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The Kontrol S2 has just been announced by Native Instruments, and will ship in early October. The Kontrol S2 features “2.1″ decks for mixing, which means that decks C and D in Traktor can be used for samples and loops instead of full fledged deck control. This allows for layering of added sounds over basic two track mixing.
The form factor of the Kontrol S2 shaves off 2 inches from the width and length of the Kontrol S4 (Kontrol S4: 19.7″ x 12.7″; Kontrol S2: 17.5″ x 11.5″) which makes it only slightly less compact. But it will definitely make it an easier fit to the Mono 365 Gig Bag, some saved space is always welcomed for the DJ who brings their own controller to the gig. They’ve managed to cut down the size on the Kontrol S2 without sacrificing the spacious layout that the Kontrol S4 is known for. For comparison, the recently released Novation Twitch is just over a foot long at 13.8″ x 10.8″, so its still about 4″ inches shy from that form factor.
So the other question is what is really missing from the Kontrol S2 that is featured in the S4…..
- No dedicated filter knobs: instead filter has to be used a regular effect
- Limited Cue Points: Instead of having 8 buttons to play with for cue points, the Kontrol S2 is limited to half that, at 4 cue points.
- No Kontrol of effect units 3 and 4: You will need to route your effect decks appropriately
- Dedicated Booth Volume Control: Switch between controlling the levels for Booth and Main Outputs
The price on the Kontrol S2 will be set at 599.99 making it $300 less then the Kontrol S4. That is a substantial price difference for someone saving up their hard earned coin. The price difference is enough to cover a pair of KRK Rokit 5 Monitors, or a pair of high quality headphones like the TMA-1 and a travel case. It’s nice to see Native Instruments thoughtfully expanding their controller options. Especially, since many Djs are not looking to spend an evening of DJing with tons of crazy effects and loops jumping off all the time. It looks like the Kontrol S2 is an elegant compromise of a straight forward easy to use controller, with some good advanced features waiting in the wings to use when necessary.
Stay tuned on our blog and Faceboook account for more updates on this controller, we can’t wait to get our hands on this for a more in depth review and some video demos.
