Whatever happened to the Traktor Kontrol S8?
Answers
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Fair point if you buy something expecting updates. From my point of view though I've been buying tech for a long time, and from experience I assume that once I've hit the "buy" button on something a few things will happen. First, it'll be on sale two days after I buy it. Secondly, it'll be discontinued at some point after I've bought it. Finally, it will continue doing what it does and in the absence of any promises of updates of functionality improvements, it won't be updated. As someone else said, if it works it doesn't necessarily need fixing. I try to buy something for what it does, not what I hope it will do.
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I have a s4 mk3 and at some point that will be discontinued. For me that’s how these things go. I have the choice to keep and keep going until my MacBook OS won’t work with it anymore or upgrade. The S8 had a very good run more so than S5 or D2. The S5 more so than S8 puzzled me as it was super portable. These things probably are decided on sales, hence why the F1 is still on NI website.
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It is probably based on sales and/or the profit on given unit. There could be much higher margin on S8 than on S5. I have choosen S5 over S8 because of size.
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Supreme MOD and S8 has made this controller an absolute beast. I love mine and it doesn’t feel old at all.
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The S8 now has the potential to be a great controller for stems mixing if/when NI bring that to Traktor. It has the F1 style mini-faders with the buttons/knobs above them that could be mapped to stem volume/cut with filters per stem. Doesn't need firmware updates, just mapping of the controls. At least it has full MIDI capability unlike the current flagship S4MK3
-- Mike
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What happened to the Kontrol S5? I'm still using it. I don't see why NI doesn't officially support the S5 considering it's the best controller they ever made (IMHO).
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I guess they support it, it works in Traktor just fine. But maybe it will not get Apple Silicon driver, if that needs one. :-( I am on Win, so no need for new driver.
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I registered here just to post this comment in support of Phil's point. I bought the S8 in 2017 (ish) and took it all over town DJing. People loved the weird futuristic look, the lack of jog wheels was _so ahead of its time_. With some 3rd party mods, the thing can do great stuff.
It was indeed touted as NI's flagship controller at the time. They really did make a whole fuss about it. We were sold a product that was worth investing our time to learn anew, only to see it be ghost-pulled before even a MK2.
I'm not a DJ by trade, only by desire. My main job is as an executive at a tech company. I can tell you that watching NI pull their flagship silently from their store, after promising the moon, is a bad, bad, bad look. It's a sign that something in management isn't right. We are trained to spot the big problems via the small symptoms, and this is a big symptom.
I intend to keep using my S8, and/or buy another one second-hand. The device is really great, and despite being hung out to dry on it by NI, I think there is enough community support ( like the mods ) to make the S8 a useful PERSONAL flagship for years to come. Sad that NI chose to ghost-pull the controller, and I'm not really sure I care about using NI software anymore after this. S8 was the reason I stuck with Traktor instead of going with something mainstream like Pioneer.
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NI has undergone what 2 transformations since the S8?
I believe that was the same term who made the F1 and X1. Notice how we haven’t seen any updat3z to those controllers in almost 10 years?
either all those guys have left since these changes or the new engineers that were brought in aren’t familiar enough with dj products to make something over the top. I hope I am proven wrong. But I suspect new hardware was developed, then new management came in and scrapped it all.
I believe I read the same thing happened on the Maschine side.
Ive read lots of talks of engagement, and have seen lots of surveys and promises to keep in touch with the community but all there seems to be is new version announcements and an Agile JIRA chart of what they are working on.
I would rather someone give the community the hard talk and say, no new hardware will ever come back, or they are struggling to find engineers, or it is coming and that design times are taking long due to X or Y. I don’t need to know specifics just that something is or isn’t happening.
I personally am wanting to get a new setup, but don’t want to buy 10 year old hardware now that will likely be unsupported soon. I believe an X1, F1 and even a Z1 could all be updated be super popular with massive sales of people wanting ti upgrade.
those are my thoughts. Maybe I’m wrong, but Traktor is way better than RB and SERATO as a software platform, but just needs a good hardware eco system to back it up.
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count yourself lucky at least it works , I can't use my Traktor scratch duo and Audio 4 DJ or my mashine even with the correct drivers on an old recently purchased windows 8.1 pc because I can't authorise them as Native decided to change the authorisation system and leave them off the list. So I am let down if I look after my kit and want to transfer it to a more reliable pc further down the line it seems. If I was to buy all new again when will this happen to me again ? Seems I cannot trust Native anymore . Everything else Pioneer , Sony whatever I own works as long as I look after it . Is there a way around this seems not . very fishy.
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What do you mean by "I can't authorise them"? Why can't you use them on a different computer?
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@spinray it should be possible to authorise Traktor scratch duo, as it is not listed among SW that cannot be authorised anymore.
And drivers for Audio 4 DJ are here:
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/support/downloads/drivers-other-files/
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Well I have the serial number in my account but its not showing up in my Native Access as a download, will it even work on windows 10 ? I did download it off the cd but it wont open.
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As used by legendary DJ/producer/remixer Francois Kevorkian during his regular Twitch streams, where he plays his own created stem files and does live remixes.
Traktor S8 and two Traktor D2s.
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