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Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol S4
Finally we have more details since our post last month about NI Traktor Kontrol S4! First, it will be shipping this winter for a price of $999 US ($899 EUR). It is a fully integrated system where software and hardware are “fused in perfect harmony”.
Here are some of the highlights…
-4 channel mixer with 2 high-res jog wheels
-full support for looping, effects and browsing
-sample support which allow for live loop recording from external or internal sources
-2 customizable FX units with 28 performance effects
-stereo RCA and 1/4″ outputs
-2 phono/line RCA inputs
-1 mic 1/4″ input
-footswitch
-midi in/out
-headphone output
Be sure to check out Shiftee’s demo below!!
The Future - gesture based DJing
It’s no secret that the future of DJing will be in software on multi-touch devices like the iPad or Light Table. Most of you will recall The ATTIGO touch turntable by Scott Hobbs as well as countless other iPhone/iPad DJ apps.
The main problem I see with previous incarnations of this concept is twofold…
1. They don’t have haptic feedback (so pushing a button feels like pushing a button).
2. They have cumbersome user interfaces and poor usability.
3. Several rely on making metaphors to traditional DJ gear that make little sense in the digital sphere.
The ATTIGO was the first serious quality attempt at multi-touch DJing. Gerg Werk has taken this concept a step further implementing VERY clever gesture support on his Light Table. His idea is to map everything a traditional DJ rig can do with simple gestures such as 4 finger swipe for volume, 1 finger tap for BPM, 1/2/3 finger swipes for hi/mid/lo eq, pinch for looping and many more. The result is a simple, easy to use digital DJ setup.
Watch his video demo for more info.
DJ Shiftee explains how he uses Traktor
DMC champ DJ Shiftee put together a nice lil tutorial for how he uses Traktor, Maschine and the X1 with 4 decks for some dubsteppy goodness.
Be sure to watch his performance video.
How to control your processor’s exact speed
I have read several articles on how to optimize your laptop for audio production and/or DJing, but few people touch on one important factor which is the processor speed. These days most laptops are Intel based and have speedstep technology that allow the clock speed of the processor to be dynamically changed by software. Typically these changes aren’t viewable or editable by users unless you use third party software (see below).
Who cares?
If you have a laptop older than ~ 2 years, then you might care, b/c software like Serato, Traktor and Ableton might not tell your processor to run fast enough to work glitch free. You might also want to set a threshold or just know exactly what frequency your processor is running at any given point in time.
Software
There are two applications that I have come across that allow you to view/edit/configure speedstepping on your Intel based computer. I have used SpeedSwitch on my older Sony Vaio laptop in the past with great success. It’s a lightweight application that gives you just the kind of control you’d want. I have not tested/used CoolBook on my MacBook yet, b/c I haven’t found a need to throttle my processor.
Let me know if you’ve tried either of these or any other speedstepping apps.
Novation + Ean Golden come up with Dicer for SSL
Novation and DJTechTools Ean Golden have joined forces to come up with one of the coolest DJ midi controllers for Serato Scratch Live. This palm-sized cue point and looping controller has been designed to fit exactly where you need it: on your turntables, CDJs, mixer or laptop. Dicer always ships in pairs - one for each side.
Dicer can fit in the slot on your turntable, CDJ or on a flat surface. You can instantly set cue points and use them to trigger ‘Hot Cues’. Or, flip Dicer into ‘Auto-Loop’ or ‘Loop Roll’ modes, to trigger loops, or ‘roll’ sections of the track to create climaxes, drops and glitchy breaks. Each ‘mode’ illuminates Dicer’s pads a different color, so you can instantly see what mode the pads in, even in dark clubs and venues.
You can also reassign the midi mappings if you so choose and it works with other software besides just Serato. Dicer is expected to be in stores in late June/early July 2010 for around $99 USD.
Ruckazoid’s Quickswitch DJ controller series
The Quickswitch is a controller designed by Ricci Rucker / Ruckazoid in an effort to integrate more with most DJ’s typical turntable and mixer setups. Instead of being a box that you set near your setup, Quickswitch wraps around and slips in with equipment you’re already using. It has 120 fully customizable midi buttons.
It comes in three different flavors: Basic – $199, Deluxe – $249 and Ultimate $299 and you can pre-order it now.. Currently the piano controller (only in the ultimate version) only fits on a Technics 1200 turntable. They will be expanding to fit onto Numark & Vestax.
Check out the video below for all the details:
Read and write to NTFS from your Mac
As I mentioned in a previous article, there are several ways to share 1 external drive between a Mac and PC, however this article deals with just 1, NTFS. Why? Well, NTFS is a superior file system to FAT32 allowing the creation of larger files as well as some security improvements which I won’t get into.
There are currently 2 ways that I know of to read/write to NTFS from your Mac.
1. MacFUSE + NTFS-3g
Download and install the latest MacFUSE .dmg. Once it’s installed, reading/writing to NTFS is pretty much automatic and you shouldn’t have to mess with anything.
That is unless you don’t properly remove your NTFS drive from Windows. In
2. Snow Leopard supports it natively (if you turn it on)
I have not tried this as I am accustomed to the older MacFUSE / NTFS-3g method above. Apparently to do this, you must uninstall NTFS-3g.
Again, I haven’t tried this method, but here’s some detailed instructions on how to do it…
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090913140023382
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=785376
Having problems mounting a NTFS drive?
I have experienced a situation where OSX shows you the following error message (if you have MacFUSE installed):
The problem I encountered wouldn’t let me do the mount -t ntfs-3g -o force. Terminal kept shooting back proper usage options. I was lost until I found an article on the very simple “ntfsfix” command. You see, the reason why your NTFS drive doesn’t mount automatically is b/c you didn’t unmount it properly from Windows (like me, you probably just yanked the USB cable). At any rate the fix is quite simple. Fire up Terminal and type the following:
sudo /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix /dev/disk1s1
The result will look something like this:
Mounting volume… FAILED
Attempting to correct errors…
Processing $MFT and $MFTMirr…
Reading $MFT… OK
Reading $MFTMirr… OK
Comparing $MFTMirr to $MFT… OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Setting required flags on partition… OK
Going to empty the journal ($LogFile)… OK
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/disk1s1 was processed successfully.
All you have to do now is reboot your machine and voila! Your NTFS drive should appear in Finder.
Seagate’s got a 3TB hard drive coming soon!
Seagate has recently confirmed a 3TB drive coming later this year. This is 50% more storage space than the biggest drive out there right now (2TB). Keep in mind that these new 3TB drives will push the 1TB and 2TB drive prices down even further.
It’s not all cake though. Apparently Windows XP won’t even be able to see the full 3TB and you’ll need updated drivers and BIOSs and equipment capable of understanding Long LBA Addressing.
DJ Craze showing you how it should be done on the X1 Controller
Native Instruments has just released another video (previously we saw Rafik killing it on Maschine + X1) demonstrating what is capable using Traktor with their new X1 midi controller. Craze is absolutely AMAZING, he kills shit in this one.
Qbert compares Traktor to Serato
Many people have been curious how DVS (digital vinyl systems) such as Traktor and Serato stack up to each with regard to scratching. Qbert chimes in with a brief comparison video…
His basic summary is that he likes both, but prefers Traktor.
He demonstrates how Serato can’t handle slow scratches as well and the sound quality isn’t quite as good as Traktor. We all know that Serato is big in the United States and Traktor is huge in Europe. All that might be changing with cats like Craze, Klever and Qbert touting Traktor. What do you guys think?
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