It's official. It required me to part with some of that pretty paper (which, in turn, resulted in this grown man crying), but I've finally pulled the trigger and ordered myself a Prime 4.

I've been using the Traktor S4 MKII since it's release, and I have a MKI as backup. For the most part, it's been solid - there have been a couple of let downs over the years, but that will be true of any system. My frustration of these let downs is that I can never suss out why Traktor isn't playing ball, and I can never suss out why it starts working again perfectly fine at the next gig like nothing happened. It's like it decides "I can't be arsed today!"

With the S4 having been used so much over the last 8 years, it's obviously starting to show signs of wear. It is still a perfectly functional controller, but I find that I have to press a button a second time because I didn't quite hit it right the first time - not saying that these buttons have to be pressed a certain way...just not as responsive as it used to be.

So the obvious move is to upgrade to the Traktor S4 MKIII and, in turn, Traktor 3 software. And yet, I couldn't do it.

When the Prime 4 and the S4 MKIII released, I decided that instead of jumping on the bandwagon again, I'm just going to sit back and watch what happens. I've spent a long time watching both, and had a play on the S4 and the same routine went though my head over and over again:

Prime can do this, but I know Traktor.

I tend to be very loyal to brands, but I honestly did not care about the Traktor S4. I was chatting to a mate of mine who upgraded to the S4, and the two features that left his mouth first to try and convince me to stick with Traktor was the motorised jogwheel and haptic feedback - two features that I honestly could not give less of a turd about. As he was championing his new controller, I was playing on it thinking 'meh'.

But I know Traktor.

The big thing that really irked me though was that I would have to lose one of the four channels to the mic. I can switch back between playout and mic at the touch of a button (well, two buttons), but I know that I will forget to do that and I'll start trying to talk while the channel is set to playout mode. Knowing me, I'll probably have a bloody track playing on that channel when I need to speak!

But I know Traktor.

Going over the the Prime 4 will mean needing to learn a whole new ecosystem. It seems that I can transfer all of my hotcues, loops and such from Traktor to Prime, so that will certainly ease the transition. The Prime 4 is considerably bigger, heavier and a damn sight more expensive. It looks the knees of the bee, it has features on it that really piques my interest, will shave about a minute from my setup and takedown time and I believe will be future proof for a long time to come (especially if Denon keep supporting with the firmware updates).

But I know Traktor.

The Prime 4 is going to take up the majority of space on my Liteconsole (to the point where the top shelf will need to be sacrificed), will require me to rethink how I load the van and Rock 'n' Roller, is twice the price of the Traktor and there's a chance that I may have to get a little bit creative with where the laptop I use for DMXing goes.

Above everything else though, there is one thing that stayed at the front of my mind: the Prime 4 looks fun. Traktor is very good, but lacks a soul. Maybe it's because the Denon is so new to me that I think that way (familiarity breeds contempt, and all that), but I can't deny that I feel that way.

So tomorrow, the Prime 4 should be in my hands. I've already downloaded Engine Prime to get my music analysed and I'm hoping tomorrow will just be a case of transferring from A-to-B. Then, it's going to be me teaching myself how to make the most of the Prime 4 ecosystem.

Wish me luck!