tsi midi-map file.) Traktor aficionados may want to consider the DX's formidable kin, the Xone:4D, as it is Traktor Scratch certified, or, outside the Allen&Heath universe, the Traktor Kontrol S4, itself only recently unveiled to the market and perhaps the only real rival to the DX as a four-deck digital DJ system. (This can be done manually or with the aid of a downloadable. If, however, you're already committed to different mixing software, Traktor Scratch Pro, for example, you'll need to spend a bit more time on the set-up side of things, mapping hardware to software controls via MIDI. The DX and ITCH get along with the sort of effortless harmony you'd expect with direct integration. The biggest step in performance that the DX takes beyond the VCI is that it offers the possibility of controlling ITCH on four decks for the first time.

Whereas the VCI has a minimalist, Apple computer-like visage, however, the DX appears stout and bold, coated in armor-like grey-blue and sporting a matrix of black controls. The DX appears to be a successor to the Vestax VCI-300, the previous integrated ITCH controller, thus like the VCI you get straightforward, out of the box plug-and-play action.

Produced in close concert with Serato so that it could be directly integrated with Serato's ITCH software, the DX unit juggles four decks with enough ease that it's possible to temporarily forget that DJing started off in a two-deck universe.

With the increased roll-out of four-deck software and hardware like Allen&Heath's latest unit, the Xone:DX, however, it's only a matter of time before the idea of only mixing two songs at once becomes as quaint as the thought of using circles of grooved wax to produce sound. It's old news that these days spinning vinyl has become something of an stodgy practice, championed largely by the lovingly classicist, defiantly low-tech or the fashionably retro.

Xone 4d traktor pro mapping