After we exposed the world to the EKS Utus, there was a lot of buzz but no word as to when it might actually come out. That is until news came across the desk today that they are in full production and will begin to take orders as soon as tomorrow. It’s still too early to report on performance but we should be getting one into the office shortly and will make a full report as soon as we do!
According to EKS the pricing will be:
EUR 649 (+ VAT 22% in EU countries) +shipping & handling
The webshop will open during the weekend or Monday at the latest
This is an exciting controller and we are anxious to put it through the paces. Personally, I wish they had released the Otus RAW at the same time which is equipped with cue point buttons and a sliding pitch fader. That release is apparently scheduled for some time in 2009. Nonetheless, this first version is going to be a hot commodity as well if they managed to nail the performance.
I’m using Otus with Traktor Pro on a Macbook Pro. Works like a charm out of the box with the driver and template (which you can tweak to your liking), sounds great and overall the combination to me feels very much like a CDJ1000 with benefits, or there's not much of a learning curve. The thing is light, but sturdy, buttons and knobs feel good, the touch buttons and ribbons take some getting used to, but the play, cue and several other buttons are normal feedback-giving tactile buttons. I’m looking forward to getting the proper carrying case, it’s a little awkward carrying it with me in the box it came in… 😉
The only criticism I have right now is the accuracy of the pitch fader (even with the highest resolution) with Traktor, but I think it's more a midi protocol feature than hardware flaw. If you want to pitch say 135.00bpm track to 136.00 to play a track back to back with a 136.00 pitched CDJ track, you can't manually pitch it to 136.00, but to 135.88 or 136.06. By putting a 136.00 track to one Traktor deck and syncing the 135.00bpm one to it you can get it 136.00, but that's a laborous work-around. Only using Otus to play the above is not a problem at all, you can just sync the next track to the current bpm whether it's even ,00 or not.
Ville/Darude
If you find a US retailer let us know. I've been waiting since June for this thing but $912 seems extremely steep.
Good News is the store is open. Bad news is, at the current US exchange rate, it's looking like $912 shipped. There are no US distributors. I tried to connect EKS to S
Sweetwater, but no go as of yet.
[quote comment=""]Would have loved the Raw to be released at the same time too, but now… I have a little bit more time to safe me up some money. 😀
And 'eh… EKS Utus? ;)[/quote]
Would have loved the Raw to be released at the same time too, but now… I have a little bit more time to safe me up some money. 😀
And 'eh… EKS Utus? 😉
Finally, nice to see them boys pusing the product out.
I can't imagine how much more expensive it would be with a spinning platter (but it would be wery nice to have one). About that tactile feedback, YES!, nothing can feel better than the CLICK feel like on the CDJ1000 cue/play button.
Price? U.S. distributors? At least the exchange rate isn’t as crazy as when we first heard about this thing! A spinning platter would be nice though….
not a fan of the touch sensitive buttons…
i think that in a dj setting, you really need something with some real tactile feedback, so you'd never be wondering if u actually hit the button or not
Are the 5 second youtube videos a joke? Why not just put all the Otus videos on 1 video.
Put a spinning platter on this thing and you got my attention. However, the DN-HS5500 still blows this thing out of the water.