Native Instruments has announced their cheapest DJ product of the year – a simple splitter cable that takes a headphone output and splits it into two outputs, one for a master out and the other for a precue. Essentially, the Traktor DJ Cable is a basic stereo splitter that then allows DJ software to send mono outputs to each split end.
Is having a cable like this handy? Absolutely. In fact, you can use it with any laptop or iPad with a headphone output, as long as the software supports splitting the master and cue outputs to different channels (left and right) on the same device.
The key thing to note here is that this isn’t an innovative product – while the hero video from NI below describes it as the easiest way to split up outputs from Traktor DJ, any splitter cable will do the job. While the Traktor DJ Cable clearly has reinforced structure on the cable itself to prevent it from bending excessively and getting shorts at the connection points, it does have a price tag of $19.99.
A quick search on Amazon shows that less-heavily-designed cables that do the exact same thing cost less than half the price:
