Thursday, January 20, 2011

Pioneer DDJ-S1 VS Native Instruments Kontrol S4 - My opinion



As former vinyl junkie (and then converted into cdjs, and then serato and then traktor) - The Pioneer DDJ-S1 seems very tempting to me - I already own a Traktor S4 (click here to see my comments on the S4) and so far everything is fine, but i am currently trying to decide if i should jump the boat back to Serato or stay on with Traktor for their massive new update??

What really got me for the DDJ-S1 is the familiar Pioneer feeling, the great CDJ400 jogwheels (small but pretty damn good!) and the nice, standard cdj sized pitch sliders for us the manual beatmatches, while indeed the S4 is more advanced, sometimes you just wanna jam with two Tunes and have fun, instead of spending many hours prepping the tracks and beatgridding (what i tend to do with Traktor - when i buy a bunch of new tracks i dread the tedious time it takes to beatgrid them all for Traktor)

Plus, from the promotional video for the DDJ-S1, Pioneer seems to have incorporated beatgrid controls on the controller itself, making it much more fun and easier than using the mouse, watch the video above about 8 minutes in and you can sort of see what im talking about here

on the other hand, the new updated traktor update seems promising as well... Damn it!!! Now how can I decide??

Regardless, 2011 seems to be going well, with Traktor releasing their massive new update soon, Serato Releasing a bunch of new products (both scratch live and itch) , the return of TORQ from the grave (and now backed up by AVID, the guys behind protools)  - There are more and more choices for the digital djs!

The Pioneer DDJ-S1 will be out around mid-Feb to March 2011 - I hope the big traktor pro 2.0 update for the S4 comes out soon so i can really decide whether to stay with Traktor or jump the boat back to Serato...