In a YouTube teaser video released today (you can watch it at the end of this post), Native Instruments reveals the new version of Traktor Scratch Pro, alongside what looks like an updated audio interface.
The video, a minute-long montage showing Dennis Ferrer and the Martinez Brothers performing live in a club, contains what is clearly a new version of Traktor Scratch Pro and also what looks like a new audio interface too.
The new software
The software seems to contain many of the new features of Traktor S4, specifically the sample decks as one might have expected, but the biggest visual difference is coloured waveforms. It is not clear exactly how these work, but it seems the idea is not to show low, mid and high frequencies such as in Serato, because the various screenshots show similar waveforms in different colours.
For us, it’s a shame that there are still no parallel waveforms – the simple fact is there’s no more intuitive way to view your waveforms than right next to each other. However, the fact that Native Instruments has decided to use colour to add information to those frankly 20th century yellow waveforms that Traktor users have had to put up with for the past 10 years is great.
It will be interesting to see how these Traktor Scratch Pro play out in the rest of the software in the Traktor range.
The new hardware
The hardware, meanwhile, looks like a new DVS box; the performance in the video uses CDJs so that would make sense. We couldn’t spot anything else we didn’t recognise with a Traktor logo on it in the video.
The name of the box appears to have been blurred out in the video, so the only wording visible is “Traktor”. It is rumoured to be called the “TA10”, and that’s a “TA10”-sized blurry bit!
No doubt we’ll learn more very soon.
What can you work out from the video? What do you think Native Instruments’ next moves will be for their range of Traktor hardware and software? Let us know in the comments…
Phil Morse
