Reply to Traktor S4 - My 2 cents

Easy all!

Like many I'm sure, I've been reading through this community for months now, weighing up my potential purchase of the S4. I've been using Traktor for years and it's taken a lot of umms and aahs to make the jump to the S4 from Audio 8 & Traktor Pro.

Well this week I went ahead and bought one and I thought I would share my thoughts on the S4 and answer a few burning doubts I had in doing so to help others out who were in my position. I figure my general scepticism after reading about so many problems and issues on here and the native instruments community will provide a good base for unbiased judgement as, to be honest, all I expected were problems, especially using a PC.

First off I'm running it on an HP DV2700 series laptop with 2.5ghz Core 2 Duo, 4 gigs of Ram, Windows 7 and a very very messy set-up as I've been using the laptop for work/home use. I own a pro tools production and mixing studio as well as a macbook but I thought I would give it a go on the PC first to eliminate that hurdle. And I'm a bit of an audiophile at the best of times.

Now to answer some of my personal biggest doubts/questions before buying:

Is the audio quality from the S4 up to par? Especially for playing out

Yes. There's no other way to put it, the S4 sounds as good if not better than my Audio 8. After a few tests I actually find the S4 cleaner. It has an output similar but not quite as loud as a DJM 800 which we've tested in the studio and also through a 1.5K Mackie active mobile rig. The real test will be on Friday through a 15K Club install rig, I'll update this once we've given it a blast.

Does it actually work on a PC using its own soundcard

Well for me, it works perfectly with the HP laptop. No pops or crackles even with 4 decks running with effects going. Works fine with the Audio 8 too (which I'll be selling).

Am I going to have to dedicate my laptop solely to Traktor, create a new partition, disable every process known to man, completely re-program windows and sacrifice a small goat to get it to work?

In my experience, no. Despite the HP being used as a general work horse for the past 2 years, net browser & downloader, home media mule and everything in between, Traktor S4 is running great on it. I haven't disabled anything or optimised in any way. I've even got 3 installs of Traktor (3, pro and S4) on it at the moment. Admittedly I try and keep a clean house but after everything I've read I would have thought it would be in the worst possible state to even try and run the S4 off.

Will it arrive in pieces, with bits missing, jog wheels falling off, headphone jack loose and crackly etc...

Well despite my general run of bad luck with gear recently, mine arrived in perfect nick, I didn't even need to calibrate the jog wheels? I am actually missing the USB cable that's meant to come with it which baffles but is no biggie. Headphone output is loud and clear and everything seems solid as a rock. It is surprisingly light but that's a good surprise in many ways.

Am I happy with my purchase

Without a doubt. I reckon