Here's my TTM57 MKII review after a night of DJing with it. Note that up to this point, I mostly dj with SSL and an OG ttm57, however, once a week I have a lounge gig where I use a controller (pioneer ddj-sr) and serato DJ, so I'm familiar with SDJ with a controller, however tonight was my first time using it with vinyl.
Light up buttons are awesome! No more putting your finger on the outermost button and walking your way to the one you want. You can see which one you're about to hit even with your finger over it because of the size of the buttons. They feel sturdy as well.
Meters are in the red with gains at 12o'clock and autogain at 94db. Not just hitting the red, pegged in the red. Sound seems fine, so not sure why the meters are so sensitive. I use SSL with 94db autogain and don't get close to the red with gains at 12.
The non programmable joystick thing sucks. Since I DJ with 1 turntable, I instant double every song and I have years of muscle memory built up where if I want to double the song to the left, I push the joystick to the left…now to send a song to the left I have to push the joystick to the right? Weird. If I accidentally push it to the left it switches to relative mode which cuts the music…bad. It didn't happen during my set but having that worry in the back of your mind all night sucks.
The crossfader reverse button SUCKS! It's right in the middle of the mixer and sticks up. I hit it accidentally within 20 minutes of my set which cut the music. Luckily it glows bright green when its on so the music was only off for half a bar. This can also be fixed by making its function user definable.
There doesn't seem to be a way to turn saved loops on and off from the mixer. If there is it isn't intuitive. On a controller you hold shift and hit the loop button and it turns your preset loops on but that combo does nothing here. I have to turn my loops on with the mouse. Hitting the loop button by itself works fine to activate loops on the fly, but for my saved loops, I couldn't get the mixer to toggle them on and off.
All of this is trumped by a major issue that Serato Support says is a known bug and is only happening with OSX 10.8 with the ttm57mkII at a buffer setting of 2 or lower, however, it happened to me at buffer settings 5 and 10 as well (I am running 10.8.) For more info on this, see this thread:
serato.com
I had my buffer on 5 tonight to try and avoid this issue, but after 20 minutes of playing, the music got a little crackly. 30 seconds later it was pretty bad, so I plugged an aux cable into the headphone jack and played usher yeah through itunes. The session (aux) input isn't routed through the software so it played fine. While yeah was playing, I closed and re-opened serato DJ and got back to DJing without the crowd noticing what happened. 20 minutes later, same thing. This happened 3 times at 20 minute intervals, and on the 3rd time, I upped the buffer to 10. 40 minutes later, to the minute, same issue. Doubling the buffer doubled the time I could play for before it happened, but clearly, something very specific is happening. I have an email open with serato support so Ill email all this to them tomorrow and go from there.
The verdict:
The mixer is awesome, but serato DJ sucks still. All these issues can and i'm sure will be fixed with software updates. Until then, I'll probably go back to my old 57 and SSL.
Midi Mapping will solve most of the issues, the joystick, the reverse button, looping, etc. should be map-able. The meter settings can probably be adjusted via firmware, and the bug is a known issue so I'm sure they'll address it ASAP.
