Review: Traktor Kontrol S8 Flagship DJ System

JOG WHEELS TAKE A WALK

Novation’s Twitch holds the crown as the first manufacturer brave enough to abandon any semblance of a jog wheel, substituting a touch-strip in its place. For those playing perfectly on-the-grid music genres, their absence may even be celebrated. But for DJs preferring to rock ‘commando’ — manually beat matching and riding the pitch fader on music not recorded to a click — the absence of jog wheels on the S8 wasn’t welcome news.

So what do I most miss about jogwheels? It’s not ‘scratching’, since real vinyl or DVS control via turntables reigns supreme for scratching. It’s the ergonomics of being able to reach out and touch a deck’s jog wheel to momentarily pause playback while holding it. On controllers with jog wheels, not only is this immediate and intuitive but also, thanks to the relative size of a jog wheel, compared to a play button, hard to miss!

The touch-strips on the S8 operate in a totally different fashion; upon finger contact you’re momentarily pitch bending the deck, while playback continues unimpeded. While the S8’s touch-strips offer greater sensitivity compared to Kontrol X1 Mk2 (NI’s first controller to feature touch-strips), those DJs with jog wheel muscle-memory will find the S8’s Play/Pause toggle button is going to get a big workout.

For those willing to give touch-strips a go, if you press and hold the Shift key, the S8’s touch-strips mimic the Pioneer CDJ’s needle-drop functionality for rapid seeking through a track. Used in conjunction with the track overview display above it, rapidly locating anywhere in a track becomes child’s play. This is where a touch-strip trumps the sequential nature of jog wheels.

When playback is disengaged, the touch-strip behaviour is similar to pulling vinyl back and forth on a Technics SL-1200 while powered off. The touch-strips in this mode have near-authentic acceleration/deceleration characteristics — I found this effective for track preparation sessions allowing accurate placement of beat grid origin points (similar to rocking tape over the heads of a tape machine) and setting hot cue points.

There are a few ways of changing the playback tempo of a track from the S8 hardware: hitting the first display button (below brightness) and adjusting the bpm with the Browse knob; syncing it to another tune playing; using the pitch reset function; or syncing it to Traktor’s master clock and then adjusting tempo using the dedicated Master Tempo encoder (hold Shift for finer adjustment).

With the S8’s current touch-strip behavior, the absence of jog wheels makes playing tunes you haven’t properly prepared in advance very much a hands-off affair — it feels like driving a car with a dash-mounted push button for a brake pedal. If you’re going to rock an S8 with any kind of finesse at a gig you must invest the time in track preparation prior to prime-time. Unless… you add turntables, and talent.

If you really want jog wheels, just go one step better and plug a pair of 1200s or CDJ players loaded with timecode media and any qualm over missing jog wheels will vanish! Many DJs would be aware of the Advanced HID control mode found on the near ubiquitous ‘pair of CDJ2000s’ rig in most club DJ booths. This same pair of CDJs could be pressed into service for the travelling S8 performer.

DECKS REMIXED

Right below the screens is a Remix Deck-specific controller. A Remix Deck is similar in concept to having four-channels of clips in Ableton Live’s Session View. The built-in screens on the S8 make exploiting this feature’s potential much more user-friendly. The names of audio parts are displayed right above the pads used for triggering the content, complete with colour coding. A scrolling waveform view shows the clips currently engaged in playback. For any Traktor power users employing Remix Decks in their shows, the S8 is a big interface upgrade.

Recently, NI announced a new audio file format, called Stems, with many digital music stores like Beatport and Juno promising to jump onboard. The new Stem format is a single multitrack .mp4 file containing four stems and a stereo master [see box item]. Support for the Stem format in Traktor will arrive with the 2.7.4 update scheduled for release in June 2015. This update will add ‘Stem Decks’ which will exploit the physical control elements of Remix Decks found on S8.

DJS OF ALL SIZES

To date there is yet to be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ combined controller/soundcard solution which suits every DJ, which is probably good and demonstrates how diverse the category is.

For the busy club-hopping, back pack warrior perhaps S8 is a bit much of a burden to bear, where portability is a concern.

For the sync-proud DJ, who approaches DJing like it’s advanced on-the-fly remixing — exploiting advanced features like Remix Decks — the S8 is firmly in your wheelhouse. Especially since it’s now possible to remove the laptop screen audience barrier and still get maximum use of all the Traktor fruit on offer.

The S8 will be most attractive to the DJ preferring DVS control of Traktor’s decks using timecode vinyl/CD. In fact, the S8’s feature set is without peer in the hybrid mixer/controller/DVS interface solutions space. With fluid access to virtually every element within Traktor, for the professional user seeking the ultimate DVS rig, the S8 would be top of the shopping list. Since the S8 also functions capably as a four-channel standalone analogue mixer, it may well find itself as the centrepiece for a club with Traktor-centric residents.