Kontrol s8

[J5k]

I honestly don't care what people use, sync or no sync. As a non-syncer I love the feeling that things can go horribly wrong at any moment if I f**k up. That's a big part of the joy even if I'm the only one in the room who realizes it. To be clear, the joy comes from pulling it off and not messing up, but knowing it's me holding things together. On the flip side, sync has been around in some form for how many years now?

Again I thing this a cool piece of gear. I don't know if it appeals to either the old schoolers or the new schoolers. There's bound to be some folks somewhere in between that can and will rock it. I just haven't yet seen a solid remix deck oriented set that I was impressed with.

[contra]

Some sites were asked by NI to not publish the story.

Ahhhhh makes sense

[contra]

Again I thing this a cool piece of gear. I don't know if it appeals to either the old schoolers or the new schoolers. There's bound to be some folks somewhere in between that can and will rock it. I just haven't yet seen a solid remix deck oriented set that I was impressed with.

I agree, definitely cool but I think a guy would have more flexibility with an S4/X1 and an F1. This thing only has two rows of pads per deck when the F1 has 4 and it also has way more control with all of the remix function buttons. It's almost like the S8 is more limited than what NI already offers.

[Th3Technician]

i wanna use this thing as a giant mixer for dvs. Seems like a monster of a mixer, combined with the remix decks and scratch pro i could see this being really fun to use.

[contra]

i wanna use this thing as a giant mixer for dvs. Seems like a monster of a mixer, combined with the remix decks and scratch pro i could see this being really fun to use.

That would solve the no platter/pitch issue hehehehhe

[Nicadraus]

I left platters years ago and can still beat match, but then that doesn't align with your view of DJs so it must be bad. So narrow-minded.


What I find very telling about this thread is the lack of acknowledgement of all the other controllers that don't have jogs. So NI made one specialty controller for DJ's who don't use jogs, so what?


Oh, and for the record I just use an X1 w/ my DJM850, but I could break out my 1200s it I wanted to spend extra time on something that is fairly inconsequential anymore.

I guess artists like Deep Dish (Sharam & Dubfire), Richie Hawtin and Felix Da Housecat aren't real DJs that can't beat match... Oh wait... Then there is the Ableton DJ's who must not be DJs either.

The pretentious smug wreaks in here...

Who is pretentious? Certainly not me.

Tell that to the "DJs" who pretend to be one. It's not only the jog that's missing but the other more important thing that is used for manual beat matching... PITCH CONTROL. I don't care if you don't beat match by ear anymore or those DJs who used to. What many of us want to see is people who didn't learn the proper way of DJing and have the guts to call themselves as "DJs", should learn the very basic element of this craft. Especially the newbies who give a ton of $h!tty reasons why they refuse to learn or just have no patience to learn it.

[KLH]

i wanna use this thing as a giant mixer for dvs. Seems like a monster of a mixer, combined with the remix decks and scratch pro i could see this being really fun to use.

That would solve the no platter/pitch issue hehehehhe

This just seems backwards. This unit has all the extra stuff that augments the regular DJ routine. I guess that that is what I'm having a tough time putting my head around.

Let's take the Club case. You show up with this controller and you reconnect the TTs or CDJs to it. Assuming that there's room for the controller (maybe over the existing mixer?) and laptop, you still need access to the CDJs and TTs for fine track manipulation and cue point setting. If you don't have CDJs or TTs, you lose the ability to do pitch control. Remember that Traktor does not have flexible beat grids, so everything must be pre-analyzed and warped if necessary... otherwise trainwrecks will happen if the beatgrid is anything but perfect. This product does nothing to help multiple DJs switch positions... and introduces complexity and risk because TTs and CDJs need to be rewired to be used with the S8.

Let's talk the Mobile case. With the same inflexible beatgrid, the DJ will need a pitch-slider... which can only be found on CDJs and TTs - so he/she will need to bring more equipment to use with this controller. I see a "mic input 1 and 2" - but no volume or EQ - so another mixer (meaning even more equipment) might be required for regular use.

Let's talk Producer-DJs (aka Bedroom DJs). Since there's no crowd, there's no actual need for playing tracks in real-time without transition mistakes. As such, any challenge - like pitch issues - can be worked around. Mic use isn't an issue either. If he/she wants a platter - add a CDJ or TT... or not. This seems to be the usage intended by NI.

Since the Amazon leak had a $1200 price, it's a direct competitor to the DDJ-SX2. IMHO, the S8 doesn't offer not as much value - especially as a stand-alone device - when compared to a DDJ-SX2.

[login]

Since the Amazon leak had a $1200 price, it's a direct competitor to the DDJ-SX2. IMHO, the S8 doesn't offer not as much value - especially as a stand-alone device - when compared to a DDJ-SX2.

We don't know if it can be an stand alone mixer, it one of the photos it seems to have tons of RCA inputs.

[J5k]

We don't know if it can be an stand alone mixer, it one of the photos it seems to have tons of RCA inputs.

It looks a lot like it can function as a standalone mixer. Like you said, lots of rca jacks. It looks like there's a button between some of them which makes me think the button is a phono/line switch. On that note, I wonder if it's possible to grab audio into the loop recorder. In external mixing mode, the only input available for the loop recorder is "ext" which in my experience doesn't work well at all (latency issues).

[Th3Technician]

As for pitch controls and platters. I read somewhere that this thing is moving away from that and more towards touch strips. Not sure if accurate but if so then it would be possible to dj with just this thing. It would be sync based IMO however.