Numark NS6 II, the field manual

The five things on the Numark NS6 II that change what happens next, if you are reading this in the booth. All five are explained in full further down this page.

Nothing in the NS6 II guide tells an owner that a firmware exists. The word firmware does not appear anywhere in this guide, in any of its five languages. There is no update procedure, no version number, no serial number range and no hardware revision, so nothing in the document can be dated to a release and nothing in it tells an owner that a firmware exists. The only version the document carries is its own, Manual Version 1.1. What it gives instead is a Windows driver download.

Numark lead the setup with an instruction to install the drivers before the software, and then scope the drivers to Windows users, downloaded from numark.com/NS6II. No macOS driver is mentioned and whether the unit is class compliant on macOS is not stated. System requirements are not in the guide either: the reader is sent to numark.com.

Numark publish a support knowledge base with per-model articles, and on several points it answers what the manual does not. Coverage is uneven: the NS7 II, the NS7 III, the SCRATCH and the Mixstream family have articles, and no model-specific article could be found for the MixTrack Platinum FX, the MixTrack Pro FX or the NS6 II, checked 2026-09-06.

Short answer. Firmware for the NS6 II does exist, and the only place that says so is Numark's own product page rather than anything in the box. They publish an NS6II Firmware Updater in two builds, Windows and Mac, both at version 1.0.3, alongside a Windows driver at 1.0.4. The release note attached to that firmware is one line long and it names the thing this controller is bought for: it improves platter touch response. So a unit that has never been updated has the older touch behaviour on its jog wheels, the owner has no way of learning that from the guide, and there are no other published entries to place 1.0.3 in a history. Read the version before you judge the platters on a second-hand or venue unit, and note that the updater is a separate download from the driver, so having installed one is not having installed the other.

Related: The guide never mentions firmware Touch mode, and what it changes

The NS6 II guide carries five languages in one PDF, and the differences between them land on things a DJ acts on. Where this site records a difference between the English and the Spanish of a Numark manual, it is recording a documentation slip and nothing more. One PDF carrying five languages is translated and laid out by different people under different deadlines, and the differences below are different in every document, which is what ordinary editing slips look like. None of it suggests a manufacturer trying to mislead anyone, and this site does not read it that way.

That sentence is in the English note under the Input Selector and it is not in the Spanish one. The Spanish note keeps the first half, about setting the rear panel Line and Phono switches correctly, and stops there. A DJ reading only the Spanish edition is never told that a channel stops sending MIDI on Line, which makes this the most valuable line in the English guide and an outright gap in the Spanish one.

Where the editions disagree, the English is the one this site follows.

Every figure published for the NS6 II sits in one appendix, and that appendix is in one language. The specification table is published in English only. There is no Spanish, French, Italian or German appendix, so a reader working from any of those four editions gets no frequency response, no signal to noise, no THD and no level figure for any connector on the unit.

So the English document is the one to keep on the drive if levels, noise or connector ratings are ever going to matter to you.

Several other NS6 II entries lose or change something between one language and the next, and each of them affects what a reader would do at the unit.

All three Spanish EQ entries drop the EQ kill sentence. In the Spanish edition the touch capacitive kill is described nowhere except obliquely in the Touch Mode entry itself, so a Spanish reader who loses a band by touching a knob has no explanation in the manual. The guide also never says how many Touch Modes there are or how to switch the whole thing off in any language: it says only to toggle through them and then describes two presses.

Three more Spanish entries lose something the English carries. The Area button entry prints its Shift function twice and never says that the button toggles through the Files, Browse, Prepare and History panels, which is the only way to reach them from the hardware. The Beat Knob entry loses the push to reset the Time Division to 1. And the LED Meters entry describes them as showing the program output on that channel, where the English says the channel level, which matters when gain staging.

The Spanish, French, Italian and German editions of the Keylock entry send the reader to the Serato DJ Intro manual, a different and lower tier product, while the English sends them to the Serato DJ manual and the rest of every edition tells them to install Serato DJ. Four of the five languages point at the wrong manual for that one lookup.

Numark recommend the centre position of the contour knob as a typical setting for club performances, turning left for a smooth fade and right for a sharp cut. That is the only setting advice in the whole document, and the Spanish edition drops the sentence carrying it and calls the knob a switch.

On the NS6 II the published record stops well short of the panel. The guide contains no troubleshooting section. There is no safety or warranty text either: it is deferred to a separate Safety and Warranty manual.

None of the seven user guides states what the product is. There is no sentence in any of them calling the unit a controller, a mixer or a standalone system. The SCRATCH guide never uses the word mixer at all, and the NS6 II guide has no introduction section whatsoever.

None of the seven guides contains safety or warranty text. All seven defer it to a separate Safety and Warranty manual, so the document a DJ keeps is not the one carrying the warnings.

The guide names the software Serato DJ, and never writes Serato DJ Pro or Serato DJ Lite in the English body. A Software Download Card is listed in the box, and the guide never explains what the card does, never mentions a serial number, licence, activation or registration, and sends the reader to serato.com for the installer instead. Whether the licence is included, and what if anything has to be bought, is not stated. Two paid Serato expansions are named in passing, Pitch N Time and the Flip Expansion Pack, both as things you may have purchased.

Sort that out on the NS6 II before the gig rather than on the day, because the guide gives you no way to tell in advance what the download card is worth.

Serato’s quick start guide for this model states it is a Serato DJ Pro hardware unlocked device, meaning it unlocks Serato DJ Pro when connected. That answers what the Software Download Card in the box is for and whether anything has to be bought.

Serato also close the platform gap the guide leaves. They state the NS6II is a class compliant device for macOS and requires manufacturer specific drivers for Windows, available from Numark. The guide scopes its driver instruction to Windows users and never says what macOS needs, which is the same answer arrived at from the other direction.

On DVS the same Serato guide says two things that do not sit easily together. It calls the NS6II a Serato DVS hardware unlocked device, meaning DVS functionality unlocks when it is connected, and it also states that the device requires a Serato DJ Expansions or Serato DJ Suite licence to use connected turntables, media players or CD players. This site records both rather than choosing, because a DJ planning a timecode rig needs to know the question is open before the gig rather than at it.

The guide never mentions DVS. The words DVS, Digital Vinyl System, control record, control vinyl, NoiseMap, ABS, REL and INT appear nowhere in it, in any of the five languages. The rear panel carries phono inputs, a grounding terminal and Line and Phono switches, so the unit looks timecode ready, and Numark describe those inputs only as audio sources selected by the channel Input Selector. Whatever the software supports, this document makes no timecode claim, so it is not the paper to promise a client DVS on.

That is a statement about the document and not about the NS6 II hardware. If timecode is part of what you are being booked for, get the answer from the software vendor and from Numark support rather than from this guide.

The NS6 II guide does not answer this, and this site will not answer it by inference either. Whether the unit passes audio with no computer connected is NOT STATED. The channel Input Selectors have a Line position, the rear panel takes line and phono sources, the microphones are routed straight to the Program and Cue mixes, and the power up order lists the unit between input sources and output devices with no mention of a computer. None of that is a statement, and no sentence anywhere in the guide says the unit does or does not work without one.

Do not resolve it from the shape of the rear panel. It needs a statement from Numark, and until there is one the safe plan is to bring the computer.

Check the Input Selector before you suspect the hardware. Numark state that a channel’s controls will only send MIDI information when its Input Selector is set to PC, so a channel sitting on Line has a gain, EQ, filter, fader and PFL that send nothing to Serato at all. It is the ordinary explanation for a channel strip that appears to have died, and it comes back the moment the selector goes back to PC.

Each channel Input Selector has two positions and no off: PC for the software layer, Line for a device on that channel’s Line and Phono inputs. Numark add that the rear panel Line and Phono switches have to be set to match. Which computer a PC channel listens to is set with Shift plus the Browse Focus button.

There is no off position on the NS6 II selector, so a channel is always listening to one source or the other. What changes is whether the strip is controlling the software or passing an external device.

Deck A controls Layer 1 or Layer 3 and Deck B controls Layer 2 or Layer 4, and Numark state it as a fixed pairing. Deck A never reaches Layers 2 or 4 and Deck B never reaches Layers 1 or 3, so a track loaded to the wrong layer has to be reloaded rather than picked up on the other platter. Plan a four deck layout around that before the set.

A four deck layout on the NS6 II is therefore something you set up before you need it rather than something you improvise around, because the layer a track is loaded to decides which platter can touch it.

Eight pads per deck and five pad mode buttons, each toggling two modes: Cues gives Hot Cue and Hot Cue Auto Loop, Auto and Roll gives Auto Loop and Loop Roll, Loop gives two banks of saved loops and manual loop controls, Sampler gives Sample Player and Sample Velocity Trigger, and Slicer gives Slicer and Slicer Loop. Numark state that when a mode button is unlit the first press always selects the first of its two modes.

Sample Player Mode uses six of the eight pads, because pads 7 and 8 are Play Mode and Player Repeat. Flip Mode is reached with Shift plus Cues, needs the paid Serato Flip expansion, and holds a Flip on six pads because pad 4 is Loop Snap and pad 8 is Assign Flip. Numark state that Slicer, Slicer Loop and Loop Snap need a track with a Beat Grid set, so an unanalysed track loaded mid set will not respond.

Numark say the pads are velocity sensitive in certain modes only and then name exactly one such mode, Sample Velocity Trigger. Which other modes respond to how hard a pad is hit is not stated.

The practical rule on the NS6 II is to analyse the crate before the gig. A track dropped in unanalysed will still play, and the modes that depend on a Beat Grid will simply not answer.

Touching an EQ knob can mute that band. Numark state that when Touch Mode is activated, touching the Channel High, Mid or Low knob mutes that channel’s frequencies as an EQ kill, and that these functions are momentary and not latching. Resting a finger on the bass knob with Touch Mode on drops the bass until you let go.

On the NS6 II that turns a resting hand into an effect. If a band keeps dropping out for no reason you can see on screen, look at where your fingers are before you look at anything else.

The Filter Mode button cycles the channel filter knobs through Off, Filter Roll and Filter FX. In Filter Roll Mode Numark state that the knob applies a low pass anticlockwise and a high pass clockwise AND applies a loop roll that shortens as the knob moves away from centre, so a habitual filter sweep also rolls the beat. The only indication is the button: solid red for Filter Roll, flashing red for Filter FX.

So a filter sweep on the NS6 II does not always do only what a filter sweep does. Check the colour of the Filter Mode button before you reach for the knob in front of an audience.

The button marked Bleep plays the track backwards rather than muting it, and Numark state that pressing it again resumes as if the track had been playing forward the whole time. The playhead therefore jumps forward when you release it, so a long censor eats a piece of the tune. Test the length of it before you need it.

Treat it on the NS6 II as a censor with a cost attached: the longer you hold it, the more of the tune is gone when you let go.

Two computers running Serato DJ can be connected at once, one to each USB port, for a changeover. Numark state that when the second computer connects the software shows all decks offline while the first computer still controls both sides, and that handover then happens per SIDE: one DJ keeps Deck A with the mixer controls for channels 1 and 3, the other gets Deck B with channels 2 and 4. A single channel cannot be handed over, and Numark warn to stop audio on the incoming deck before taking it, because it will go offline.

The rear panel tells you to set a channel’s USB selector to port 1 or 2. Nothing in the Features section is called a USB selector: the function is Shift plus the Browse Focus button on the top panel. Worth knowing at a changeover, when the search for a switch that is not there costs minutes.

Numark state that when the unit is reconnected to the computer it recalls the previous positions of the software, naming pitch and effects parameters, and tell the reader to be mindful of that before playing a track. The Takeover LEDs by the pitch fader exist for the same reason: move the fader the way the arrow points until the light goes out and it has control again.

Agree the changeover on the NS6 II in advance, because it happens a whole side at a time and both DJs need to know which side is moving.

The crossfader takes a per channel Crossfader Assign switch with three positions, A, B or centre Off, and Numark state that the centre position bypasses the crossfader and sends that channel straight to the Program Mix. The curve is set by a Crossfader Contour knob, and that knob is on the FRONT panel rather than the top surface, so it cannot be reached with the unit racked flush or with the front of a coffin case closed. Set it before installing.

Numark state that the crossfader is user replaceable if it wears out, and the entire published procedure is to remove the facepanel and then the screws holding it in position. Which facepanel, how many screws, what tool, what part to order, whether to unplug the unit first and what it does to the warranty are all unstated. So are the fader type, brand, cut-in, cut lag, tension and any calibration routine: the only calibration in the document is of the platters’ touch circuitry, and the specification table has no crossfader entry of any kind.

If the NS6 II is going into a coffin case or a flush rack, set the contour before it goes in, because the front panel is where that knob lives.

The appendix gives frequency response, signal to noise, THD plus N and maximum level for the XLR master, the RCA master, the RCA booth and the headphones, plus level figures for the line, phono and microphone inputs, all measured at 20 kHz bandwidth. The XLR master is rated plus 24 dBu and the RCA master and booth plus 16 dBV, two different units for the same comparison. The phono block has no frequency response and no THD row, and the microphone block has one row.

The table gives no input impedance, no output impedance, no phono cartridge loading, no sample rate, no bit depth and no USB specification. The XLR master is called low impedance in the prose with no ohm value anywhere.

The guide gives no dimensions, no weight and no power consumption. The only power figure in the document is the adapter rating in the rear panel prose, 12 V DC, 2 A, centre positive. Anyone sizing a flight case or filling in a rider gets nothing from this document.

Measure the NS6 II yourself before you order a case, and weigh it before you promise anyone you can carry it up a flight of stairs.

Line and Phono RCA inputs with a Line and Phono switch and a grounding terminal per pair, and microphone inputs on 6.35 mm jacks, given in the specification table as balanced TRS. There is no XLR microphone input, no phantom power statement, and no stated count for either the input pairs or the microphone inputs: the prose is plural and the diagram shows each callout twice. Line inputs take up to plus 8 dBV, phono up to minus 22 dBV at 1 kHz, microphones up to minus 18 dBu.

A balanced XLR master, an unbalanced RCA master, an unbalanced RCA booth, and headphones on 6.35 mm and 3.5 mm on the front panel. There is no balanced booth output. Whether the booth carries the Program Mix or an independent mix is not stated: the Booth Volume control is described only as adjusting the Booth Output mix.

Numark state that the microphone signals are routed directly to the Program Mix and Cue Mix. The microphones therefore have no channel fader, no crossfader assign, no filter and no way out of the headphone cue, and their only controls, Mic Level, Mic High and Mic Low, are under the front lip.

On the NS6 II that means a microphone cannot be faded, filtered or taken out of the headphone cue from the top panel, and the three controls that do reach it are under the front lip.

Connect your input devices to the NS6 II, then power the unit on, then power on the amplifiers. Connect your input devices, then power the unit on, then power on the amplifiers. Numark print that order twice in the English edition, in the setup section as one, two, three (input sources, then NS6II, then output devices) and again in the rear panel Power Switch entry. Shutting down runs the other way: amplifiers off before the unit.

The Spanish rear panel entry says to power the unit on after DISCONNECTING all the input devices, where the English says after they have been connected. The Spanish setup section a dozen pages earlier gives the correct order, so the two Spanish passages do not match each other. This site follows the English and the Spanish setup section: connect first, then power on. It is a documentation slip, and worth knowing about before anyone sets the unit up from the Spanish page.

Go to Numark for the files themselves. We link their pages instead of hosting a copy, because a manual copied here is a snapshot of release day and theirs is the one that stays current.

A four channel Serato DJ controller with two hardware decks, four software layers, two USB ports and a built in mixer. The guide itself never says so: it has no introduction section at all, no product class sentence, and it never states the channel count in prose. The nearest thing to a count is a bracket inside the FX Assign entry, where Numark write that each effect can be applied to any or all of the four channels.

The document spells the model NS6II throughout, as one word with no space, in every language. The forms NS6 II and NS6-II appear nowhere in it, and Numark give the support address as numark.com/NS6II.

The unit, a USB cable, a power adapter, a software download card, a Quickstart Guide and a separate Safety and Warranty manual. The full user guide is not in the box, and Numark note that anything not on that list is sold separately.