im surprised there hasnt been an ‘industry standard’ midi controller yet… someone could come in and just kill the market with a product right now.
all the midi controllers i see on the market have some functional thing missing, either it dont have 14bit faders, jog wheels are crap, its too plasticy, its too unreliable, no good for scratching etc etc…
id love to see something with a lovely platter on it, but have all the decent controls and reliability too. the eks otus is the closest ive seen so far to what id like, but that has many flaws too…
ah well, let me wait and see for ‘the next big controller’…
I’m dreading the days of an industry standard MIDI controller. It’s almost impossible to do because the main advantage of having all of these different ones allows everyone to have their own workflow. I can put my setup next to Bento’s and Ean’s and Foreverhex’s and JesC’s and while we all know ours really damn well they all work different and allow us to focus on different aspects of our style.
There is so much more at our fingertips now, allowing us to be unique DJs, as opposed to everyone being tied to two technics 1200’s and a Rane mixer.
I think the days of industry standards are loooong gone and have instead been replaced with a bring your own gear kinda thing - best “industry standard” piece of equipment that you might see there for you in a club will be a touch screen.
Instead of lugging your crate of vinyl to a gig, now you lug a crate of midi gear
It’s not so much that the controllers have problems, it’s that there’s not yet a standard model of digital mixing. All the software and devices take the vinyl model of two sound sources and a mixer and provide small extensions from that, but digital mixing can be so much more than that (as customized Ableton setups are starting to show us).
I have the feeling the final model will look less like two decks and something more closer to a “bag of synchronized sound sources” connected to a set of FX and piped to the output as needed. The ability to take a track, add layers and breakbeats, set and mess with loops, jump around the timeline in a direct or a scripted manner and pipe parts of the resulting mixdown through effects is how I see the future of DJing. Halfway between production and performance - “onstage live production”. Plenty of chances for impressive setpieces, using controllerism that requires artistry and a new set of skills that take hard work and practice. The opposite of Microwave DJing, it will take mad skillz to reproduce these sounds.
Dropping the “two turntables” model in favour of a “multiple sources” idea would be the single most powerful change Traktor could make. Either that or Ableton needs to allow more direct control over track playback by an external device (MAX anyone?).
Whatever the future holds, I can guarantee you’ll see it here on DJTT first!
I too am happy with not having any standard midi controller. It does inspire creativity and in a way you can find your own methods of djing. I do have a feeling over the next few years digital djs will begin to all use a similar setup consisting of hardware and software that would become standard. Looking at the 70-80s that really paved the way for djing and turntablism. I would not be surprised if history repeats itself.
hmm i think some people are missing the point here…
the cdj 1000 become the industry standard, but that didnt mean you were a good DJ just by using one, you still needed skill and creativity to use it well… it also meant different DJs did different things, zabela for one pushed the boundaries
the same could happen with a controller, my personal opinion is that theres not a controller made yet that ticks all the boxes, but when there is then most people will get it… and more people will push it in different directions
the vci-100 is championed here (and rightly so), it almost ticks all boxes but just falls short in some areas, yet is a good example of people using the same controller in many different ways
Fatlimey is on the right track i feel, but the trouble with ableton is you have to prepare everything before using it, and I find that rather lacking in terms of creativity… Ive never seen a dj warp a track live, he would have to be mad to do so… although using live with other dj apps could be interesting, im all for integration… traktor as a vst would be nice for instance
which why i have no interest in ableton, that was what put me off goin digital for a while too tbh. then after a fiddle with traktor i saw what could be done and how i could/would use it, deal sealed
this argument of preparing all your tracks is flawed. If you use CDjs you have to get your tunes in order and write to disks, if you use traktor you have to grid all your tracks, set your cue points etc. There’s nothing wrong with preparing. I don’t use ableton as I think its an overkill for playing ‘live’. Give me 4 decks on traktor any day!
I think the industry standard for traktor users is pretty much any 4 channel analogue mixer with a suitable midi controller for looping, FX, etc. Ie some faderfoxs or 1d’s. Iv never seen any big dj on just a midi controller and traktor. I may be proven wrong though.
suddenly i feel really lazy, just do the basic analyze and roll the deck to the start of the track with jog wheel when i use it. no pre set cues, loops or anything - just do it all on the fly when i play.
After traktor analyzes my tracks they don’t seem tight at all, the grids are usually way off! I have no practice at beat matching at all so gridding is my only hope
My point is that there isn’t a single controller that will be the end all be all for DJs in the digital realm. Yeah, they could put something together that would make a lot of people happy, and hence you have something like the VCI-100, and their attempt at the 300.
But what will make me happy, and fill all of my requirements, won’t fill the majority of other DJs, and vice versa. The advantage of this kind of equipment is that there can never be a true standard piece of equipment. The thing with CDJ’s is that all CD DJ’s require the same basic equipment. The CDJ-1000’s filled those requirements in spades.
The concern with the digital realm, though, is that none of us require the same things. We use different software, have different workflows, use different effects, have different numbers of hotkeys and loop controls and gridding requirements. There may be a standard controller for Itch (The VCI-300) or for Traktor (was the VCI-100 under 3.x but now something new is needed) or for Ableton (APC40) ((those are all just arguable, not looking to debate that point) but the only way a company is going to be able to create a real industry standard is to create something totally and completely modular, that I can break down piece by piece and reassemble however I want, quickly and easily. The SCS system has the right idea, but I hate touch sensitive control so it doesn’t really work for me. shrug
And the standard DVS system will almost always be the same as the standard vinyl system. To me, and when I was still using turntables, all Traktor was for me was my CDs/records, and everything was done live. The debate doesn’t concern standard DVS, in my mind.
a lot of good points were mentioned here and most posts emphasized making your own layout which really means constructing your own instruments and shifting the boundaries to live production are the new dimensions that make digital so attractive, and I love messing around with mappings etc.
But I totally see the point that for example, there is no midi controller that is anywhere near sufficient to give a hands on solution for the basic functions for Traktor.
I’m thinking about something like 2 transport sections, 4 line faders plus Eqs, two transport sections with dedicated pitch controls and 16 pots for the 4 fx banks. If you look around the midibox pages it is noticeable that there are quite a few traktor controllers that were built individually with a lot of blood and sweat in order to achieve this. To me, using an external mixer (which I do now too) seems somewhat anachronistic because it introduces a very expensive peace of hardware and another source for bugs into the whole system, while many people who buy one just needed more tactile control.
Connecting four outputs to a mixer on a party while someone else is finishing a set feels kind of silly too. So I think definitely a pimped VCI 100 for the price of a decent mixer would find many many friends.
I’m hoping the EKS Otus Raw is launched soon and it has the improvements all DJ’s were looking for… better buttons, better pitch adjustment and better quality pots.
). A few times I didn’t even see cdjs or technics.
