Reloop has today officially announced the Terminal Mix 4, a controller for Serato. It represents the European company’s first foray into Serato controllers, and pretty much gives the game away as to where Serato is going with its software at the same time.
The unit seems very similar in build and appearance to the company’s Jockey 3 controller for Traktor, but in packing in a full four-channel mixer and lots of extra buttons, shares a little in common with the Vestax VCI-400 too.
Features summary
It has a high-end feature set, which includes “intelligent kills” (any kills are good in our book); per-channel filters; crossfader curve and assign; six-inch aluminium jogs; fader start; simultaneous control of four cues and four sample decks per side; and the promise of performance modes (a slicer like Twitch is mentioned in a forthcoming “software update”. More on this in a sec…).
Looping benefits from having a ecent number of controls assigned to it, meaning easy loop readjust and movement while performing a loop, and the effects sections have the standard four knobs and four buttons. You can adjust software views from the hardware unlike most Serato controllers too. There are 14-bit hi-res pitch controls.
We don’t know how many external inputs the unit can handle, or how many microphone channels it has, but we can see from the picture that it has both booth and master outs.
New Serato?
As we noted with the overlay that comes with the Numark N4, manufacturers are stopping putting “Serato Intro” on their products and just writing “Serato”. this Reloop controller confirms this trend.
As we know, Serato Intro is up until now two-deck control only, and so we have to assume that Serato is about to offer either a four-deck upgrade path for Intro; rebrand Intro and Itch as LE and Pro, just like the other manufacturers; or have some other mechanism for controllers like this to have true four-deck support.
Reloop are staying tight-lipped about this saying only that “Terminal Mix is a four-deck controller including Serato DJ Intro” when I questioned them, but I just can’t see Reloop launching a high-end style controller with software that can only utilise two of its four channels – and leaving “Intro” and “ITCH” out of the press release and off of the unit is the giveaway.
We look forward to a proper demo at NAMM when we’ll ask the pertinent questions about the software – if all hasn’t already been revealed by then, that is.
Are you excited about a Serato controller from Reloop? What do you think is going on with the Serato Intro / ITCH matter? Do you think this controller is going to offer any serious competition to other controllers at the mid/top end of the market? Let us know in the comments!
Phil Morse
