I was recently very lucky to grab an opportunity to get hands on with the new NS6 controller from Numark. The chaps from Mobile DJ News have very kindly allowed me to put my review on here also!
Another month and a whole new stack of midi controllers have made their way onto the market but the NS6 from Numark has been one of the most widely anticipated products since it first appeared at Musik Messe in Frankfurt earlier this year. It seemed to grab everyone’s attention (even mine and I wasn’t even there!) so I’ve been REALLY looking forward to seeing this in the flesh and now I finally have my chance.
The Numark NS6 is a midi controller designed for use with Serato Itch. In terms of size it is not as wide as the Pioneer DDJ-S1 but quite a bit larger than the DENON MC6000. It features a 4-channel “real” mixer, 2 large 6” platters, an FX section, touch-sensitive ribbon strip search, two microphone inputs, two phono inputs, two line inputs, XLR outputs, booth/zone out and finally a ¼” and 3.5mm headphone jack on the front.
We’ll start with the decks and more specifically the platters which I think are the most amazing parts of the NS6; they are an absolute pleasure to use. They are incredibly smooth; insanely sensitive to even the slightest of touches and just ooze quality. I rate these platters way above the quality of the ones found on the Pioneer DDJ units. Like the Pioneer units a light travels around the edge of the platters when the deck is playing. The light turns from white to red when you switch to the second layer and can be “slowed down” from 45rpm to 33rpm with the supplied Serato Itch software.
Underneath each platter you have the 5 hot cues and quite closely below that you have the trademark SYNC, CUE and PLAY/PAUSE buttons that feature on most of the current Numark range. Personally for me I find that the hot cue buttons are way too close to the transport buttons, quite often I found myself jabbing the CUE button by accident obviously stopping the audio. I also found that from time to time if I hit the PLAY button it would start and almost immediately stop and I would need to press PLAY again. A bit annoying, but it didn’t happen too often.
On each deck you have a very large pitch/tempo fader that is incredibly accurate. It doesn’t have a center “click” but a little LED lights up when the fader is in the middle.
Above the platters you have the loop control section that offers a comprehensive selection of buttons to help you get a bit creative. If I wanted to create a very quick 4-bar auto-loop (blasphemy!) I found that the process was less than quick and required a few button presses, something I’m not used to on my DENON MC6000. Once you’re in the loop it’s very easy to half or double it and escape from it when you need to.
Above the loop section is the imaginatively titled “strip search” ribbon that now appears to becoming commonplace on most midi controllers these days. The idea is simple; you drag your finger along the ribbon to quickly locate a part of a song. Alternatively you can just as easily click on the part of the waveform you want to jump to in Serato Itch. I do like the strip search ribbon, if just for its comedy name! Above the strip are little red LED’s above it that are handy for a quick glance to see how far through a track you are.
Onto the mixer section and from the outset you can notice some very important features that are missing.
First of all there are no level meters on each of the channels, which make it absolutely impossible to work out if you need to adjust the gain for each track you are playing. Luckily Serato Itch has a feature built into it so that uses an auto-gain algorithm to work it out for you and this is fine if you are playing tracks from your computer however if someone hands you an iPod it’s a bit hit and miss. The VU meters in the middle show you actual output only, which personally I find a bit pointless.
Initially I thought it was absolutely impossible to be able to PFL/CUE more than one channel at once as each time I pressed the button it just flicked over onto the other channel. It appears that to be able to PFL/CUE more than one channel at once you need to press the PFL/CUE button for each channel you want…simultaneously. It’s quite easy to do but very annoying, especially if you want to drop a loop in from another deck you spend a few moments trying to get both channels in your headphones.
The NS6 claims to have 4 decks of control, and that’s right it does…well, that is until you want to use a microphone, then it becomes three decks. If you want two microphones then you have two decks. The reason behind this is that channels 3 and 4 in the mixer double up as microphone channels if you flick a switch. I made a point about how backwards this is in my Pioneer DDJ-T1 review in last months Pro Mobile. It’s either 4 decks or it’s not. Even more annoying is that if you are playing a track on channel 3 and your microphone is plugged in on the same channel as soon as you flick the switch to activate the microphone, any audio you were playing stops. For me personally if one of your main selling points is that you offer 4 audio decks then offer 4 audio decks, not 2 disguised as 4!
Despite all of its misgivings…I absolutely LOVE this controller, it’s the right size, has the most amazing platters and has a decent set of features, but it’s not perfect and I really sincerely wish that the big players in the controller market would consult DJs at ALL levels and not just those at the top of their game. We may only be “mere” mobile DJs but we have as much right to shape the future of controllerism as the next DJ, even if his name is Norman.
There are some very basic features missing from this controller and with a few refinements here and there then it has the makings to become a killer product. I would confidently give this controller a 7 out of 10.
Written by Ian Forest – ian.forest@seda.org.uk