Things are all of a sudden busy around Traktor again, with the launch today by Native Instruments of the fourth in a recent Traktor Signatures profile series, an incremental software update (v2.11.3.12, which has just hit public beta), and the news that lighting control app SoundSwitch now works with the platform, too. We’re guessing that this means a much-anticipated Traktor Pro 3 software update may finally be coming some time soon.
The new Traktor Signatures content from Native Instruments is notable because it follows an exceedingly quiet period for Traktor; the last hardware release was the Traktor Kontrol S5 back in 2015, and until now, the last update to Traktor’s software was v2.11.2 way back at the end of 2017, which fixed stuff that had been broken more than anything else. Looking further back, we were publishing feature requests for Traktor Pro 3 as early as October 2014.
Traktor as a platform has been badly falling behind in pretty much all areas against its competitors, with the library/browser features, beatgridding, and the GUI in particular all crying out for an update.
But with Native Instruments also landing considerable new funding recently, we think the pendulum may well be swinging towards Traktor again.
We certainly hope so – even after the recent relative neglect of the platform, Traktor is still the second most popular DJ software in the Digital DJ Tips community, behind Serato but ahead of Virtual DJ and Rekordbox.
Watch this space for more news as soon as we have anything concrete for you.
• The latest Traktor Signatures episode features Joris Voorn, following on from episodes with Andy C, Rebekah and Audiofly. In these items, the artists discuss how they use Traktor, accompanied by set-up diagrams and short written interviews.
So…. is it finally close? What would you like to see in Traktor Pro 3? Are you eagerly anticipating it, or has the wait been too long for you? Share your thoughts below.
Phil Morse
