Hi guys. Been djing now for almost 11 years and made the progression from vinyl to cd (reluctantly) and I am now on the brink of buying my first dvs. Can anyone give me some pointers as to the differences between SL2 & SL3 apart from the option to have a 3rd deck on SL3? I am also going to pick a pair of Novation Dicers to go along with this set up. I’m just struggling to justify the £150 difference between 2 & 3 unless someone can tell me why SL3 is so much better? Originally I had planned to buy a Kontrol S2 but I am now swayed towards Scratch with Dicers. If anyone has any opinion as to why I should buy the Kontrol S2 over Serato I’d be really grateful of your advice.
imo..its all about ur own style..what do you play.. what do u feel more comfortable with… i learned on vinyl and when i tried cdjs..i wasnt impressed..i felt like they were souless…but when serato was first released.. i struggled to come to terms with it… and now i will forever sing its praise… its as close to vinyl as itll get minus the crates and crate bite… and the dicers are soooo much fun… im a bit of a midi noob tbh… i didnt start messing around with midi until jan of this year.. and now im obsessed with it.. had the dicers for a month before i added my lpd8… and all i play is hiphop funk soul old skool and on acassion sum top 40 or sum dub step… at the end of the day mate… its what you are comfortable with but given your time with proper decks… i think youll find serato and easier transition into dvs/digital dj’in
Hi! Thanks for the swift reply! I know what you mean re cdj’s being soul-less. I have a Saturday night residency and I play house, commercial & old skool dance. I am bored stupid with the cdj1000mk3’s and djm800 setup we have at the club. The last thing I want is for my sets to become repetitive and stale. I want to move forward and take a step to the next level hence the want for midi. The Kontrol really appealed to me but I am totally useless on computers hence the idea of beatgridding each individual song is putting me off where I know I can plug Serato and the Dicers in and away I go.
im way anti-beat grid syncin style dj’n… in my opinion.. if you can beat match, you shouldnt be dj’n a residency… the dicers do allow for things like cues, loops rolls, and loops… which will add a ton of depth to your sets (check ean’s video on build ups) serato is well user friendly and midi mapping is a breeze if you want to add more controllers later… good luck… i hope i was sum help
Auto-gridding works fine for about 95% of your songs and when it doesn’t you can just tap the tempo out just like you would in Serato. Traktor seems like more work, but it’s more that you have more control over what you can do with it. For me, having tried/owned both, I prefer Traktor for its flexibility and layout, among other things which I’ve discussed at length in a SSL vs Traktor thread previously (check my post history).
You’re comparing apples to oranges here though. SL2/3 and dicers vs. a Kontrol S2 is DVS vs. midi; a more apt comparison (price and performance wise) would be an SL3 vs. an Audio 10 + TSP2 + an X1. That Traktor setup would run about $800 new, which makes it equivalent to the SL3 with Dicers. Or you could get dicers instead of the X1 and save $100 (though I’d take the X1 over dicers any day unless you absolutely don’t have space for it).
In that case, I’d go with Traktor over Serato. Keep in mind that apparently the CD timecode with Traktor is a bit buggy ATM so it could be problematic with CDJs (I’ve heard this secondhand, don’t have CDJs to test it out). It really depends on how you’re using itthe program and what’s important to you, though.
As for the SL3 vs. SL2, the SL3 also lets you record your sets in decent quality without another soundcard and directly in Serato. Also gives you a separate channel for the Bridge. The two soundcards are pretty damn similar, so it’s really just whatever you’re going to do with that third in/out that makes the difference. I’d rather have it and not need it than vice versa, but YMMV.
As for midi mapping in Serato being user-friendly; yes it is. That also severely limits it though, and I’d rather have setup be /slightly/ harder and have more flexibility than have easy setup which I’ll only have to do once. If you want one button to perform one function, Serato midi mapping is fine. If you want to get more advanced than that (multiple layers, modifiers, etc.) like you see in the DJTT mappings, you quickly run into the limitations of Serato’s midi mapping. It honestly seems thrown in there more as an afterthought than as a real feature of the software, to be honest, at least compared to Traktor.
Have you used both though? Serato’s main advantages are in simplicity and ease of setup, but functionally both programs are pretty much the same. Also, arguably Serato is more producer oriented considering the Bridge. IMO it’s not about production vs. turntablism just as it’s not about EDM vs. hip-hop. It’s about Serato being simple with a clean interface and being a little bit more user friendly than Traktor because of that. Some people prefer simplicity, some people prefer flexibility. And as far as the turntablism angle - A-Trak, Craze, and Q-Bert all use Traktor; not necessarily exclusively, but it’s pretty equivalent to Serato for turntablism at this point.
Also, @durtyjerzy: Beatgridding is also necessary for effects and loops, not just for sync. Also, the Bridge and Video SL aside, pretty much anything Serato can do, Traktor can do better. Every feature of the dicers you mentioned can be duplicated in Traktor (beatmasher = loop roll, effectively). Serato’s simpler, but I’m not bothered by reading a manual to understand software that I’ve paid hundreds of dollars for.
Serato’s great, and if you want to use it you can’t go wrong. Still, having used both I would say Traktor is both the superior product and cheaper. I know people will disagree with me, and I know that Traktor has more of a rep. for having bugs. Still, Serato just somehow feels like a cheaper/less featured program to me, despite being more expensive in dollar terms. Now that I have a mixer with external effects, the effects in Traktor are a bit less appealing, but I’d still rather do midi mapping in Traktor over Serato any day. The click a control and push a button thing is helpful for quick setups, but with midi mapping I’m not about to do that very often anyway (make a mapping once and be done with it - not hard) so what’s the point of making it quicker?
IDK… I’m ranting; but I still have yet to have someone convince me that Serato is better than Traktor, or even broach the subject without tremendous amounts of fanboyism.
in no way am i anti traktor ive played with it several times and in fact the other guys i gig with use it… i just found it to be nice an easy and without getting into the details of it, was a smotth and effortless shift from vinyl.. i never got on with cdj’s… the gentleman who started this thread simply asked (given his time as a dj and his perferred medium) which (in our opinions) would be the easiest transition to digital dj’n… i mearly suggested based on my same dilema, that serato would perhaps be the better route… i think the stuff guys do with traktor is brilliant and while i personaly would never get on with a sync function, i can see it merits and what i allows the dj to do… its just not me… and as for other dj’s using traktor (craze, a-trak, q-bert, and klever) after seeing them and even jamming with klever, they dont seem to use half as much as traktor has to offer (but i do admit traktors control vinyl signal is cleaner and more stable) please dont think im a hater in anyway… using ur equipment to suit your needs is all that matters… but technology wont make a bad dj good, but it will help a good dj be better
So, as to the OP’s question…yes…it’s just an IO thing. The SL3 might be worth considering mostly because 3 decks is kinda cool (depending on your genre) and you can use the 3rd one for something like Ableton or maybe Maschine or the MPC Renaissance (with their apps…they’re stupid as DJ controllers)…which is sick.
As for the other BS in this thread….
I have a weird stance on the whole sync issue.
I have no problem with it, despite using turntables. I apparently do nothing a bit worse than everyone else. Auto-gridding fails for me 100% of the time. Maybe my ears are better. Maybe I’m pickier. Maybe Traktor and Ableton really do honestly hate me. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.
But…I went back to SSL with Technics after a year on Ableton and a bit more than that on Traktor Pro with X1s because beat matching is easier than setting beat grids or warp markers by hand. I knew something was wrong when I was about to pay someone to set beat grids for me…bringing the cost of my wav files within a buck or two of the cost of vinyl. All so it was marginally easier to do things that I can do manually anyway.
If auto-sync actually worked that way (as in…do nothing, then push a button and things magically sync up), I’d use it in a heartbeat and quit bitching.
But it doesn’t, so I use a DVS in Absolute mode because it’s easier. I am thinking about dicers for looping, though, because even though I know how to beat juggle…it’s not worth the effort.
After getting the Dicers, I’d recommend them to any 1200/Serato user. They aren’t game breaking, but it’s nice having those looping controls at your fingertips easily. And they won’t break the bank by any means either. If you have an X1 it might be redundant though, but I really like how they just fit into the tables without much fuss.
It was worth ditching traktor for my entire “new” setup to cost only like $150-200 out of pocket.
The main hesitation is just that my recording interface is USB (against my better judgement…I’m also starting to hate it because it makes me restart more often than any other piece of hardware or software I’ve used since I switched to Apple) and I also use it as a monitor controller. So, getting the dicers would mean that I’d need to use a USB hub and that one of the sound cards would have to be on a hub.
Or I could do what I should have done in the first place and boy a FW sound card for recording. That’d solve the problem too. Or just record off my laptop’s line in since it sounds fine for the 16/44.1 files I DJ with. That’d work too.
+1 thank you for properly validating my feelings… now i can stop crying and get on with making sum newbie wretch when he asks how do i do that with out a lot of buttons…lol (just jking id never crush sum kids dreams without making sure i had parental constent first…but if the money is right )
Thanks for all your input guys. I really appreciate it and I’ve made my mind up to go with SL3 and a pair of dicers. The purchase will be made this week. Thanks again, WB.
you wont regret it, the dicers along with my lpd8 have completely re-invigorated my luv for the art.. and i hope it does for you too… we all lokk forward to your vids or mixes to see what u come up with
I’ve never had the SL2, but i do have the SL3. Honestly i haven’t used the extra I/O for anything yet but it’s nice to have the room to expand. It will probably be used as a record in from my mixer.
There are better interfaces available than the SL3 for recording…you just can’t record inside SSL with them…which is fine, it’s limiting.
Your laptop’s line-in and Audacity will give better results if you know what you’re doing. I use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Logic…and the only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s USB. God, I hate USB.
having owned both SL3(Sold) & SL4 def that extra I/O, does make good use if you have a 3rd/4th controller for SP-6, Ableton(The Bridge), Recording made my whole experience with Serato <3 and loving it!!
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