My feelings, thoughts and overall review for the Traktor Kontrol S4

Before I give you my feelings, thoughts and overall review for the Traktor Kontrol S4, I want to give you a background of my experience.

2003-2004. Almost all Vinyl. Occasional mix of CDs.
2004-2005. More integration of CDs.
2005-2010. Almost all Serato Scratch Live, with an occasional mix of Vinyl and CD.
Present. 100% digital, married to a controller.

Seeing a few demo videos of DJ Jazzy Jeff back in 2005 sold me on Serato Scratch Live. It is a great DVS. I have never had any major problems with it. It has been bulletproof since I first ran it on an Apple iBook G4 around fall 2005. Of the group of DJs I worked with, I was the first to move over to a DVS for my primary method of DJing. It would be a year or two before all my friends made the move to Scratch Live. Many of these guys being hardcore vinyl junkies.

But recently, I decided to make a switch to something more compact to save more space at home. Wherever I played out, there was always gear , so my turntables at home weren't getting a lot of use. After a few weeks of research in December, I got one at the end of the month. I purchased mine at a local Guitar Center with a $100 off coupon that was been offered until the end of the year in 2010. I also purchased the gear replacement option.

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1. Unboxing and Initial impression:




The packaging is simple and does not feel excessive in size. The unit ships with a usb cable, the power supply, manual, keyboard shortcut poster, the software cd, a set of stickers and a $10 Beatport gift card.

Coming from turntables and a scratch mixer, I was happy with the overall size of the unit and what NI could fit on it with the available space. I am not overly concerned that the unit is made of plastic and not metal. All the knobs and faders feel very solid and well put together. The jogwheels have a robust feel for their relatively small size. The layout seems logical to me. But, there are some issues/concerns I have which I will cover later on in this article/thread.

2. Initial Setup
The computer I am using, is a mid 2010 13" Macbook Pro, 2.4GHz core duo with 8GB of RAM. I am running the latest version of Snow Leopard on a 500GB, 7200rpm Seagate Momentus hard drive. The music I am using is not stored on an external hard drive. I have several external drives that I use for backups and archiving, but I do not use an external drive to play music off of.

The software installation and hardware plug in is straightforward. Insert CD, install the software, then turn on the hardware. After installing the Traktor Pro S4 software and opening it for the first time, the software ran a few updates and I had to download the latest verion of the software. After everything was updated, I opened up the software again and proceeded to the hardware calibration.

The hardware calibration lets you setup all relevant knobs, faders and both jog wheels. The instructions are easy to follow and are not misleading.

3. Music setup
I quickly found out that a lot of my subcrates in Scratch Live did not import over to Traktor Pro S4. So, I decided to create new playlists to make transferring my music over a little less tasking. After I had all the music I wanted moved over and sorted the way I wanted, I had the software analyze my tracks.

I discovered that some of my track bpms were off and the software had either half timed them or double timed them. I changed the bpm of these tracks manually. This process was a little time consuming, but I felt it necessary.

Regarding the beatgrids to all my tracks, most of them were spot on. More so for the housey 4/4 type stuff. Other tracks, I had to change the grids manually. I used a video video that Ean Golden put up on youtube as a reference. So, for a lot of music that was slower and didn't have a constant "beat" that the software could recognize, I used the snares for the base of the grid. Then, I adjusted the grid down the track as needed.

4. Layout and feel
I felt that the layout of the hardware was solid and everything seemed reasonably placed. I did have a few dislikes/gripes.

The knobs are the biggest culprit for me. I do not have Carl Cox sized hands. So, I wanted smaller knobs.

Pictured is the new knob compared to the OEM one. The new one is about 17mm in length and the skirt[bottom portion] is about 12mm in diameter. All the pots on the Kontrol S4 use a 6mm flatted/D shaft.




I changed out the knobs I use the most and relocated some of the original knobs to what I feel are better locations for me.



Regarding the faders, I have not been able to find out what kind of channel and crossfader NI spec'd out for the Kontrol S4. Out of the box, they were very solid and tight. Regarding the fader cap size, I feel they could be a few millimeters skinnier. Especially for the crossfader. I am currently shopping around for new fader caps. I will post an update once I find a suitable replacement for the crossfader and channel fader caps.

Currently, the channel faders are breaking in nicely and have a smoother feel with less resistance compared to when I took it out of the box. The crossfader is a little smoother now that I've been scratching a little bit with it. I currently have the cut in time for the sharpest available, which ends up being around 1mm in travel before the sound cuts in.
I have made a basic demo video with some basic scratching. As I get a better feel for the unit as a whole, I will post more videos.

Regarding the crossfader life, I cannot tell you how long this thing is going to last. I also cannot say whether or not NI will be making this user replaceable. Considering how this is built in, you would need to disassemble the unit to access the faders. With that being said, am I afraid to keep scratching in it? No. I am confident in the gear and if a problem does arise, I will get a replacement from Guitar Center using the gear protection plan I purchased when I bought the unit.

Although I can add more devices to the unit, I do not see myself incorporating anything extra to take advantage of the future timecode support.

5. Sound and general performance
Regarding actual sound quality, I am using all high quality CBR mp3s or .wav files depending on the track. All of the music I have played on it so far sounds ok. But, some tracks seemed too hot or not "loud" enough when used in conjunction with the auto gain feature and the embedded limiter.

Since my initial testing, I have not utilized the autogain feature and I have turned the limiter off and manually set the output sound limit (for recording).

I do not like that fact that the gain knobs are encoders and not knobs that have a limit to their travel. This has been a gripe from other Kontrol S4 users from other community s as well. I hope in a future software update, this will be remedied/addressed.

Regarding to any audio dropouts or latency issues, I have not experienced any that have been previously described for Mac users. Other than turning off my screen saver and wireless network, I don't do anything as far as OS tweaks. I have been able to run all 4 decks, with keylock on and all 4 effects routed to all 4 decks with no latency or sound issues. I have also been able to do the same with 2 decks and all 8 sample decks going.

Regarding the sample decks, they take some time to get used to. They cannot be keylocked, so you have to pay attention what samples you are pushing at at higher or lower bpms. But, they can be a powerful tool when you're layering sounds.

And if you don't want to use any of the sample decks, you can switch to 4 decks and have the extra slots as cue points, so you have 8 cue points per deck. Perfect for live remixing of your music.

6. Sync
Having learned how to DJ with vinyl records, I had always mixed my tracks by ear. The sync feature was a little strange to me at first. But, having put more time into the unit, I can see how useful it can be when you get to using all 4 decks or a mix of a live deck and some samples, all while triggering effects or doing alot of cue point juggling.

7. Effects
This unit has 4 effect banks. By default, only 2 are enabled. You can change that in the software options. Each effect bank can run one effect in an advanced mode, where you can control 3 parameters. Or, you can run 3 different effects on one bank in a chained mode. The jogwheels can also be used to change effect parameters.

Even though the Kontrol S4 has a relatively easy layout, I did not like the placement of the on/off buttons for the effects.

I ended up mapping some of the effects controls to a separate midi controller which gave me more flexibility and faster response time to trigger them.

8. Visual/Waveform
Coming from the colored waveforms of Scratch Live, I thought I would be missing a lot. But, I really didn't find myself staring at the screen too much with Scratch Live to begin with. So, even in Traktor, I didn't feel like I was missing anything. But, from what I've seen with the new NI software teaser, the colored waveform will be part of a software update for S4 users.