Music is deeply tied up with motion; seeing that in a machine is somehow satisfying. Soundmachines, from the enigmatically-titled Berlin studio TheProduct*, is an interactive physical installation made from optical turntables. By moving the “tone arm” – really in this case an optical sensor attached to an extended mount – you can change rhythms and sound sweeps.

We’ve naturally seen many visualizations, tangible and digital, that make loops into wheels. But it’s worth noting the particular connection to a kinetic experiment by The Books’ Nick Zammuto from the film earlier this week. In fact, my one criticism of this piece is that the rhythms are so regular. Some syncopation in a machine like this would be not only pleasing, but immediately visible to the eye and therefore understandable. Perhaps even decoupling the wheels from the motor could allow a user to experiment with sound. That doesn’t mean you have to go from minimal techno to irregular chaos, but there’s quite a lot in between.

That’s not to take away from the impact of this piece, and in particular, the beauty of its installation. The presentation in an iconic object is a message in itself. And the circle remains the ideal design for a looped rhythm, embedded as it is in the repetition we perceive in our world.

http://www.the-product.org/soundmachines

More details:

Three units, which are resembling standard record players, translate concentric visual patterns into control signals for further processing in any music software. The rotation of the discs, each holding three tracks, can be synced to a sequencer.
The Soundmachines premiered on the Volkswagen New Beetle stand at the IAA motor show in late Summer 2011. In cooperation with the sounddesigner/producer Yannick Labbé of TRICKSKI fame, we developed three unique discs, each controlling one track of an Ableton Live Set exclusively made for the Event. The show was supported by a set of realtime generated visuals, running on a 25m wide LED wall.


One/One oneone-studio.com
TheProduct* the-product.org

Client

Volkswagen

Agency

Vok Dams, Hamburg

Sounddesign/Producer IAA
Yannick Labbé yannicklabbe.com

Special Thanks

Matt Karau
 matt.karau.com
Andreas Schmelas invertednothing.com

(See also a compelling-looking visual collage. It’s supposed to be set to John Cage’s “First Interlude,” but because of copyright concerns, is instead (arguably) set to Cage’s 4’33″. Let’s hope they don’t get sued for that.

What should DJing software look like, anyway?

It’s just a teaser, but for once, the idea is simple, straightforward, and clear. Native Instruments have taken their DJ software, Traktor, and combined it with a grid of pads for sample triggering and loops. The upcoming hardware/software combination we expect later this spring.

At the risk of stating the obvious, what’s significant about adding loop triggering to any DJ set is that you can more easily move beyond playing and mixing tracks. Even without drum machines, this kind of manipulation is part of the grand tradition of DJing, made all the more impressive when ground-breaking DJs were able to accomplish it using only a turntables. (It’s perhaps a triumph over the linearity of recorded music in the 20th Century that, at last, artists found a way to subvert recorded music’s permanently-frozen state and reclaim the playback device as an instrument.)

What the upcoming product does is to take the virtual deck metaphor of Traktor and makes each deck a sampling machine. Each deck can trigger one-shots and loops, coupled with the mixing, cueing, and effects possibilities of Traktor as a DJ tool.

The obvious comparison will be to Ableton Live, but here, it’s as significant what is different as what is not. This wording from NI’s description will admittedly sound a lot like Ableton Live and colored renditions of the monome: “Stylish multi-color pads trigger loops and samples, allowing for on-the-fly remixing.” There’s definitely some influence there.

But the grand-daddy of all these things is sampling drum machines, the first instruments to popularize triggering one-off or looped audio content from a grid. (Tip of the hat here to Roger Linn and his designs.) Ableton’s breakthrough was taking that sample-triggering grid metaphor and cross-breeding it with the DAW, the all-purpose studio workstation with its channel strips, tracks, and arrangements. In Live, the track is king.

NI’s breakthrough here promises to be seamlessly making each deck – not each track – the focus for sample triggering. And their hardware literally combines the DJ mixing and effects functions with those pads. In the future Traktor tool, the deck, not the track, is king. And that makes all the difference. The deck will behave like a deck for cueing (a common complaint about Live), for one, but it’s also important that whereas Live gives you as many tracks as you want, you’re forced into the limitation of four decks in Traktor. That limitation is neither positive nor negative, but rather something that will influence every other decision you make. (Having looked over the shoulder of Richie Hawtin’s impossibly-enormous Live set recently for Plastikman, with tracks that scrolled on seemingly endlessly, I can tell you this isn’t a minor point.)

Of course, the other amusing point is the timing of when NI is tipping their hand. NI already makes a popular sampling drum machine, Maschine, combining a dedicated controller with software. Akai has just entered the ring with their own revision of the MPC – combining a dedicated controller with software to make a sampling drum machine. NI, for their part, here reveals that their next move is a new dedicated controller/software combo that also adds in DJing.

Anyway, for now, it’s just a video, so everything else is speculation. Feel free to have a look and let us know what you think, which, knowing comments, I’m certain you’ll do in no uncertain terms.

Side note: My brain is fuzzy; can anyone remind me of the capabilities of 4decks? This was, as I recall, a Reaktor patch that combined looping and decks.

For fans of slicing, dicing, glitching, reversing, and shuffling incoming audio streams, this Max for Live Device is for you. Shuffler 2.0 is the latest in a series of “modular” Max for Live devices from developer Isotonik Studios. Mappable to MIDI, the suite of Devices focuses on simpler tasks in ways that can be combined. There are interactive Follow Actions, for instance — a feature I’ve long argued should be native to Ableton Live — plus tools for more easily mapping MIDI to envelopes. There’s a convenient Looper.

From last week, there’s a module called Smart, capable of mapping some eight macros to one knob.

The entire series is sold as a subscription for 17 quid:
http://isotonikstudios.com/modular/

Check out the Follow actions in the video below.

I tend to tune out when it comes to sample libraries, but here’s one that takes the scripting capabilities of Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler to extremes. The Grid Machine line developed by Lindon Parker (Channel Robot) and distributed by LoopMasters brings to Kontakt the sort of grid-based, sliced-up sample manipulation we’ve seen in the monome community and in custom tools in environments like Ableton Live and Renoise. Using KSP, the scripting environment in Kontakt, these produce entirely-custom instruments that cut, chop, stutter, reverse, mix, trigger, sub-loop, re-trigger, and modulate. You can change speed, mute, skip, reorder, and play patterns, and even mix between loops.

Even before you get to Kontakt’s effects, this kind of work really challenges the notions of what people imagine a “sampler” or “loop library” to be. And that’s been true of the sample sound design community, generally – they can brew things beyond the expected boundaries of a sample. I could even see this becoming a performance instrument.

Now, for those of us not content to use existing loops, I hope we can somehow convince Lindon to explain how he did the KSP scripting work to make it all happen. Drum ‘n Bass and House libraries are £29.95 each.

Loopmasters: Channel Robot

Some House for those of you who weren’t into the DnB version:

The computer as bandmate is nothing new. It’s just more stable, more powerful, and friendlier than it has been ever before — and that, coupled with growing familiarity, has been making it more commonplace with artists. So just how are artists working with computers onstage when they also play instruments and sing?

Recent guests at New York’s Ableton Live user group have been demonstrating their own techniques for playing Live, live. They work with loops, recording, sampling, live effects, synths – all the things you’d expect – but find ways of navigating all that functionality while still playing their instrument. I was just editing interviews in which electronic artists made the opposite argument, that they preferred producing only electronic sounds with technology. But whatever your desire, you can find a playing technique to accommodate it.

It’s just one set of snapshots from one city — consider it the tip of a very large, very global, very diverse wave of artists getting more comfy with live laptop performance. Here’s how Cosmo D, on cello as part of the band Archie Pelago, and Erin Barra, singing and playing keys, work with software live.

Cosmo D

New York-based artist Cosmo D is doing some wonderful cello and laptop music. Even that’s something that’s becoming more frequent – a good thing, I think, as it means a range of artists will explore ways of working with instrument and machine.

In a video for our friends at the bangbang blog, he demonstrates a simplified version of his set.

And here’s Cosmo D with his band Archie Pelago, jamming away…

If you’re in the New York City area, this ensemble is playing live at the Ableton User Group at Tekserve on Thursday.

Archie Pelago on Facebook

Erin Barra

On the singer side of the spectrum, Erin Barra was also a guest this year at the New York Ableton UG. She’s working on a Live setup that’s a hub of vocal performance and keys, using the computer to host chains of effects.

A Berklee graduate with the chops to match, Erin is a recent convert to Ableton use; her publicist tells us she just dove into the manual last summer and is working on a training certification. The musical idiom is a bit different than the kind of artists’ work regularly featured on this site, but that’s further evidence that the tools aren’t genre-specific.

She walks through her live rig for the performance above in a separate video:

Also, in July she did the first of a writeup for a local New York production and recording outlet, Sonic Scoop, in which she talks more about production. The video is geared at novice and intermediate artists, so it walks through things gradually, step-by-step, and also reveals a bit of her approach to working with Live for vocal processing:

“Insert Scene” by Erin Barra: Creating a Vocal Chain in Ableton Live

It’s great to see artists being brave and patient enough to do this kind of walkthrough. (I say that because I personally find doing screencasts to be a huge pain, though I do promise more in the future on CDM anyway!)

One small nit-pick: I think the Shure SM57 is very, very popular as a vocal mic!

Erin calls herself a “one-woman army,” and deservedly so — playing keys, singing, and operating a computer requires some serious multitasking chops, and she handles her APC with aplomb.

Erin has an album out called Illusions, and a tour of the US on. (Warning: autoplays music.)
http://www.erinbarra.com/

Your Neck of the Woods?

That’s just one city’s recent Ableton user group appearances, and a fraction of the kinds of artists who have appeared in New York alone. Got artists working with laptops — using any software, not just Live — talking in your community about what they’re doing? Want to share your rig? Get in touch.

Working in open source code for any platform, Brazilian artist and developer Jeraman has produced a charming project that imagines musical interfaces in dynamic, whimsically-simple sketches. Like doodled knobs, cartoons of guitar pedals, interactive devices on the touchscreen control musical activity.

And because it’s open, cross-platform code, everything from a computer-powered multitouch table to an Android tablet could get in on the fun. Jeraman explains:

It is a digital musical instrument that allows the control of real-time recorded loops through collaborative performances based on relationships between sketches and sounds, intended to be ludic and playful.

Developed in Processing and OpenFrameworks, it mixes multitouch technologies with the interaction metaphor of guitar pedals, by using a FTIR DIY multitouch table – built with PVC tubes, tapes… – with a modified old keyboard as pedal, following a high-end / low-tech approach.

Here’s an example of performance using an early prototype. By the way, sorry for the poor musical quality… I’m not a professional musician!

The project is also open source and the code, that may allow the instrument to be ported to others plataforms like Android, iPad and cardboard boxes (yes! using this http://sethsandler.com/multitouch/mtmini/), will be released soon.

This is possible due to the independence of the gui module (developed in processing) and the looper module (developed in openframeworks).
for the communication between both, it was used OSC protocol.

Some pictures can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeraman/sets/72157626935130739/

For further informations, check this site (sorry, in Portuguese):
http://jeraman.info/illusio/

It’s a fascinating-looking project! Do keep us posted, Jeraman — and readers, if you happen to play with the code, let us know! Oh, and never apologize for Portuguese – it’s a gorgeous language!

See also some nice examples of Jeraman’s previous work:

See, previously:
Robotic Twitter Songwriter Generates Tweet Poetry

In a week awash with new music gadgetry, Kaleidoloops are a reminder of the electronic musical object at its most basic. It’s a box for collecting and making sounds.

The Kaleidoloop contains basic digital audio recording capabilities – 16-bit / 22,050 Hz mono WAV. You can now save those recordings on an SD card, with up to 32,000 tracks and – if you upgrade beyond the paltry included 256M card – hours of sound.

What makes it interesting is its simple controls for manipulation. Knobs control speed and direction, and you can switch the speed control between a continuous mode and one that steps along the harmonic series. Buttons let you select tracks. There’s a built-in speaker and mic, or you can opt for 1/4″ input and output. And you can layer tracks together, too.

None of this is innovative; buying a Kaleidoloop is like buying a trawl or a hoe. It’s a basic tool you’d always expect to use.

It’s the simplicity of the thing, combined with an artful case, that makes it worth mentioning. The art collective Dearraindrop has given it a gorgeous skin, lending an almost mystical quality to the object.

Since these are handcrafted, the price of US$299 isn’t entirely unreasonable. But whether you buy this, or rescue a tape recorder, or build your own hardware or patch, I think just looking at it is a good reflection. It’s a way of reminding ourselves that what we do in production is work with sound. And getting back to basics is never a bad idea.

Or, as the makers suggest:

“Use several devices to build up layers of sound, pass a sound from one to another and play with resonance, invent new musical games, practice speaking in reverse, alter playback speed and explore new harmonies, carry sounds around the room… the list is endless. Best of all the Kaleidoloop stores everything it records, so you have a collection of your sound journey.”

http://www.critterandguitari.com/content/kaleidoloop

Like bright colors? Want to see other projects? Look here:
http://www.critterandguitari.com/projects

Somewhere at the boundaries of “ambient” and “experimental,” there’s a great deal of wonderful music being made these days. Even with great labels behind them, it’s the sonic signature that stands out.

With densely-layered, trance-like loops, “Hearts in Stasis” is a perfect example of this hard-to-categorize immersion for your ears, worth repeated listens for its tightly-packed details. Direwires, aka Adam Young, has been on Moodgadget since the beginning, included on their first compilation. The Ontario-based artist talks to CDM about his approach to music making, and I think it’ll resonate with a lot of artists of a similar mindset. With minimal, software-conceived production and drawing heavily on memory and the sounds around him, Adam says he crafted this record as though manipulating a dream.

You can have a listen to the full release on SoundCloud. Digital downloads on iTunes. There’s also a free MP3:

Bayfield

Direwires – Hearts In Stasis by Moodgadget

Peter: Above all others, there’s a sense of a hypnotic quality to the piece, in these repetitions. What’s the compositional idea behind these? Do you put yourself in a sort of meditative state when working?

Adam: I’ve always loved repetition in music. Repetition gives things weight, and meaning and draws you in, and makes you ask questions rather than taking a recorded idea for granted… sort of forcing you to “live” in it for a short bit. I’d say for this material in particular, it is more about intro/retrospection than meditation or some kind of self-hypnosis. There were many moments in the album where I drew pretty directly from fond and bittersweet memories of my teen years and because they meant so much to me, I wanted to stay there for as long as possible without creating something people couldn’t listen to. It was a pleasant process and it felt a bit like manipulating a dream you were trying really hard to not wake up from.

What’s your technique for working with loops?

There are exceptions to my methods all the time, but typically I’ve either heard naturally-occurring repetition that I really liked or something that I think would be fun to get my hands dirty with and edit into something loopy. I’ve used telephones and telephone messages, portable tape recorders, computers — all sorts of things to capture these things or pull from personal sources. But ultimately I feel most at home doing all of the reconstruction in software. I like the control I have over things on a computer, and it’s how I learned many years ago. Most things you hear have gone through software samplers or received some sort of digital manipulation.

It was a pleasant process and it felt a bit like manipulating a dream you were trying really hard to not wake up from.

There’s a real sense of dense dynamics to the layering here. You talk as well about “lo-fi” sounds here. Can you describe what that meant, how you approached the sound of this record?

I used a lot of analog and digital methods to capture audio from life around me. I did a lot of disregarding of source quality with the mindset that it would only add to the texture of whatever piece I was working on if I treated all things equally in the production process. A poor quality voicemail message was just as valuable to me as a perfect recording of a grand piano. This really helped bring things into perspective without a lot of effort and I was able to focus on the more conscious creative decisions I wanted to be making.

What are the sound sources we’re hearing? It sounds like you’re sampling all kinds of different things and working iteratively with those materials.

Anything that makes a sound is fair game, typically. There are a lot of human voices, but this time around I’ve tried to stick to tangible objects from my life and surroundings, and some synth parts here and there. It’s very personal music and it was important to me and context was crucial, even if the listener can’t hear all of it in a recording. There’s a LOT of different things in there though. You’ll hear everything from traffic and construction sounds to human speech and garage sale guitars. There’s even a couple seconds of a beat up read-along record in there.

Even I think without be influenced by the lovely album art, there is a sense of being underwater in this piece, perhaps because of the ebb and flow of the rhythms and dense layers. There were some natural inspirations, yes?

I’m very fond of aquatic themes and water in general, but it was mostly coincidental in this particular case. Most of the album was inspired by fond memories that just happened to take place in and around water and beaches and the like. I am always inspired by natural surroundings though and it just so happens that I’ve spent most of my life in and around fairly beautiful areas of Canada. The lovely cover art was put together by Alex Koplin at Moodgadget, based on a photo I took while swimming in Lake Huron in my teens.

Moodgadget notes that this album is the product of four years of work. Obviously, some records are produced in days, others years. How do you sort of keep material that has evolved over a longer period of time fresh?

I would like to think that it’s always “fresh” because I didn’t write music for the music people. I wrote songs about things that will always be the same so long as I remember them. I wasn’t chasing after a trending sound or trying to write something for a certain group of people. I was just writing something for me in what was almost a side effect of being someone who spends too much time thinking while sitting around a bunch of studio tools.

Since you’ve been with Moodgadget for some time, how did that relationship come about?

I met the gentlemen involved and their friends at Ghostly some years ago when I was attending parties and trying to make some connections for a couple of techno projects I was a part of at the time. They had been putting on some really cool mixed-genre multimedia shows at the time and eventually formed the label. At one point they were brainstorming by email and talking about their intentions and what they should call it and I suggested the name and they apparently liked it.

Can you share some of your background, and how you approached this musically / technically speaking?

I was always around video games and computers as a child, which gave way to spending too much time hobbying about with computers to the point where I was actively looking for new things I could do with a computer. I eventually discovered the “tracking” scene and some of the things people were doing musically with computers. I started experimenting a little bit at a young age and was writing mediocre techno and ambient things by the time I was twelve. I guess in a lot of ways, not a lot has changes other than I’ve developed some very intentional compositional habits, understand how to write music that flows the way I want it to and how to use the tools I have..which are obviously better tools than I’ve started with.

Most of the songs here were written in similar ways. I’d start with a sound I had recorded, would pull it into a virtual sampler or waveform editor, pull it apart, and start putting it back together in different ways until I had a new sort of “instrument” I could write something musical with. Then I’d start laying out some sort of melody or just ride out a loop I liked and would build something resembling a song around it.

What are you listening to these days? I hesitate to call anything “ambient” as the word has so much associated with it…

That’s a tough one, and I agree. I’ve gone through a lot of different phases but lately it’s all over the place. I’m listening to a lot more traditional music than I used to, bands and stuff. I used to listen to a lot of exclusively electronic things. I have playlists I rotate through for different moods and I guess the ones that see the most play lately are ones that include some folk and things like Grouper, Owen Pallett’s solo work, David Sylvian, Fennesz… I think I have listened to that “Transit” song Sylvian and Fennesz did together about a million times. It kills me every time. Once in awhile I’ll go on a strange bender and spend a week only listening to 80′s New Wave stuff, or something like The Stranglers.

If you asked me several years ago, almost everything I listened to was some form of techno. It’s kind of funny, because when I first began listening to music as a child, I only wanted aggressive, violent sounding metal and rock music around and my father would play Tangerine Dream and all sorts of classic synth music and I would attempt to make fun of him and tell him to put on “real music”. It looks like he gets the last laugh.

Can you describe for us what’s in your studio?

It’s not very impressive to studio nerds, it’s always been the least important part of my process for better or worse. My studio was my bedroom for most of my life. I’ve had dedicated studio space a couple times in recent history but i’ve always found myself bringing everything back to my home so I could work on things and always revert back to working where I live. The setup changes over and over, and depends on what I’m working on. Sometimes I’ll have space reserved for vocal recording, synths, guitars, odd objects or very seldomly – people singing. The centre of it all will always be the most appropriate computer or two that I own at the time (which is always something Apple based… I’ve had enough bluescreens, crashes, lost work and the like for two lifetimes.) I often run a myriad of VSTs and stand-alone applications that have been written by friends and strangers alike, but usually a fairly typical sequencer/host is at the core. I’ve been using Ableton a lot in recent years, I like how easy it is to use the same software in the studio and on stage.

At the moment I’ve an obsession with not being distracted and keeping the area free of unnecessary instruments or objects and so it usually just looks like someone’s typical office until I need to bring in a specific synth or controller to work on a specific part. I rarely use proper monitor speakers because there was a time in my life when I couldn’t and made a habit out of using headphones as long as I could until bringing it elsewhere for mixing, or compensating appropriate. A silly way to work, but old habits die hard. One of the few strengths in doing things the way I do them is that it’s very easy to take the process mobile and work from neat locations. I’ve done work on boats, in cars, in tents and cabins out under the open sky on warm nights with a laptop.

Thanks to Adam for sharing a glimpse into his creative life. Find the album at Moodgadet:
http://moodgadget.com/direwires/

Producer/composer and Reaktor super-guru Peter Dines is back with a new concoction for Native Instruments’ graphical development environment for sound. Entitled the Reaktor Sample Pack, it’s a collection of three granular sampling instruments. Updated with new download links (no more divshare!)

Frame is a looping sampler with smooth/crossfading, envelope controls, and built-in saturation, plus graphical loop point selection. Free | download

Loupe is a “polyphonic looping slicer,” which is to say you can slice up a sample and assign it to different MIDI keys. Press a note, then graphically set loop playback parameters from reverse to envelope to filter. US$15 via link below, or get Loupe + Mirage for US$22.50 | download

Mirage is a granular sampler that focuses on ambient textures, by creating snapshots of various parameters. There’s some deep sonic functionality in there, including an LFO with a “whirl” effect (and accompanying whirly graphic widget), per-voice filtering, global envelope and EQ, and tons of grain-level controls. US$15 via link below, or get Loupe + Mirage for US$22.50 | download

They also all look lovely with Reaktor’s recently-overhauled UI. Pete isn’t just a good programmer, though; he’s a talented producer, so I’ll let the sound samples speak for themselves:

Peter Dines Sampler Pack – Frame 2 by peterdines

Peter Dines Sampler Pack – Loupe drums by peterdines

Peter Dines Sampler Pack – Mirage demo by peterdines

And here’s a look at Mirage’s UI; click through for a bigger version:

If you have Reaktor, I can’t imagine any argument for not picking these up. Through the end of February, you can pick up all three for US$22.50, and Frame alone would keep you busy for free.

Full details on Pete’s terrific Modulations blog at Noisepages:
Introducing the Reaktor Sampler Pack

If you’re interested in using this in Ableton Live, read on for Reaktor+Live tips. If you’re a fan of Maschine, Pete has also been putting Reaktor and Maschine together while testing the upcoming Maschine 1.6, and he’s got some fantastic tips:

Ableton users…
More on routing Reaktor in Live: multi out audio UPDATE: VST works too, not just AU [PS - little tip, VST is usually a safer bet than AU on the Mac because so many AU plug-ins actually use compatibility layers]

Maschine + Reaktor (and Loupe!) Maschine 1.6 beta just dropped!

And if you love running patterns at different lengths, routing patterns into one another, good stuff:
Sound to Sound MIDI routing in Maschine 1.6

Thanks for the great ideas, Pete. Well worth checking the rest of his site:
http://modulations.noisepages.com/

Traktor 2 is a new “generation,” says Native Instruments, of its flagship DJ software, along with upgraded hardware interfaces. The upgrade is so capable, simply calling it a “DJ” product may be inadequate. Just as Ableton Live’s user base grew to incorporate DJs, Traktor’s capabilities move easily into live performance and remixing, too.

It’s still Traktor. But drawing on Traktor’s background, it’s Traktor as a DJ tool that, aside from just playing auto-beat-matched tracks, can transform into a sampling and remix tool with some far-out sonic effects, for a more dynamic live show.

However you classify yourself, the update promises both expanded usability and, for those who do want to go deeper, more extensive live sonic manipulation.

New features:

• Redesigned UI you can actually see. NI calls it “high-visibility”; I’d call it “squint proof.” While I’ll need to use it first-hand, it may at last resolve one of Traktor’s most glaring deficiencies – that the UI was too darned hard to see.
• Four sample decks and the Loop Recorder. I love Ableton, but too often users fail to limit the number of simultaneous samples. Four samples playing at once really is often more than enough, so the four-deck metaphor makes a lot of sense. Coupled with loop recording, you could forget that Traktor is marketing at DJs and have a pretty nice little looping program; I’d been tempted to test it as such to see how it stands up. For people who do call themselves “DJs,” meanwhile, it’s an opportunity to really set your live numbers apart.
• Big, colorful wave views. High-resolution, color-coded waveforms (and lots of viewing options) let you focus on visual mixing with wave views. That should both please some digital die-hards and offend purists, so we’ll see how people comment online to this one. (Flame war, perhaps?) At the very least, it can make your workspace look nicer.
• SoftSync. I’m looking into this, but NI says it’s a new automatic beat-matching mode that keeps multiple tracks in sync without “manipulating phase.”
• New effects: Tape delay emulation, Bouncer (pitch delay) effects, and Ramp delay.

There’s a whole lot to the UI rebuild; it’s not only bigger, but cleaner, adds more waveform feedback, and tons of customization options, all intended, evidently, to make the UI easier to see and use.

Obligatory promo video (as with any manufacturer, put your hype-filtering glasses on … now!):

And Ean Golden over at DJ TechTools already has an in-depth walkthrough:

There’s also a great feature-by-feature walkthrough in the UI that rivals what you’ll find from Native Instruments site:
Traktor Pro 2 @ DJ Tech Tools

To me, the addition of sampler on all decks, a loop recorder, and extra effects make this the first DJ-dedicated tool you could really see as a live tool. For people coming to DJing from producer backgrounds, I think that’ll be welcome.

On the hardware side, the Audio 6 and Audio 10 represent big improvements, too:

• More I/O: 6 or 10 inputs instead of 4 or 8 on the previous models. NI suggests you use the extra stereo in as a loop or sample in, an effect/send return, for an external mix, or other … stuff. Yeah, it’s handy to have.
• 24-bit/96kHz Cirrus Logic converters, +12 dBu outs
• Better LED indicators
• New Direct Thru function patches an input directly to the output even without a computer connected. (Hmmm… handy if your computer crashes, huh?)

You also get a copy of Traktor LE 2, the new Traktor 2 version of their lightweight DJ tool.

There are loads of great interfaces out there for production and recording; what might appeal about the Audio DJ interface line is its live features – even if you’re more on the live PA / live electronics side than DJing per se.

Mac and Windows support; I’ll be curious if the unofficial / unsupported Linux drivers remain compatible, as there – with far fewer good choices – NI’s stuff tends to be a great choise. (I use an Audio Kontrol 1 right now with my Ubuntu setup, and get some fantastic low-latency performance.)

Even the audio interfaces get their own video:

And a bonus video of Traktor Scratch:

Pricing:
TRAKTOR PRO 2 – $229 / 199 EUR
TRAKTOR SCRATCH PRO 2 – $669 / 599 EUR
TRAKTOR DUO 2 – $119 / 99 EUR
TRAKTOR SCRATCH DUO 2 – $399 / 349 EUR

S4 users get the new Traktor for free; other upgrades available. On the interfaces:

TRAKTOR AUDIO PRO 6 $279/249 EUR (that’s the bargain, in my opinion)
TRAKTOR AUDIO PRO 10 $449/399 EUR

Okay, now with your hype goggles off, let us know what you think.
Traktor Lineup Page