Anyone else thinking the Slab that has just been announced by Alphatheta (for Serato Studio) resembles our beloved Maschine Mikro?
Just like any Maschine resembles MPC's I guess… Looks cool, design language looks modern, 4 knobs + a bigger screen is a nice advantage hw wise. No idea how decent Serato Studio sw is but now I'm curious.
It's great to have one more player in this space.
Class compliant or neither?
Yes, as soon as I saw it in my emails I could see some similarities. I've been using a Vapor Grey M+ a lot since I found one in the wild and the lighting on the control/option button around the pads are very similar.
The encoders look similar too and the performance strip, albeit in a different direction and I guess the screen is fairly similar to a Mikro.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I bought a Chordcat recently and it was probably my worst experience with gear in many many years. Nothing really was great about it imo (apart from the premise of what it could offer), even the chord combos and cruiser feature, so what this feels like in use remains to be seen.
It's £259 so £100 more than the Mikro or MPC Studio.
Better screen position (not behind a knob).
Four control knobs, reminiscent of the larger Maschines.
The two GIANT buttons on the left though 🤣 I guess it's to make it look like a CDJ?
The usual price premium for AT (formerly Pioneer DJ) consdiering you could buy an actual hardware sampler (Teenage Engineering) for that kind of money.
Mikro Mk3's are second class citizens for NI, it never got any updates to the workflow, screen, navigation, selection, nothing… it will never evolve, it had a ton of stuff from the Mikro Mk2 removed due to a stupid philosophy of 'simplifying things' that made it a downgrade. IDK how Pionner/Alphatheta behaves in this regard but if they keep tweaking it and improving, it has potential to be worth the price difference depending on use case… Especially if they deliver DAW control templates/scripts which a ton of people seem to drool over with this smaller 4x4 form factor.
If we are fully ignoring the software a dedicated controller is meant to control then price wise an MPD can run much cheaper, less buttons tho.
controllers dont really excite me that much, unless they are really dedicated like akai, maschine etc. this slab thing seems to be something in between.
…seeing the picture of the sp-16 on the alphateta website while scrolling, makes me want to see an improved mk2 rather than a serato controller tbh.
Just curious… How come do you feel like it's in between? what's missing from Serato Studio that makes you say that?
from the first look, it seems that you still would have to use the mouse to control certain/a lot of things. …comparable to the maschine mikro. i dont think it has the same deep integration as the maschine mk3, where you can just focus on the controller. but im coming from a standalone point of view.
after seeing the whole video, it really does have some nice features!
I asked on a video and a rep confirmed it MIDI class-compliant so should work with everything, iPadOS, Android, Linux, etc…
Price is not the best but it's already sold out which is rather odd 🤔
Oooh, yes. It's a small controller just like the Mikro or MPC Studio, theres not a lot of sense in comparing directly to a full sized MK3 or MPC, those sit on a 500$+ category aswell.
