Numark NV II – Review and Demonstration
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My name is Brennan Galley and I was the Canadian Technical Sales Manager for inMusic Canada. I toured Canada coast to coast to show musicians how to use innovative instruments, DJ and Music production equipment. One of the companies I represented was Numark. The NV II is a transportable professional DJ controller with capacitive touch functionality. It allows you to DJ in ways that would otherwise be physically impossible.
01. Setting Cue Points
Cue points allow you to move around the song to points that you determine. There are 8 pads, coloured to match the corresponding cue markers in Serato. Having control to move around your tracks lets you extend and warp your performance. I will almost always put a cue point on the one, so that every cue point is at a start of phrase. That means that I will always know when to move to another point in the song. If you turn quantize on in Serato then no matter where you hit the pad the timing will be on point. Be sure to check that the grid in Serato is matched up to your drum hits, otherwise known as transients. Serato will map it out automatically but sometime a nudge here and there will make sure everything will line up. In this video I show how to set the cue points using the Numark NV II.
02. Cue Loop
If you press the ‘cue’ button a second time it will begin to flash. This means that when you press a pad it will provide a loop. Knowing how long the loop is before mashing the pad is pretty important; nothing throws off a song more than a random 16th note. The Numark NV II has two screens that provide you with all the track information you need to perform. This video shows how to engage cue. It also shows where the loop size is located on the screens. Making adjustments to the size of the loops is done using the parameter buttons.
03. Auto
The auto section on the Numark NV II allows you to play back a loop from the position you are currently listening back to. When you turn on ‘auto’ it will be navy blue. This is the latched auto loop section. Latched means that when you press it once it will stay on. This works really well for doing larger loops that you want to play back for a while. When you are performing with smaller loops it is difficult to find the out point. If you press the ‘cue’ button a second time you will get the un-latched loops. When you press a pad and hold it the loop will repeat until you release the pad. When the song starts again it will play back from the position it would have been in had you done nothing.
04. Manual Loop
The auto loop section that I discussed above is locked into the grid of the song, which means that your loops will sound good and on time. If you find they don’t sound on time, check your grid in Serato and make sure that it is matched up with the transients. The manual loop section on the Numark NV II allows you to loop with disregard to the grid. This extra flexibility can give some interesting results. In this video I show how to set the in and out points. I also show how to save the loops to memory locations and how to recall them.
05. Sampler
The sampler section of the Numark NV II allows you to play back drum shots or cue points from tracks. Serato allows you to navigate the audio out from the sampler onto a channel on the NV II. If you’re having problems finding drum sounds here’s an Easter Egg for you. The Alesis Sample Pad Pro product page here has drum sounds available. The Numark NV II also comes with a bunch of content that becomes available once you register it. You can find the registration for Numark by clicking here. In this video I show how to control volume, filter and effects for the sampler section.
06. Slicer
Slicer on the Numark NV II gives you the ability to quickly repeat any part of the song as it’s played through. You can speed up and slow down the loops and play the track from start to finish. If you want to loop a section in the slicer mode, press the ‘slicer’ button a second time. The pads will go blue and it will keep repeating the section that was playing. In this video I show how to expand or shrink the size of the slicer loop.
07. Capacitive Touch Filter
The knobs on the Numark NV II have capacitive touch functionality. The knobs are made from a hybrid metal and plastic material, and when you touch them your body breaks the circuit with your own electromagnetic field. This opens up a ton of performance parameters. In this video I show how the filters on the NV II can be used to quickly loop a section of a song while simultaneously applying a filter. I also show how pulling up the auto section allows you to hop around the beat timing for even more flexibility.
08. Filter + Effects
The filter on the Numark NV II can also be used to apply effects to your music while simultaneously applying a filter. This means that your one hand can do the work of three hands. In this video I show how to engage this feature and how to create an effect signal path for the effects in Serato.
09. Capacitive Effects and EQ
The effects knobs and EQ knobs can all have capacitive touch applied to them as well. For the effects this means that you don’t have to push in a button to engage; the effect will turn on just by touching the knob. This will improve the timing of your effects and allows for some interesting performances. When the capacitive touch is engaged, touching a low, mid or high EQ knob will kill that frequency. The entire knob is capacitive, so you can do quick kill by shaking your finger in between the EQ channels. This video shows how to turn on capacitive touch for the effects and the EQ and how to perform with it.
10. Audio IO
The Numark NV II comes with a balanced microphone input, and has a booth output and XLR main outs. In this video I show the audio IO section and show which knobs control what on the top of the Numark NV II
If you want to set up a SKYPE lesson please send an email to fiercemule@gmail.com