Our user asked for a ‘little brother of Dark Fire’ with less controls but same powerful MIDI mapping and firmware capabilities: Half size – Half price – Full features, that’s the whole idea behind.  

So Dark Flame will be our next controller – fitting into the palm of your hand.

We wished no compromise in quality, so we decided to use the same materials and components as on Dark Fire (CNC made chassis, metal encoder knob etc.). We discussed user workflows to avoid removing mandatory controls: Dark Flame supports 4 RGB pads (instead of 10 as on Dark Fire) and 1 encoder (instead 2). We even added controls (2 knobs L/R of the centered encoder instead of 1 central knob), to allow for support of workflows (e.g. song library browsing) more easily. Most importantly: we kept ALL powerful MIDI and customizing features of Dark Fire, so everything you know from Dark Fire works in Dark Flame 1:1 the same.

The earlier multilayer and RGB concept has paid off. We were surprised ourselves how powerful ‘only’ 4 RGB pads can be mapped. Our Traktor mapping support all our needs, triggering 8 hotcues, browsing thru song library, nudging, stem support etc., all feels intuitive. Even the NI typical 2 encoder concept (Beatjump & Looping) works well using the SHIFT layer. In summary: We like it. We do not feel a big difference to the double sized Dark Fire. And we hope that the final price will allow even more user to own and enjoy our handmade Dark Controller.

Dark Flame has exactly the half size (length) of Dark Fire. We hope our material costs will be about 50% too, so we plan also to halve the target retail price to €198. Let’s cross the finger where we end.

We plan to be ready for building (GA/General Availability) for any interested folks eof March 2021. The prototype works great already, we tested first mappings in Traktor and it works perfect. So we will start the beta testing phase now.

Let us know what you think about our planned Dark Flame.

Stay tuned !