I recall which said something to that effect. You’re right though - it’s in NI’s interests to keep other hardware manufacturers from using NHL/HID.
And shr3dder - I didn’t mean to imply they were crap or useless, more that they feel so terrible that I wouldn’t want to use them. They’re like nails-on-a-chalkboard bad in terms of feel. I much prefer something smoother like the S4 jog, and I really don’t like the edges of the DDJ jogs. That combined with buttons that feel like they were lifted off of a cell phone makes me have the opinion that I do of the T1. Feel free to disagree - I simply hate how the controller feels and would never purchase one myself. Before I saw one in person I thought it looked like a decent controller; but after actually touching one, I was set on not buying it.
And RobotNinja - I know the S4 is capable of scratching. I’d just never want to do anything extensive on it. Even scratching a cue to mix in on the S4 isn’t pleasant. The jogs are far too small and the lack of visual feedback means not looking at your hands as you’re moving them on the tiny platter which makes the feel even worse as you struggle to keep your fingers on it and rotating around properly. No me gusta.
The best jogs (for me) are probably found on the Numark NS6 and 4trak, for Itch and Traktor specifically. I have a 4trak, which uses HID for the jogs with Traktor. Very precise and with great feel, it’s only Traktor’s jog implementation that keeps it from achieving perfection. However, if you’re looking for the CDJ feel of a micro switched jog, this is different since it’s touch sensitive instead.
There’s nothing wrong with MIDI for jogs as such, it’s Traktor’s implementation of them that sucks. Case in point, check out how fluid low end jogs feel in Serato Intro…
I’ve been looking at this 4trak but it looks like a bit of a beast and not much in the way of extra buttons to customise stuff.
I think I really want the VCI400 but am a bit worried about the jogs in Traktor. I’ll have to try and find somewhere that has one to try.
For the way I do things, there’s plenty of customisability in the buttons and sliders - but no, it’s not exactly a VCI-400 in that regard. The big downside to the HID platters is that there is no way to customise their behaviour in Traktor, so there’s no hope of getting VCI-100SE style jog FX going. Also, no sensitivity controls or any other niceties you get with MIDI jogs… but, the response is great.
If you remap anything within traktor do you lose the HID jogs? Isn’t that what happens with the S4?
HID mappings are normally open. S4/2 are exceptions since part of the mapping is handled via firmware.
No, that’s the good part with the 4trak! Everything else is freely mappable, but the jogs don’t show up as controls in Controller Manager.
Oowh i like the sounds of this. I’ve just looked again at it and there are quite a few things that could be customised if i wanted i guess.
Them filters look a bit out of the way are they comfortable?
Also i take it they are software filters not hardware ones ?
Are the normal mixer controls midi mappable or are they analogue only?
Cheers
MMM
we have no idea what they’re referring to there. the 30x must at least in part refer to the hardware, else any protocol doesn’t matter.
again not true… anything like a jogwheel only ever sends “relative” messages anyway so even using MIDI it can send 5k ticks per revolution if u really wanted.
the only limit with 128 is a normal note or cc, but we have 16 14bit pitchbend messages per device not to mention all the nrpn’s etc.
it should be possible for midi in the most part to feel as responsive as a hid device, but i’m sure NI are purposely optimising their hid interface and not midi for just this very reason…
as i said before the only real other thing i can think of is that any midi message ofc needs to pass thru the windows or macos midi layer, that adds some latency to the whole shebang (maybe) compared with dealing with the actual device directly.
with hid afaik an encoder has to be sent in absolute mode as all it can o it signal “something has changed” flag so the driver/software can read the status and work out “how much” it has changed. which ofc is all the midi driver would be doing anyway. i don’t really understand the difference in real latency between midi and hid for something as simple as a jog movement given the equivalent complexity in processing.
MIDI:
HID:
the main advantage of hid is the flexibility to encode whatever data the developer needs with whatever resolution that is needed but this shouldn’t be translating so directly to different feel/latency
so i’m not arguing that the s4 feels more responsive i just can’t see why. my bet is that NI is purposely making sure that their HID interface feels better, since the only technical reason for it (talking about jogs, and 14bits is gives u over 16k values anyway so over the 4k limit they mention so that’s not a limitting factor) is the fact that they aren’t in control of any midi driver and/or midi layer running on the system for any controller, where as with HID they are able to interface directly. it could be that this is the reason and not that they’re throttling their midi code, but this advantage has nothing to do with the advantages that they state about hid.
Okay, first off let me clarify that the full mappability is available on Traktor Pro, I already had a licence. The 4trak version MAY limit you to the controls labeled “assign” only, not sure.
The filter controls are just MIDI, not available in standalone mode - however, the PC/line switches actually switch the decks in question into Live Input mode if you have Traktor running, so you get the filters and all FX etc on line/phono inputs as well, which is nice. Positioning wise I’m still not used to them, but shouldn’t take long.
All mixer controls including CF curve and fader start are MIDI mappable, and you get friendly names instead of MIDI control numbers as labels in Controller Manager. The exceptions are master, booth and phone levels and phone mix, they’re all analogue - which is how they’re able to have split cue in there.
The only complaint I have so far is that they haven’t gone all the way with the pitch faders. They feel very nice, 1200-ish if you know what I mean, but the actual resolution is only 10 bits I think, not 14 - so you don’t quite get 0.01% precision unless you drop the range to something silly. At 8% you get 0.03 to 0.04 bpm resolution, which is almost as good as a CDJ-1000mk3 but not quite. I know the NS7 got this right, but I’m not sure if any other controller has it any better. 
Thanks for the info. Thats a real shame on the pitch faders. It was one of my next questions.
As this has been developed closely with NI have they certified the unit for Traktor Scratch use?
Cheers
MMM
Sorry Keeb, but you’re absolutely wrong in your post. I was about to rip you to shreds, but then I saw that Zestoi beat me to it. All MIDI isn’t limited to 128 steps. MIDI jogs don’t send note data. That DJTT article got a lot of it’s information wrong (and I called them on it).
Stay classy Zestoi! Great info as always.
cheers nem0nic 
tbh i was expecting u to post… glad you’re here now 
i still have a lot of midi stuff to learn really, only really know about the stuff i’ve coded in my midimasher.
i am still curious as to the (f)actual reasons (and not the marketing BS) for jogs feeling more responsive on say the S4 in hid mode verses midi…
No mention of Scratch certification, and to be honest I’d be VERY surprised to see that. Practically, a 4trak and a pair of 12-hundos would be such a huge setup that I don’t think it would make much sense.
In any case, you will need Traktor Pro to get the best out of it. The 4trak edition doesn’t have Advanced mode effects. No delay freeze? Get outta here…
Ahhh I see. Is it really that much bigger than the S4.
I already have Traktor Scratch Pro 2 so i would be good in that respect. 