STANTON DS4

For younger people, the brand may not mean much, but just over 20 years ago Stanton was a benchmark brand and a coveted object of desire. Even back then, it had a very close fight for first place in DJ needles, Trackmaster and Groovemaster graced the decks of clubs and festivals all over the world.

Then came the hardware, mostly mid-range mixers, but which had a very good quality-price ratio, and which shared the market with the now defunct Vestax. Then came the decks with the ST150/ STR150 that even today can eclipse and even embarrass the biggest and best current Super OEMs, and finally, the FINAL Scratch, with which Stanton took the decisive step by building specific hardware and software that involved dual booting with Linux. Later, in association with NI, they adapted Traktor and incorporated DVS technology, we cannot forget that without Stanton the world of DVS might not have existed, and we say perhaps because Serato was making its way in parallel.

During the last 5 to 10 years Stanton has lost part of its strength, it has been bought and sold, and it has bet on a series of very innovative products but clearly too far ahead of their time.