The Lowdown
The original Numark NV was the first DJ controller to have integrated screens to show information from Serato DJ. The Numark NVII is an incremental upgrade, featuring enhanced screen displays. These include adding gridlines to the waveform display, improved new navigation control with push-to-load tracks via the selection knob, sorting by metadata in browse mode and build in controls for beat jump and quantize on/off. The jog wheels are now touch sensitive and have a different colourway. Nice, but not essential improvements in a very competitive market.
First Impressions / Setting up
The Numark NV II is a four-channel all-in-one unit with two screens specially designed to work with Serato DJ.
The screens are full-colored and display the Serato DJ interface. The jogwheels, EQ knobs and filters are all touch capacitive.
All four channels have a three-band EQ and a gain knob as well as a large filter knob at the bottom. At the top are two effect buttons and gain knobs for the inputs.
The NV II has stereo XLR and RCA outs and a mic input via a 1/4” cable. The gain for the aux and mics are controlled by the gain knobs at the very top of the device. It also has 16 RGB coloured performance pads for triggering hot cues, loops, performance effects and sampling.
In Use
The NV II plugs-and-plays with Serato and having the interface on the device’s screen is a major convenience. Scrolling through songs is easy with the very large screen as well.
The knobs and faders all great when in use especially with the touch capacitive EQs being quite responsive. The large filter knobs at the bottom are pretty convenient and have enough resistance for accurate use.
The unit is also relatively light and compact which is a big plus for DJs who are on the move.
The RGB pads are a nice touch while we’re not so sure about the jogwheels being touch capacitive as well because it feels kind of awkward and we can’t help but feel that it will mess up the interior of the unit.
An Amazon reviewer really loved the touch capacitive EQ and jogwheels though he also mentioned he had a latency issue with his PC laptop, causing the audio to “lag”. This seems to be an isolated case, and could simply be a matter of adjusting audio settings within Serato.
Conclusion
The Numark NV II has a lot going for it and is a nice unit if you’re looking for something fully-featured but lightweight. With its tight integration with Serato, some will find using the NV II to be almost second nature.
