Traktor Pro S4 Description

Pre-listen tracks, synchronize tracks, start the playback at the right position, and mix the tracks together using the crossfader.

Pre-listening a Second Track Directly from the Browser Before we load another track.

Traktor Pro S4's Sample Decks have four sample slots each for holding one-shots or loops of up to 32 beats long. Sample Decks C and D recording from and sync to the tempo of Track Decks A and B respectively. You can fill the sample slots by either loading them from your Track Collection, creating a loop and assigning it to a Sample button, or creating a sample based on the current loop length by hitting an empty Sample button, either while the Track Deck is playing or stopped.

Once you have samples in slots, press the Sample buttons once to trigger playback and again to stop. For more control over the samples, switch to Deck C or D. Then the Hotcue buttons become re-trigger buttons for each sample, and the jog wheel applies to them for sample scratching or tempo bending. Also, the Loop Move encoder becomes a sample volume knob, while Loop Size become a sample filter. All the while, you still have full mixer channel control over the Sample Deck and FX options as well.

The Loop Recorder can record from either the Main Output of Traktor Pro S4, the output of any deck with the Cue button activated, or from the Aux input, which is likely to be a microphone plugged into Channel D of the Kontrol S4. In the S4's Loop Recorder section, press the Size button to scroll through recorded loop sizes of 4, 8, 16, or 32 beats (synced to the master tempo). Press Rec and record your loop. When finished, your recording will play back, and you can adjust the Dry/Wet knob to mix the loop with the rest of the audio. At this point, you can hit Undo to scrap the recording, record again to overdub a layer, or bounce the recording to an empty sample slot.

If all the sample slots are full, you can clear them out by pressing Shift + Sample button. Don't worry, all your samples are saved automatically to your collection in the All Samples favorite folder. One area NI could improve on in a software update is to make it possible to save and then reload groups of 2-8 samples with group names, so a DJ could really exploit the ability of the Sample Decks to be the foundation of a completely original set.

FX Units: The signals coming from the Decks can be further processed by two FX Units located at the top of your hardware and software interface. You can even activate two additional FX Units in the software, allowing you to process each Deck individually. The FX Units give you access to the whole collection of high-quality FX included in TRAKTOR PRO. The left FX Unit on your S4 can control the left FX Unit(s) in the software. The right FX Unit on your S4 can control the right FX Unit(s) in the software.

The Mixer receives on its four channels the audio signals coming from the four Decks described above. There is one channel for each Deck. As any DJ mixer, the Mixer's purpose basically is to adjust the relative level of each channel, to control the channels' frequency content, possibly feeding them into the FX Units before sending the overall result to the Main section at its top-and in the end, to generate the mix that is sent to your audience.

This is one of the best software for mixing music!