Following a clandestine live stream outing from WMC in Miami last month, the Traktor Kontrol D2 has officially surfaced.
Berlin-based Native Instruments have taken the wraps off a controller they're touting as built for the road. At first glance the D2 appears to replicate the functionality of a single deck from NI's flagship S8 controller, and seems to be aimed at DJs looking for that device's deep and intuitive control over Traktor, but wanting the ability to use their own DJ mixer.
The resulting deck controller has a compact, lightweight build and contains a pretty extensive suite of desirable functionality. Arguably most eye-catching is the support for Stems, the recently revealed multi-channel audio format, allowing live mixing of individual musical parts.
Touch and see
'Touch-and-see' technology, also featured in the S8, makes the D2 more attractive still. There's a full-colour high-res display for browsing, setting beat grids and like, which responds to display information appropriate to whichever control you put your finger on.
The touch-sensitive knobs invoke Performance Panels which hover over track waveforms for viewing and modifying BPM, key, filter or effect values, while an LED touch strip takes care of pitch-bending, track seeking and scratch emulation.
As you can see there are four faders, eight colour-coded pads for triggering, cue point juggling in Hotcue Mode and track rearrangement in Freeze Mode. Basically, it sounds like a lot of fun.
The Traktor Kontrol D2 will be available for $499/€499/£429 from 4 May 2015, and comes complete with a copy of Traktor Pro 2. We'll bring you more details and hands-on impressions very soon, and the D2 will be on show at Musikmesse next week.
In the meantime, for more details head over to the official TRAKTOR KONTROL D2 site.
