Ever since I got to play with Serato Scratch earlier this year, I've been eager to get a vinyl emulation setup for myself. It seems as though the tech has reached prime time in the past year or so. I see more and more DJ's using them. As someone who has schlepped crates of records all over and whose back isnt' getting any younger, I welcome the increasing variety of services and software that allow you to download and spin music. And I feel like if I'm going to continue doing this, I need to be up on the new dj and production tools out there.
I got Traktor DJ as a gift a couple of years ago and have played around with a little bit. But when Native Instruments decided to make their own hardware to couple with the software, I became very interested. And when they announced the introductory pricing for owners of the software and competing vinyl emulators, it was a no-brainer.
So I got my Traktor Scratch set in the mail yesterday. It was a long day and I planned to wait unti today to start playing with it. But I started installing the software last night and after reading the first few pages of the manual decided to see how far I could get in 30 minutes. I was pleased that I was pretty much up and running after about 10 minutes of hooking up cables and configuring the software. I've been reading the bad experiences of users with G4 processor machines online and I was expecting problems from the get-go. So far so good. The Audio 8 interface is top notch. It feels really solid and has plenty of inputs and outputs The vinyl and pitch control was very responsive with no hiccups. I was able to start mixing right away. But I've only just begun. Round two tonight.