Ask A Sound Guy

It’s no secret that there’s a lot of DJs in the world that prefer to work in the digital realm. There’s a lot of reasons for it and one of them has to be all the cool stuff you can use in conjunction with your laptop. The Eks OTUS is the perfect case for this argument.

With the Eks OTUS Raw being debuted at NAMM this year, I had to finally get my hands on one of these units to see where the OTUS started.

Out of the Box

The OTUS comes with everything you’d need to make it work: the unit itself, a manual that explains all the different knobs/buttons and also gives you layouts of what a typical setup might look like, two stereo RCA cables, a USB cord (the OTUS is USB powered), and a download voucher for a free version of Image-Line’s Deckadance software which I used for this review.

Looks

Do a Google Image search of the Eks OTUS and take a look at some of the photos. There’s no denying that the design of this thing is unique and, well, a little different. There’s not much text on the OTUS. In fact, the only buttons you’ll be able to read out of the box is the “CUE” button and the “Play/Pause” button. Everything else is marked with somewhat cryptic graphics. That being said, it didn’t take me long to read the documentation and figure out what everything did.

The knobs and pots are pretty nice. I have to say that, aesthetically, my favorite part of this unit is the green and red lights that are visible depending on what deck you’re using. Everything’s nice and illuminated, so using this thing in a dark club/warehouse party setting would be easy.

The platter is 7.5,” which is nice enough for me.

Feel

The build quality of the OTUS is really solid. The platter is nice and sturdy; nothing feels cheap like on some of OTUS’ competitors. It feels really sturdy when sat on top of a typical Stanton/Technics mixer, so I wouldn’t feel weird placing it on top of someone’s turntables (or my own).

All the buttons and knobs are responsive, which is nice. The button to switch decks takes a couple of consecutive clicks in order to hop over to the unused deck which took me a second to figure out, but after five minutes of experimentation with the OTUS I was pretty comfortable.

The platter is nice and smooth. It doesn’t move at all, which isn’t a big deal for me. If it did move, it’d be much bigger, heavier, and have more buttons. Seeing as this thing is crammed with stuff as it is, it just wouldn’t be worth it to add a motor.

I have a couple of gripes with this thing in terms of feel. The first being the pitch slider. There’s no actually fader like on most other controllers or turntables, instead its touch sensitive. It looks really nice, but is a little confusing unless you’re checking up on your software to make sure the pitch is correct. Fortunately, Eks is fixing this with the upcoming OTUS Raw. Those units will have SL-1200 style pitch faders.

The only other gripe I have is with the onboard mouse. This is a great feature, but it was a little buggy on my system. That being said, I’d prefer they keep this feature in on future iterations of the OTUS as it really does help you keep your eyes and hands busy with mixing instead of tweaking stuff on your laptop.

Sound

The onboard soundcard is nice and sounds good. 44.1/16bit or 48/24bit are your options, and I had no complaints when it came to the sound. Considering I’m DJing 320kbps mp3s, there’s not a whole lot you can bitch about when it comes to sound quality.

The fact that you can pair up the OTUS with your favorite DJ/club mixer means you can have some pretty nice sounding mixes if you have some decent gear.

Conclusion

Minor gripes aside, I really had a lot of fun with this unit. It’s build quality is very nice, it was a cinch to setup, and it ran extremely well. It comes with templates for Deckadance as well as Native Instrument’s Traktor and VirtualDJ, so you should be set no matter what you’re using. The fact that the OTUS is also a MIDI controller means you can use it for more than just DJing, too.

I’m very excited to see the OTUS Raw when it comes out and I’m really sad I have to send this thing back.

Pros: Great build quality; sounds great; is an all-inclusive deal thanks to its onboard soundcard; easily fits on top of standard turntables
Cons: Pitch control is touch sensative; onboard mousepad is a little wonky; very little text on the OTUS to tell you what most of the controls do
Recommended for: Anyone who’s looking for an all-in-one DJ solution

The Eks OTUS is available now for $799 from most major retailers.