So What’s the Deal with Stanton’s DaScratch? —- Stanton SCS.3d

Ok, what the hell is this new thing from Stanton called DaScratch? More importantly, what can it do for me?

There has been a lot of buzz lately about Stanton’s new SCS.3d midi controller, also known as Da Scratch or DaScratch. I guess since Stanton’s Final Scratch couldn’t really compete with the likes of Serato or Traktor, they decided to come out with the next best thing – a flashy, colorful little midi toy that can be used in conjuction with your favorite DJ software.

DaScratch (still don’t like that name) plugs into your laptop via USB and maps itself according to whatever DJ software you are using. This is done through a little application called DaRouter. So if you’re running Serato, DaRouter will load up presets tailored to that particular program.

So, what does it do? You can basically use DaScratch as a midi player for your software. It has start/stop buttons, looping, eq, effects, trigger buttons for cue points, a slider for volume, a slider for pitch, and even let’s you scratch directly on the unit.

DaScratch does look like it would be a lot of fun to play around with, but I’m just not sure if it would be that practical of a unit to add on to an existing setup. Maybe it could be a slick way to browse through and load tracks from the Serato library, but as far as hands-on control of my music, I’ll stick with DaVinyl!