Hardware
Our first impression of the Twitch was positive. The hardware is solid, with a sturdy plastic body and a thick brushed metal face. The combination seems ideal, because the metal top is going to take about anything you throw at it, but the body is still light enough to feel portable.
Twitch is roughly the width and thickness of a 15″ laptop and a little taller.
Here’s a top view:
Mixer section:
- 8x pots: EQ and trim
- 2x channel faders
- 1x replaceable crossfader
- 2x Continuous rotary encoders
- 2x headphone assign buttons – enables respective deck in the cue mix
- 2x Fader FX assign buttons
Master section:
- 4x pots
- Headphone level
- Master/cue mix
- Booth level
- Master output
Controls per deck:
- Touchstrip with swipe and drop modes
- Continuous rotary encoder for pitch +/-
- Cue button
- Play/Pause button
- 8x Large Triggerpads
- 4x performance mode selector buttons
- 2x Beatgrid buttons
- 2x sync/keylock buttons
- Master FX section:
- 1x Pot
- 2x continuous rotary encoders – right hand is also tap tempo/left hand is pressing makes for secondary parameter control
- 6x FX select buttons
Mic/Aux input section:
- 1x pot
- 1x on/off button
- 1x assign to headphones button
The primary connections are made around the back:
Novation Twitch rear connections:
- 2x master outs (L/R) on balanced TRS jacks
- 2x booth outs (L/R) on phono jacks
- 1x Master/cue switch to change signal going out of Booth outputs between cue & main
- 2x aux input (L/R) on phono jacks
- 1x aux gain pot
- 1x direct monitoring switch
- USB
- Lock slot
Mic input and headphone outputs are along the front face.
Novation Twitch front connections:
- 1x mic input on TRS jack
- 1x mic gain pot
- 2x headphone outputs (1x TRS jack & 1x 3.5mm jack) both can be used simultaneously)
The Novation Twitch strikes a balance between being fairly lightweight but also offering great ‘feel’ and rugged construction.
Great controller – but I wish they’d include some sort of overlay for Live. They might have to include some blanks for a few controls that you could fill in.
Not really necessary, but would be nice.
This controller is so very powerful and yet under-sung. The amount of energy poured into this controller clearly shows through it’s tight integration with Itch, Traktor and Ableton. Many people will simply dismiss this as a toy but when you compare a jog wheel to the touch strips, you’ll find that the touch strips are more capable (A Jog wheel cannot make the pinch/expand expressions that the touch strips can). If you’re looking for buttons, it’s important to note that (in Traktor Pro), there are 8 buttons per each of the 4 modes per each of the 4 decks (that’s 128 assignable buttons).
Within Itch, the Twitch is a 2 channel mixer, but within Traktor Pro, the Twitch is a virtual 4 channel mixer (meaning that each side can toggle decks via a single button push). It’s very nice to see that Novation planned ahead when they created this controller noting that each of the pad buttons has two LEDs (one Green, one Red) which can combine to make at least 4 discernible colors (with various levels of brightness) for each pad (this behavior is not locked to one color per bank either), each button can be assigned any color (in the available pallet).
In Itch, the up-faders can double as effects (the toggle uses a soft-take over so you won’t have to worry about accidentally changing the volume when switching back from the effects. This level of thinking seems to be everywhere on the Twitch, it clearly rivals (and often beats) the best of the other controllers on the market for HALF the price of the most expensive. This is one of the very few controllers which is designed to be used in Ableton, Traktor and Itch.
Nothing is perfect… Two major concerns about the Twitch are: it’s “USB only” powered so you can’t use it without a computer and it’s sound card. While it sounds great, it doesn’t generate the output power that powered controllers do… that being said, I’ve never been accused of playing too softly in a club.
I’ve been eyeing this for quite some time. Can anyone tell me if you can bypass Twitch’s onboard audio out when used with Serato? (I heard the master out is kinda weak) I’d rather use my Motu ultralite’s outputs.
No problem with the outs being weak here. If you’re going into a relatively noisy system, maybe it would be a different story.
fantastic DJ controller in my view, should be a strong consideration for anyone looking to perform seriously with serato itch or traktor. especially lovin’ the 8 trigger pads and their multiple uses, as well as the touchstrips!
Can you add other devices to this, such as run a vinal, drum machine, sampler, or anything like that along side, or would that be difficult?