Ok, so… I would never have expected it of myself but after a bit of practice recently I’ve really taken a liking to 4 channel mixing. For this reason I would like to upgrade my livestreaming setup with a 4-channel controller.
My problem is that I can’t find anything that would be ideal for me without spending a fortune on it. In my case, this is something that will be plugged into my streaming rig all the time, so I don’t really care about outputs and inputs and military grade titanium body that can withstand dropping it from the 20th floor.
The Mixon 8 looks great, but spending that amount of money to use less than 50% of its functionality does not sound like a smart solution because any additional cost will significantly delay how soon I will be able to buy it.
Traktor Kontrol S3 looked very promising initially, the price is also great, but the lack of a separate FX controls section is a dealbreaker for me. If i’m going to spend some money, I don’t want to end up with an upgrade in one area and a downgrade in another
Soooo, any ideas what my options are? Am I really doomed to spend a fortune on Mixon 8 even if it will be used more as bedroom DJ gear?
I’m using a couple of midi fighter twisters with custom mapping. Recently added a reloop neon, but don’t like the performance bank concept that looks nice but keeps you pressing the deck / performance buttons more than actually use any of the functionality. From midi fighter perspective, considering to add the button version. Also found this promising concept, got a , but unfortunately doesn’t work out of the box and needs some low-level programming.
Here’s the thing - it seems as if you want something for nothing. Based on what you’ve said, £800 is a fortune and £400 is great, but there aren’t many four channel controllers for that kind of money.
Pioneer’s FLX6 might be worth a look but it’s not £400.
You’ve not been clear on exacly what functionality you need/want.
Sadly Mixon 8 is actually closer to £1000 not 800. At least I don’t remember seeing it under ~940. And for someone who is going to use all of the features it’s still a good price, but 80% of the price of that device are inputs/outputs, iPad slot and full metal construction, things that are completely unrelevant for my use scenario.
FLX-6 is twice as expensive as S3 and still having the same problem as S3 - lack of the dedicated FX section. But still thank you for recommendation ^^
Now, Brainbox, thank you, getting S3 and a separate controller just for FX seems like a really good walk-around. ^^ I think I’ll go with that
Those kind of generic MIDI modules will typically not be natively supported by any software, as by their very nature, people use them for many different things.
To use something like that would require manually creating a MIDI mapping.
I did load a standard building block (or profile they call it) for a relative midi control for the 2 knobs. For seek/scratch it is way too inaccurate, you can’t tweak the track to get it exactly on a position, measure, bar, whatever. For library scroll it steps 4 songs at a time … it sends +1/-1 midi messages nicely, but something is off. E.g. sensitivity parameters and timer intervals have to be set using an editor, but this does not work as documented. And if you want to go beyond the standard blocks, you need to write Lua code.
The same type of control with the midi fighters works reasonable to very good.
I think I will get it will work eventually, not giving up and good support from the company and community, but to use it out of the box as a DJ it lacks maturity. In the current state of development, configuring this will be a project on its own. But the concept is very nice.
I will try some more normal controls like EQ or Neural later. Another thing is that Midi-in, e.g. for responses from Djay, might suffer clogging of messages if there are too many. I don’t think Djay will send that many messgaes, but it is a performance issue to be aware of. Buttons have a nice slight click, just on/off (or toggle if you configure) but still need to test. Midi fighters are probably better, but also twice as expensive.
really like the customisation they seems to have with their software. Might take some work to learn, but then you have more control! Thanks for linking it!
It looks like this controller has 2 sets of volume / EQ potentiometers that probably switch together with the jog wheel? How would this work if the EQ settings are different for both decks? I know that there are ‘catch’ settings so that after turning a pot there is nu jump, but looks like very inconvenient to me. I’m a beginning DJ that comes from midi fighter twisters setup and maybe a bit spoiled with nice endless encoders … other than that, I could try a controller like this with this price point to experience a real controller for once …
Yes, very promising concept, but believe me, they also need more than some work to make it mature. I would also skim their forum to read some of the discussions.
You could try 2 pioneer DJ Rev 1 controlers. I sometimes use my Rane One with a Rev 1 for decks 3-4. Ot has buttons to easily switch deck channel controls.
Oh maaaan, it reminds me the CMD series by Behringer, it used to be quite popular 10 years back in the Traktor community.
BTW I thought through all my options and decided that I’d rather spend a little more and have something solid and came up with an interesting, quite unique idea.
I want to get the most basic 4 channel mixer (Numark M6 USB maybe), Xone K2 for all the FX controlls and for my decks, i’ll start looking for good deals on 2nd hand LC6000 for my decks. Initially I will buy two, then I will add a third and a fourth when I find a good deal. Pretty much fully digital, killer setup👌
Yes, 10, 15 years ago there was a lot of out of the box thinking controller stuff that also used endless encoders. Also, some single jog controllers that were very basic and would be perfect for a modular controller setup. But most of that stuff, if at all still available, is badly supported by the current OS versions.
I’ve been playing with the TEK2 a bit and I must say I’m positively surprised, created a 4 deck transport module, scratch, seek and library selection works perfectly smooth.
Also considered something similar you are suggesting, but being used to the midi fighter twisters with endless encoders for everything, I don’t want to go that old-school absolute pot direction.
