Are you saying that there aren't already threads about ANY of your 20 issues?

I find that hard to believe...

I have no clue if anyone from Serato has even read this. If they don't react somehow, maybe I'll post this list to Serato Feature Suggestions. Like I told, I rather put the whole list in one piece rather than flood that area.

There good upgrades on SDJ, but then again there are so vegetable level downgrades... but that what you usually get, when jump to wagon @ ver 1.0. I truely hope people @ Serato can make DDj-SX & SDJ as intuitive combo as NS6 & ITCH 2.1 is... 'cos has good changes to be better, IF they want to be - to be at that level, where it supposed to be.

If any of these rises any questions, I'll be appy to give more information about them. Here's the list:


1) (mid) Four deck extended mode and fx's can't be at the same time on a 1366x768 resolution. ITCH could do it! Just make it happen. Since I don't use that much different fx's (mostly echoes), this is mid-level issue... for me.

2) (mid-major) NS6 had own button for Open Prepare. This is where mapping is needed and badly!!! Current shift+Area (toggling through History and Files) is slower and clumsy.

3) (mid) How it should work: Once you open Prepare, if there's any songs, one the lines becomes active (marked as blue). That way you don't have to hassle with back-button. Faster and makes more sense, you know. This is (just) one the reason, why I stayed with ITCH 2.1 instead of 222.

4) (mid) If you were on extended mode (four decks) and opened prepare, the layout changed to Library (this is good). Once you close it, it stays there (this is stupid). ITCH understood to return to right layout. Once again you cause hassling with your drawbacks. Thank God, with keyboard short cuts I can make this stupid behaviour little better.

5) (MAJOR!) Loop section is on DDJ-SX is a major draw back compared to NS6 or Novation Twich. I could easily sacrifice Slicer or Sampler for that. If you don't wanna make sacrifices, there's one additional way to add the section. Pressing the button of active section would make it unlit and that could be the fifth section - for auto loops. As parameters they could be identical with Loop Rolls, just to keep it simple.

6) (minor) Blue border showing the deck under control doesn't stand out like it should. Yellow and one or two pixels thicker might be better. Getting it worse would need special skills. Not biggie though.

7) (minor) The colour scheme with unplayed (white) and played (gray) files audio files on library ought be vice versa or like it were on ITCH.

8) (major) Loop rolls can't be used inside existing loop without losing the original loop.

9) (mid) Loop Shift shouldn't be under Shift. Parameter buttons should be assigned for that.

10) (mid) "Back" as primary funtion and View as a secondary. You gotta be kidding! Since the browsing knob can be used as a button the Back button is useless.

11) (MAJOR!) On Extended Mode the waveforms are in numeric order (in software display) and the faders (on DDJ-SX) aren't. Mixing these was very stupid move. Get back the same order as was in ITCH. Starting from up: 3,1,2,4. Then they match, then they make sense.

12) (major) Since the loop section is a joke on DDJ-SX (after NS6), you had to made things even worse? Using Loop Rolls changes the lenght of normal Loop that was set.

13) (mid) How well is the lenght of loop shown? Does it stand out in display? FYI: It does not! Should it? Take a wild guess.

14) (minor) Finally the THRU-assinged deck is well shown. Props for that. How about making it show what is it assinged for? Instead "Thru" there could be "Mic", "Line" or "Phono". Not biggie, but most useful, if you mic and an external on the same line.

15) (minor) Mic talk over is way too strong. Shouldn't it be adjustable? [retoric question] At this point it's unusable feature.

16) (major) Dual Deck -mode does not lock pitch fader (for both channels). This pretty much ruins the whole (excellent) idea. Ever heard of live pitch riding on mash ups?

17) (mid) Zero point of the waveform ought to be movable. We are not interested what happened in the past. What lies ahead is more important. That's why showing the past is waste of space.

18) (mid) Bpm readings. In the moon SDJ has current/real bpm and on the edges the original bpm. On a Library view you have just the original bpm, which isn't the truth about what's really going on. I'd say that info is misguiding. No biggie, but amator level mishap.

19) (very minor) One day I wanted to test seven channel system with NS6&DDJ-SX (yep seven, 'cos one channel is an input for four channels from the other controller. Seems that ITCH and SDJ are still the same thing. Once you have opened one of them, the other one won't start.

20) (major) And finally: Mapping! At least for secondary features & functions. That way I could solve myself few of the problems.

21) (mid) Scrolling bar (on the right side) is hard to see, it doesn't stand out of it's background.

22) (mid) If the beat grid was locked on the Itch, you could still open it on the deck with combining ctrl & mouse click. SDJ this is not possible. Sucks when the beatgrid is locked and you need to adjust it rapidly. Sometimes these things happen during gig, but only sometimes. Still is considered as downgrade.

23) (minor) play count of songs

24) Elapsed/remaining time isn't shown on library view.

I wrote more than two weeks ago "I have no clue if anyone from Serato has even read this."

...and I still don't mean while you busy supporting Serato Intro -controllers to get more money (which is understandable, after all you're a commercial company), would you please announce, you have raid and understood the list above and you will fix the problems? You do it and you win I win.

At this point DDJ-SX is the hottest controller (soon there will be something hotter like always). Dozens of deejays are asking me about it and about SDJ. Since I'm fanboy to nothing, I give honast answers and they know it.

"Wow! Is DDJ-SX good?"
- Yes and no. If you love riding with 3 or 4 decks, NS6 with Itch is faster and more convenient and more enjoyable to use. If you use two decks only, you don't need DDJ-SX.

"What is the new Serato DJ like?"
-Short story: It's like retarded Itch with SSL gui.
- And with few sentences more: Compared to Itch, it has better fx's. Finally it shows remained and elapsed time at the same time, but at the same time so many things have been ruined, that was right with Itch. You can live with it, but you have to learn the keyboard shortcuts and still it's called surviving... while with Itch it was enjoying. If you will not learn those keyboard shortcuts, you must learn to be patient. That way it might hurt a little bit less.

- "So should I buy DDJ-SX?"
It looks funky and it even tastes shiny, but do you really need it? Once Serato fixes even ten of the most important issues on list of more than twenty fixes needed, maybe then I can recommend it. But if you ready to run crippled, go ahead. That's what I'm doing right now. It may not sound like that, but that's what it is and not just as fun as it used to be.



My personal statement for you: If are making hardware or software for professionals, understand the game and understand the feedback professionals are giving you back.