Touch it or grab it? Another Dj Touch controller.

Stanton has carefully leaked news of a new controller through the most underground of sources, a guitar center flyer. They have then decided to put up a confidential website, containing additional sensitive information that was not mailed to 500k guitar center customers. Is this what passes for guerrilla marketing these days?

Its called “Dascratch?” and appears to be the love child of the pacemaker and a kaos pad. The point of this article is not to re-announce news that skratchworx and CDM have already covered but instead to talk about the concept of touch pad controllers- again.

Here is the problem- static touch surfaces get old fast. Ribbon controls and touch zones that do one thing and one thing only are just not interesting and will never replace a good knob, fader or button. Sure, an XY pad is good for FX and other performance applications but they are great as an accessory, not the only form of control. The lemur, a non-static touch surface which can be re-configured to suit any need instantly is exempt from this broad sweeping generalization.

throw in pressure sensitivity and interactive haptic feedback and I will sing a different tune but we are not even close to that goal. MidiMan tried in 2001 but abandoned their efforts. For a dj controller to properly take advantage of this new dimension in control, they are going to need to re-write the book not just re-package existing technology.

Trust me, touch sensitivity and interactive screen surfaces get me excited too but after testing the pacemaker for a month and trying every ribbon sensor under the sun I was not really that impressed. This is the kind of thing that could be incredible with a lot of R&D and the right design team- the Iphone for instance obviously nailed it. I am personally excited to see how well Stanton executes this design but If you don’t want to wait and see if it really “changes the dj world forever” then make your own!

Check out this video which gives us a much better look at the controller and shows some interesting features: