I saw Thomas posted in the techinal issues section of the NI forum that there are new drivers currently being tested. Could this be a driver issue? Could it be a MAC vs PC issue with drivers working differently on each machine.
I sent him a PM, because he said exactly what i feel when i plug the S4, not good enought, as audio 2 4 or 8, but the problem is, he said , that can happen using not very good pcs, but …my computer is a new 13" mac. So that shouldnt happen to me.
odd
that’s quite weird I also tried at really high volumes at a club and I have a A4dj too and they sound exactly as loud, in fact as loud as cdjs, and in cases of other brand cd players it sounds louder, I’m glad my unit works I guess 
unfortunately I had software problems crashing 3 times with the sample decks, not even pushing it hard with a brand new mac with nothing but traktor on it, but I guess I need to make a new thread for that XD
I played out with my S4 on Saturday and the volume was fine but I ran through the house mixer and altered the gain on that.
I did have trouble with monitoring though, could hardly hear anything, but that may be my headphones - dunno till I try some others.
the headphones is not very good conection in S4, even with internal knob high, doesnt sound very good, i got others sounds cards where headphones is also a 24 bit 96 khz out, here obiousbly it isnt.
Guys, the setting 24 bit 96 khz is simply too much for the USB2 Bus. With USB’s architecture, all the raw Input/Output is handled by the CPU and that’s a setting bound to create issues when used with USB2. Understand that you need the CPU to compute your EQs; FX; transport & scratching. You expect that to work in real-time, right. Now add to all this the basic system I/O of the USB bus, which by hardware design has higher precedence than any user process computation (such as the Traktor app).
If you don’t trust my words on it, do a research, but it is advisable that you’d run Traktor in lower bandwidth consumption settings. Basically the 16bit 44 or 48khz is good enough - about 95% your source files do not have higher resolution either way. It’s the high quality of the built-in DACs, which makes the Sound Quality difference after all. The S4 has it, so by setting the 24bit/96k mode you practically don’t achieve a lot - you’re just adding the overhead of upscaling.
Don’t get my words wrong - the equipment supports the 24bit/96k mode. It’s just that the amount of bits to be processed is too damn high to be reliably computed by the Application and then handled by the USB2 bus. If you set the buffers to 250ms and just play an a audio track on it, without doing any real-time sound manipulations (as if on a HiFi CD player), it would play great. But that would simply be a constant flowing strem feeded through the big buffer. That’s not what Traktor is for, though .
If it was FireWire, it wouldn’t be an issue, but unfortunately FW is not as widely accepted (though the macs have it 
) , so it’s clear why NI didn’t make it FW.
HTH
Yes, is true , but anyways, the problem is not USB2 on this case, something must be wrong there, or driver, or faulty unit, because others soundcards with USB works great with S4. I crossfinger and hope mine get fixed.
Its a shame they didnt use firewire, the scratchamp2, works great at 96 khz 24 bit.
My fingers are crossed that yours was really a Faulty Unit and the one about to come will just work.
so good the S4 is … why would one want to use any other equipment when there’s S4 out there … exaggerating, but still close
Cheers!
I hope god hears u 
. If not, what do you think about the topic? Do you think i could get inside another sound card?
I agree with Victor that usb2 is not the problem, because I’ve had even more flow of information (ableton+traktor pro) on the same machine/soundcard and not a glitch…on other notes I have 16bit sound card and it makes a hell of a difference, like 10-15% less power, specially noticeable in clubs. Finally to Victor, the headphone amp on mine works super! specially compared to my ADJ4 which I have to crank almost to the max in clubs, sorry man everything to me indicates you have a faulty unit, hey maybe thats a good thing!
Okey, when u talk about 10-15% less power, you talking about S4, or your other sound card? Because if S4 is finally like that, i will need to get another system /soundcard, because i cant change anything but the track gain in the clubs mixer as they dont let anyone do that, because normally every system has similar db output, enought for the club, so in case its loud, they just move the gain or the fader, and its ok, but they not gona let me put loads more dbds on the master, because its not how its sposed to work.
What about a 40 dollar line convertor box? It is a super small box thats purpose is to convert a unbalanced signal to a balanced signal. In real world terminoligy, it simply gives you more DBs.
I used to use one when I used an audio 4 soundcard cause the mater output was never loud enough.
Basically you would connect it from your S4 output, into whatever mixer you where pluging into at the club.
I swear by them…
Here a link to the one I have
True, i also saw that, but i feel that there is also a bit of less quality when you do the mix, compared to the others sound cards. Basically, in some tracks, when i put bass on middle, it has a lot of power, and in others tracks, the bass/kick dies. In others sound cards, those tracks, both sound good, its like if my S4, with bass, sounds good, but if the sound only have powerfull kicks, that kick dies, ending in a poor mix when i move from one low to the other low (Sorry if i dont explain it good)
I hope to get info in the next days about my S4, and then i will post here again.
Anyways, if i end getting one of this, i would get and audi2 dj, or audiofire 2, wich are similar in size and would get rid off my problems.
Thanks anyways.
the Direct box only enhances what ever output is coming from the s4. The Direct box simply gives you more volume and doesnt color the sound what so ever…
So if ya tink AudioFire sounds better (which I would agree with), go with the AudioFire…You’ll have a higher DB Output with the AudioFire anyways…