Summary
The Novation Twitch is an exciting new controller that is perfect for digital native DJs and controllerists. Novation deserves credit for leaving behind the two turntable metaphor and coming up with a controller that’s designed for cutting-edge DJing.
You tend to get what you pay for with DJ controllers. The Novation Twitch retails for about $400, and its professional contruction and ample features reflect that.
Pros
- Design offers a great balance between ruggedness and portability
- Twitch offers comprehensive digital controls and analog connectivity
- Ideal for controllerism and modern remix and mashup DJ approaches
- Touchstrips are a unique feature that begs for experimentation
Cons
- Touchstrips don’t replace platter controls and will take some getting used to
- Channel faders feel a little lightweight
If you’ve used the Novation Twitch, leave a comment with your thoughts on it!
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?