Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol S4 Mk3 DJ Controller

Product Information

The faders are “carbon protect” (no, I am not sure what that means either), and feel good, with the usual looser crossfader and stiffer upfaders. Crossfader assignment and curve (three choices) are controlled by small buttons on the front of the unit.

The mixer section is clean and logical, and there is no longer the gap between the two left and the two right channels. There’s now a fifth “strip” to the right of the main four channels handling output volumes – again it feels more “standard” than before, and we like it. This is not particularly good if your laptop crashes and you still want a simple, external “thru” source to keep the music playing. Rumour has it that true standalone is coming in a firmware upgrade, which would definitely be welcome. I won’t lie and say that I was immediately on board. In fact, my first thoughts were, “Ah man, I guess they’re going down the Pioneer route.” It is easy to forget how popular the Kontrol S4 Mk1 and then Mk2 were, and how Traktor led the way in innovative controller DJing all those years ago. The Traktor Kontrol S4 Mk3 reminds you (literally) with a jolt.

Not only has the layout been condensed and streamlined in a major way, but the sound quality has also been given its own update as well thanks to the improvement to the sound card and internal audio summing model.

As stated earlier, touching a pad while the pads are in hotcue mode will save an active loop to that pad. Screens

Of course, this is traditionally used for a “one-knob filter”, having practically replaced more advanced filtering options on mixers and in DJ software, due to how easy it is to use in the mix, especially in the heat of the moment. The filter is here, present and correct – but also there are four other buttons for four other effects that you can choose instead, giving a total of five choices for these knobs. Above each jogwheel are “standard” software effects controls, with wet/dry for each unit, and three parameter knobs, all with corresponding buttons. Depending on how you have the effects configured (three single effects or deep control of a single effect per engine) these knobs and buttons do different things, but the first one is always wet/dry. While holding SHIFT, press the EXT button on the corresponding Mixer channel you want to modify. In this example, we are showing the S3, which only has one EXT button, on Channel D.