Reply to Serato dj. Worse than vdj?

Good day
I hope this isn't gonna be a tl;dr post :P

I have been djing for about a year now, using a friend's (here comes the hate) hercules dj mp3 e2 and virtual dj. I started out in my bedroom, and only in the past month and a half me and a friend (we're a duo) have gotten quite a lot of attention locally
And the money i got at gigs, i saved up to buy a serious controller and give back the already pretty beaten up hercules to my friend.

I went with the pio ddj-sx. I mainly chose it because i needed something big and sturdy, and i just was too fed up with small jogs (of the hercules) to buy the kontrol s4.
I loved the controller at first sight. It was just the thing i needed. When i installed the software, however, my feelings changed drastically.

Serato DJ disappointed me a lot. Beat detection sucks, waveforms (even tho they're colored) are harder to visually beatmatch when compared to VDJ, auto gain doesn't work and i have to keep my SX at redline volumes to cope with the volume changes, waveforms are sluggish and stuttery on my quadcore i7 laptop (CLEAN windows with nothing on but chrome and serato), and i get occasional audio stuttering and audio dropouts, along with sluggishness in both the computer and controller.
I performed a clean install of windows on a new disk, with the purpose of having it run perfectly, with no bloatware at all, optimizing windows for audio processing, and this is what i get?

Now for some aspects of the software that really surprised me (in a negative way)

-There's only a couple of good effects imo. Why put hp, lp, and combo hp/lp filters in the software fx section when most controllers have an integrated filter in the mixer section?

-The slicer is quantised to 1/8, ok, but why can't you turn quantisation off in the settings? Or even just set it to 16ths or 32ths.. Like this i find it useless... and sometimes it gets stuck in an 8bar loop with no apparent reason.

-The sampler. It seems to me like it's made to just drop goddamn air horns and "pump it ups", instead of actually getting creative with it


Now yes, there are some gains when using serato. Of course the slicer isn't even present in vdj, and the sampler is just as bad. But when compared to traktor ( a software that i've used at a couple of gigs with the s4, and i really really liked), serato really seems lacking to me.


I actually seem to do better mixes on the $60 hercules and vdj than on the $1000 ddj-sx and serato...
To those of you who suggest using traktor with the SX, i tried, but the lag on the jogs is so bad i really can't work with it (call me spoiled, but it really bothers me... )

What should i do? Return the beast that the ddj-sx is and get an s4, letting go the beautiful jogs?
Return the ddj and wait for the s4 mk2 and traktor pro 3?
Or simply live with the constant feeling that i'm not "at home" with the software i'm using?

Thank you and i'm very sorry if i sounded harsh, it's just that i'm quite confused right now..

Luka