Reply to S4 w/ 1210M3D.

Hi guys,

I've just got a Technics SL1210M3D set-up here with my S4. I bought it mainly to start collecting and playing live vinyls (more of an audio nut than a DJ, really) and was wondering if anyone could talk me through the basics of Traktor Scratch Pro. I have a few questions:

Firstly: the sound is quite gainy in places and has a lot of distortion in the high and low ends. My 'decoder gain' is 11.2 - will this have anything to do with it? Playing around with the gain knob on the back of the S4 doesn't seem to do much. I'm quite confident that the deck is set-up properly with tone-arm weight and anti-skate, so I'm not sure where these audio problems are coming from if it's not the hardware (and the records are brand new). Any idea on how to get a 'clean' sound? Will my S4's sample rate effect this at all?

Secondly: can a live-input vinyl be 'shown' at all in the interface of Traktor? For e.g., if I was playing a live vinyl from Channel D whilst mixing A/B with digital-mp3 files... is there any way at all of getting a visual representation of D? Obviously not talking about timecode-DVS visuals... I just mean maybe the circle icon that shows the vinyl is even playing? At the moment all I've figured out to do is to set it to 'Live input', in which case the D deck is just left as a blank grey square. Just wondering if there's anything I'm missing.

Also any tips and general pointers that an idiot new-guy should know to S4 + live turntable... please throw them out there for me. Nothing is too obvious.

Cheers!