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I built something: S4 MK3 HID-MIDI bridge, use your S4 on Djay Pro

yyz

I love my S4 MK3 but have always lamented that it's mostly unsupported in other DJ software mostly because it doesn't have a MIDI mode. This has mostly been an issue when it comes to wanting to use different streaming platforms during bedroom sessions (I have a bunch of songs in my Spotify/Soundcloud likes and I just want to play them) and is actually the only reason I have a Beatport streaming subscription. More pressing however is that I started hosting open deck nights, and participants can't just use their laptop on my controller, or if they bring music on a USB, I have to import their tracks, they have to get re-analyzed, and then they wont have their hot-cues or playlists.

I discovered a library on GitHub called Encdr, which contains the fully discovered HID protocol for the S4 MK3 amongst others, and ended up building a bridge software that translate those into MIDI, and further, a Djay Pro mapping.

It wont be possible get complete feature parity owing largely to the limitations of the MIDI bus, what DJay makes available on it, and just different features/modes of operation, but it will work at least as good as any other controller you can use on DJay.

I just released the first beta which is completely playable and has the majority of the controls mapped as closely as I can get to how it works in Traktor. Motorized platters, adjustable jog tension, external inputs, and figuring out what to do with the screens is in the near future. Right now this is MacOS only, but I do plan on making a Windows build as well, and the eventual plan is to make this into a hardware bridge where you can simply plug any device in and it will be recognized as a MIDI controller without having to run anything on the device itself, enabling you to use devices such as iPads and iPhones.

Link to the beta release is here:
https://github.com/jtoronto/S4MK3-HID-MIDI-BRIDGE/releases/tag/v0.1.0-beta.1

And I also recorded a quick demo/walkthrough video: https://youtu.be/mkl5JU2X5Bo

I'm looking forward to people trying it out and seeing what they think.

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Comments

Stevan

Looks great!

Main issue with Djay for me is a lack of modifiers. How do you handle pages/modes? Do you have some kind of modifiers inside you bridge app?

I lke the idea of putting control names/labels on the screen!

FYI stem EQs are possible in Traktor. I made some FLX 4 and Mixtour Pro mappings that allow that kind of functionality inside Traktor.

yyz

The bridge keeps track of modes and applies the modifiers internally. It keeps track of state on the controller, for example hotcue/sampler/stems. The mode switching happens internally and the selected mode dictates what MIDI note is sent, same for Decks A/D B/C as well as modifier keys like Shift. It's kinda all based on modifiers when you think about it since there's no original MIDI message to change. As far as Djay is concerned it's a controller with a zillion discrete buttons. It's similar to how many controllers handle internal modes like the Hercules Impulse 500. It's just doing the same thing the firmware would do.

Yes I know it is possible to do EQ stems on Traktor, I actually use the popular QML mod that uses the FX1/FX2 controls for them. But you can't do them realtime :)

Nico_Tf

So, this is incredible. It is very stable too, and I'm trying to hammer it as much as I can to see if it holds. It is very cleanly integrated, and I can also directly control Ableton with it.

The only real trouble so far is to make the loops behave sensibly in Djay. There is no such thing as a Loop Move command and workarounds like moving both the start and end or the loop, or having the skip duration and loop duration both modified by the loop encoder, sometimes fail and the loop is ignored, or there is some de synchronisation between loop and skip duration.

I just want to slip the loop backwards or forwards by a beat or 8 ffs.

But of course, that has nothing to do with your software. Many thanks for this, it's awesome!

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