The S4, my first initial reaction and concerns.

DJ Software & Apps Traktor
1

The S4, my first initial reaction and concerns.

Hello fellow S4 owners and DJTT’ers,

This is day one of S4 unboxing and testing.

Already, I have found some legitimate issues with it that I haven’t seen any other user bring up, and then my concerns, and then likes and reactions.

First of all, the somewhat small, but there none the less issue in my unit. When the track I have cued in my headphones is playing with the fader all the way down it sounds fine, and when I put the fader up I can hear a sort of jet or flange effect happening in my headphones. WTF is up with that? It’s slight, but still enough to throw me off. The sound becomes a tinge more metalic. I don’t like this.

My concerns is that there is no booth volume gain control anywhere. How does one control the monitors in a booth if there is no club system to plug into? If the only option NI thought to leave us was to plug into a DJM800, then that really limits us when we have no choice but to remove the club mixer to squeeze in the S4. And then I guess I could mix completely in my headphones, but I would need to upgrade to something with better reference, and more isolated sound. I lost my pair of Shure 530’s in Vietnam, I don’t feel like buying another.

Do I like this thing. Hell yeah. I truely have never touched Traktor before, so there’s a bazillion things I gotta learn and pick up workflow wise. But so far so good, I’m impressed with the unit. It just doesn’t have the feel of a true mixer, built like a metal tank (such as a Rane 2-channel mixer), and therefore doesn’t exude the confidence of being durable. My mixer I would feel safe bringing anywhere. I almost wish I had a rubber protective comdom for it like the common ones for an iPhone or Blackberry. QUICK, who’s down to make a new product? :slight_smile: But if it surprises me, and I never have to re-calibrate it again (which was as easy as pie, but still shouldn’t be necessary more than once), and I can lugg it around and not worry about it, then it will be an absolute winner.

Now I gotta get learning Traktor.

-PL>Y

2

Karlos was talking about geting one of these and running one of the main outs to it. I don;t really understand why there’s not at least a booth volume knob in the software that we could map to an X1 or something like that. Probably has to do with how the main volume is wired up.

http://www.tcelectronic.com/levelpilot.asp

I don’t get any odd sounds when moving the faders up. I’m using Ultrasone Pro 650’s.

3

Does the noise happen just when the fader is up (ie fader up but not feeding into the master, indicating a problem with the fader itself) or does the track have to be entering the master out? To clarify that, I mean that if the fader is up but the x-fader is on the other side, do you get the noise in your headphones?

All I can think of is that it could be a phasing effect between the master and cue level in the headphones if they are the same track slightly offset.

4

Are you sure you’re not hearing the track cued and the track playing on the Master cue? Maybe that’s accounting for the flanging/phasing sound?

5

Okay so I figured it out.

The flanging is definitely there. If the cue/master mix is 50/50, there’s a definite flanging.

That’s not good. Nor have I heard this in other pieces of gear, all the way back to the now ancient DJM-600 I have sitting in my studio.

The booth control is very very important for me. I hope this gets figured out in an update. It’s possible for me to hook up monitors via the main out, but there’s no way to turn them down. Terrible.

Still trying to figure out Traktor. So far it’s been a pain going through the S4 pfd. Can anyone recommend some good beginner reads / videos?

-PL>Y

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you could get the s4 dvd from the store

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that’s a good idea. While you may be a very experienced DJ Traktor has so many options it’s probably best to come at it like a complete noob. You may have to sit through stuff you already know, but you’ll pick up some litle tips and tricks that will go a long way.

There’s also the traktor Bible, a very good resource for all things Traktor.
http://traktorbible.com/en/traktorbible.aspx

8

Absolutely! I started watching the included DVD last night, and got about half way through it. I have to say, the video is perfect! Ean did a great job. It covered everything I wanted to know (at least to get me up and running), and the video in general does a fantastic job of taking what I found to be dry on paper and making it easy to understand in one shot. If you guys out there bought the S4 and don’t already have it, I’d say it’s worth it to have this DVD ready for when your unit arrives.

@photojojo:

The Traktor bible. When you get it, does it come as a book? I read some of the articles online, and the reads were decent. But is this something you would actually recommend spending an entire night reading?

-PL>Y

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The Traktor Bible is a HUGE resource of information. Rainer (you’ll see him posting) and Karlos are the two guys behind it. They’ve forgotten more info about traktor that I probably know.

When I started on Traktor I went to Ean’s youtube page and watched every video. Most of the stuff applies from Traktor Pro to S4 aside from the specific update features. — but effects are the same, gridding is the same, transitions, cue juggles, etc.

10

Yes it comes as a book and you get free PDF updates with it. So the S4 stuff isn’t in the book, but you’ll have access to the PDF’s when the update is finished.

11

To me it sounds like your track and and the audio feed of its cue are slightly out of sync which would induce a flange effect which would not be noticeable at lower volumes.

You can reproduce this just by taking to copies of the same track, beat matching them then nudging one slightly off time

12

If this was the case, is anyone else with an S4 having this issue? Or is this a faulty part on my unit alone most likely?

-PL>Y

13

Could easily simply be your unit only. Mine is the only one that I read / saw anywhere on the internet whose FX didn’t work, and half the lights didn’t work either.

14

i thought everyone’s 1º reaction was like this kid

15

I dont think it would be hardware related - what type of computer are u using it on? Do you have another you could try it with?

16

I think i had some of this yest on my first gig. Ill check again later.

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If im cueing a song, with fader up, and (MIX/CUE) at 50% i get like a flanger with headphones, seems is bad programing or something, its like the sound of the master and the sound of the cue make a flanger because the sound is coming at same time. This happens if u mix the same song on both channels, but shoudnt happen in headphones while cueing, others digital mixers, or analog mixers, dont have this.

Sorry for bad english.

18

it’s called phasing (both streams aren’t 100% aligned), pretty odd in a digital mixer IMO

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I hope they make an update soon, the soft has some important bugs

20

This.

Happend to me last night. I just turnd off the CUE and turned up the CUE MIX and things were fine. Didn’t happen again after that and not a big issue on my end really.