Traktor Pro 4 - Kontrol S3 Loop/FX Pad Bank

A small mod for the Native Instruments Kontrol S3 on Traktor Pro 4.

What it does

1. Turns the unused SAMPLES button into a second pad bank. On a 4 (track-)deck setup, SAMPLES normally does nothing — it only lights up if the other physical deck happens to be loaded with a Remix Set. This mod makes it always switch a deck's 8 pads into a Loop/Key pad bank instead.
2. Jogwheel ring "spinning beat counter." The LED ring around each jogwheel chases around in time with the beat (or shows a loop indicator while a loop is active), plus a spin animation while a track is loading.
3. Custom deck colors. Pick your own color for each of the 4 decks (used for the jogwheel rings, pad LEDs, etc.) instead of Traktor's stock colors.

Quick start

1. Download/clone this whole folder.
2. Right-click install.ps1 → Run with PowerShell.
   • It will ask for admin rights (a Windows popup) — say yes. This is needed because the files it changes live under Program Files.
   • A console window opens. It'll show you a recommended set of deck colors and ask if you want to use them — press Enter (or y) to accept, or n to pick your own per deck from a preview list.
3. Fully quit Traktor Pro 4 (check it isn't still running in the background/system tray) and relaunch it.

That's it. Press SAMPLES on the S3 to switch a deck into the new pad bank, HOTCUES to switch back.

If you ever want to undo everything: right-click uninstall.ps1 → Run with PowerShell.

The pad bank

Pad	Function
1	Loop In (freeform — any length, not locked to the beat grid)
2	Loop Out (freeform)
Shift + 1 or 2	Exit / toggle the active loop off
3	(unassigned, TBD)
4	(unassigned, TBD)
5	Key transpose down 1 semitone
6	Key transpose up 1 semitone
7	Key reset (back to the track's original key)
8	(unassigned, TBD)

Requirements

• Traktor Pro 4 (tested against the version installed at the time this was written; see "If the patch doesn't apply" below for other versions)
• A Kontrol S3
• Windows, with the ability to run PowerShell as Administrator

Credit / not all original work

This mod is built on top of files that already existed on my own Traktor install — I'd modified Traktor's stock S3 mapping myself a while back (deck colors, and the jogwheel-ring spin/beat-counter behavior), and at this point I honestly don't remember where the jogwheel-ring QML originally came from — likely adapted from a mapping I found online somewhere (possibly a forum post or another user's shared mod) rather than something I wrote from scratch. If you recognize this code and know the original source, please open an issue so I can credit it properly.

What I can say for sure is original to this repo:

• Repurposing SAMPLES into a pad bank (S3Side.qml patch)
• The Loop In/Out + key-transpose pad bank itself (S3LoopFX.qml)
• The interactive/scriptable installer and deck-color picker

The jogwheel-ring spin/beat-counter and load animation (in S3Deck.qml) predate this repo and aren't guaranteed to be my own original work.

More details

Command-line options

• If Traktor is installed somewhere other than the default C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\Traktor Pro 4, run from a PowerShell prompt so you can pass the path:

  .\install.ps1 -InstallPath "D:\Native Instruments\Traktor Pro 4"

• To skip the interactive color prompt entirely, pass your colors up front (valid names: White, Black, Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, LightOrange, Purple, Mint, Cyan, Plum, Fuchsia):

  .\install.ps1 -DeckColors "Mint,Cyan,Plum,Fuchsia"

• -Force restores S3Side.qml / S3Deck.qml / DeckHelpers.js from their .orig backups first (if one exists), then patches fresh — so it doesn't matter whether the file on disk is untouched, already patched, or hand-edited. It also re-prompts for deck colors instead of keeping your previous choice. Use this after editing anything under payload\, or to repair a file you broke by hand:

  .\install.ps1 -Force -InstallPath "D:\Native Instruments\Traktor Pro 4" -DeckColors "Mint,Cyan,Plum,Fuchsia"

It's safe to re-run plainly (no flags) — it detects whether each patch is already applied and skips it instead of double-patching, and remembers you've already picked deck colors so it won't re-prompt.

What files it touches

Resources64\qml\CSI\S3\S3Side.qml          (patched, original saved as S3Side.qml.orig)
Resources64\qml\CSI\S3\S3Deck.qml          (replaced, original saved as S3Deck.qml.orig)
Resources64\qml\CSI\S3\S3LoopFX.qml        (new file)
Resources64\qml\CSI\Common\DeckHelpers.js  (replaced, original saved as DeckHelpers.js.orig)

Heads up: DeckHelpers.js lives under Resources64\qml\CSI\Common\, a shared folder used by every NI controller's mapping, not just the S3. If you also use another Native Instruments controller (S4 MK3, S8, etc.) on the same Traktor install, its deck colors will change too, since they likely call the same colorForDeck() function.

Why pads 3/4/8 are still open

An earlier version gave pads 3/4 an effect-select role (cycle through the FX unit's effect list) and pads 5-8 direct control of that effect's dry/wet and 3 parameters. Effect select worked correctly, but turned out not to be practically useful without also being able to shape the effect by hand — and every attempt at that hit a real wall: dry_wet/knob1-3 on the FX unit's native adapter only respond to a genuine declarative Wire from real absolute-position hardware (like the dedicated FX knobs on NI's own S4 MK3), not to script-driven reads/writes — confirmed across several independent attempts (an accumulating encoder script, and a button-driven nudge both silently did nothing; pointing RelativePropertyAdapter's path directly at the pin was worse, it broke the whole S3 mapping outright, since that adapter validates its path against real app.traktor.* engine properties and the pin isn't one). The S3 has no free absolute-position control to dedicate to it, so that whole feature was pulled in favor of key transpose. Pads 3, 4, and 8 are free for whatever's next.

Why not continuous loop-edge nudging?

The original ask this was built from also wanted: hold Loop In/Out and turn the jogwheel to continuously shrink/grow the loop, instead of only fixed beat-based sizes. That was checked against Traktor's own controller-scripting API (the .qml files under Resources64\qml\CSI\) across every controller NI ships mappings for, including their own flagship S8 and S4 MK3. None of them expose a continuous/freeform loop-edge property — only fixed power-of-2 autoloop sizes, loop.move, and a freeform Loop-In/Loop-Out button pair. So this mod gives you the freeform Loop In/Out buttons (arbitrary length, not locked to the beat grid), which is the closest real equivalent — but not a jogwheel-driven nudge, because Traktor doesn't expose that hook to any controller.

If the patch doesn't apply (Traktor update changed the stock files)

The installer matches the exact stock text of the blocks it changes. If NI ships an update that rewords those files, it will print a warning and leave that file untouched rather than guessing. To patch by hand:

S3Side.qml — find the two Wire { ... from: "%surface%.samples"; ... } blocks (they set pads_mode to PadsMode.stem / PadsMode.remix) and replace both with a single:

Wire
{
    enabled: true;
    from: "%surface%.samples";
    to: SetPropertyAdapter  { path: propertiesPath + ".pads_mode"; value: PadsMode.loop; color: Helpers.colorForDeck(focusedDeckIdx) }
}

S3Deck.qml — replace the whole file with payload\S3Deck.qml, then inside its Module { ... } block, right after the S3Samples { ... } submodule, add:

S3LoopFX
{
    id: loopfx
    name: "loopfx"
    surface: module.surface
    deckIdx: module.deckIdx
    active: padsMode == PadsMode.loop && module.enablePads
    shift: module.shift
}

Then copy payload\S3LoopFX.qml into Resources64\qml\CSI\S3\S3LoopFX.qml.

DeckHelpers.js — copy payload\DeckHelpers.js over Resources64\qml\CSI\Common\DeckHelpers.js, editing the four return Color.XXX; lines in colorForDeck() to whatever colors you want per deck first.

Notes

• This edits files inside your Traktor installation directly (there's no supported plugin system for this — Traktor's S-series controller integration is compiled into the app's QML resources). A Traktor update may overwrite these files and require reinstalling this mod.
• S3Deck.qml and DeckHelpers.js are replaced wholesale rather than patched as fragments (both are short/self-contained enough that a full replace is simpler and more reliable). If you've made your own other edits to either file beyond deck colors and the jogwheel-ring behavior described here, merge them into payload\S3Deck.qml / payload\DeckHelpers.js before installing, or they'll be overwritten.
• S3Side.qml is patched as a small fragment and won't touch anything else in that file.