Native Instruments’ latest performance controllers do beats on a budget

If you're into digital DJing or music production, you'll be very familiar with Native Instruments. For disc jockeys, Traktor (software) in combination with the Kontrol S series of hardware is about as comprehensive as it gets. For tunesmiths, it's Ma...

Take Control, with Kontrol

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Sketch Tablets are aimed primarily for use by designers, illustrators and artists alike, but they are also a great tool for video and photo editing as they offer much greater control compared to a mouse.

Kontrol is a Sketch Tablet that features a customizable workspace for both sketching and editing purposes. The addition of this also aims to maximize the user’s efficiency and create a more seamless experience from analog to digital. The configurable controls allow the user to have a truly unique and personal workspace for each piece of software.

Kontrol’s design makes using it in a workspace with limited room a breeze; the two parts are held together using magnets, this enables the two parts to be separated if needed. The almost seamless surface of the tablet allows the user’s fingers to glide across the board in a frictionless manner, while the monochromatic color scheme makes for a professional looking product.

Designer: Jonny Tran

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Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol F1 review

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What is a DJ? Everyone who considers him or herself one can probably give you a unique answer. Is everyone with a music collection and a sense for good timing a DJ, or does their music collection have to exceed a certain number of gigabytes or slabs of vinyl to be in the club (no pun intended)? Audio playback devices are certainly getting more plentiful and powerful on a large scale; anyone who's played with an iOS DJ app can tell you that. In the deeper end of the DJ pool, things aren't expanding at such a frantic pace. But every once in a while a new toy crops up that adds depth and breadth to the way music nerds play back music. Native Instruments' just-released Traktor Kontrol F1 is a blinking slab of rainbow-tinged hardware with an intense devotion to manipulating samples. While boxes from Roland and Akai have been defining genres for decades, this 16-pad add-on takes the sampling game to a new arena. Will DJ's want it? We feel it's safe to say they will. At $279, should they buy it? That question's a little more complicated.

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Native Instruments Traktor Kontrol F1 review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 May 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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