The Numark NS7 II was announced today at the NAMM Show 2013, a direct replacement for the Numark NS7 and a controller that Numark is touting as the ultimate for Serato DJ software.
It has motorised platters, a full four-channel mixer for both software and standalone mixer control, 16 RGB multi-backlit MPC-style pads lifted straight from Akai Professional gear, and “capacitive touch-activated knobs and filters”. read on for details or go here for our Numark NS7 II Serato DJ Controller Video Talkthrough.
You helped to design it!
The Numark NS7 II looks very much like the culmination of the design process that started 12 months ago with a teaser of the “Numark MPC controller” at NAMM 2012 involving the ideas of hundreds of Digital DJ Tips readers, who commented at Numark’s request on both our Numark MPC Controller article and our Numark MPC Controller video.
Clearly aiming at the ground currently occupied by the Pioneer DDJ-SX at the top of the Serato DJ food chain, the new controller similarly has eight pads per deck offering cues, loops, rolls, sampler and slicer functions, and these pads do indeed look excellent, with velocity sensitivity and full multi-colour backlighting.
Of course the real pull of the NS7 and this unit too is the motorised platters with real slipmats and vinyl. These are now apparently high-torque or low torque, depending on your preference (I wonder if low torque feels like using cheap belt drive turntables?). They were the real star of the show on the NS7, feeling utterly authentic to DJ on, so I’d expect them to be just as good here.
Indeed, the NS7 is still an amazing instrument, five years on, and if the NS7 II builds on that without dropping any balls, it deserves success. It’ll be big, heavy and expensive but that’s not going to put off those who want a substantial, pro-built controller that feels like using real record decks but has a lot of cutting edge controllerism features built into it too.
We’ll get a video, talkthrough and proper opinion of this in the bag at NAMM in a few days, but for now, and having only seen the teaser photo at the top of this piece, it’s fair to say we’re excited by this one.
• No launch date or price as yet.
Would this be your ultimate DJ controller? Did you contribute to the debate last year over the “MPC DJ Controller”, and if so, what do you think of the result (or what we can tell of it from the teaser photo, anyway)? Please share your thoughts on the Numark NS7 II in the comments.
Phil Morse
