not tried it but maybe this is why the S2 has been reduced?

http://www.djkit.com/native-instruments/traktor-s2-kontrol.html?gclid=CN...

Personally, I'd be tempted to take advantage of the (temporary?) price cut of the S2 - seems a bit of a bargain compared with what I've just paid for the S4. That said, you don't get the additional inputs on the S2...which is what attracted me to the S4...so may depend on how important these are to you...

Often a sizeable NI discount is a sign that a new product announcement is fairly imminent but I guess it could just be in response to competitive pricing from other manufacturers. There was a Traktor teaser vid recently I think, maybe it's related to that.

EDIT: 2nd item down

http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/dj/traktor/?content=1863

Yeah...not sure quite what to make of that...looks very Ableton-eque.

I'm guessing there will still be a long-term market for the "traditional" controller, for people who just want the functionality of a decks+mixer+FX setup (with option to play about with loops/samples if required). Me, in other words...

Going back to the original question...just looking at the picture of the Reloop unit, I'd say that the S2 seems to have a much more logical layout...for me the Reloop has too many identical buttons, seemingly distributed at random. But that's just my impression from the photos.

Thanks for the heads up on the offer... (this has somewhat thrown a spanner in the works for my decision making process ).
The Reloop was a clear winner in terms of features (the main important one being that it was versatile with allowing external outputs) and of course (at the time) its attractive cost.

I rarely (unfortunately) buy vinyl but it would always be nice to have the option to add this my sets. Whats the solution? - Buy the (more likely better built) S2 and transfer my vinyl to digital format?

Is their some sort of advice here/anywhere on how transferring to vinyl to digital format can be done in the best/most respectful way?

There's a veritable gold mine of info buried here on vinyl ripping. Search using "ripping", "digitize", "phono stage", that should get you started. Make sure you select posts rather than threads as the search term, although threads will still bear results. Happy reading

this is a good one on encoding..

http://www.djhistory.com/forum/traktor-pro-2-the-pitfalls