Spinning on the 1s and 0s: Traktor, Ableton, Serrato, Rekordbox - the digital DJing thread

Ableton's requirement to warp tracks before using them is what turned me off too. I use Traktor, and have done for about 7 years now. It's really good software. They do make much smaller controllers you can pair together and pack in a backpack. I haven't used the competition but I can say I love traktor and was frustrated with the time required to prep tracks in Ableton. You can also grid tracks in Traktor but it's not required.

Ableton is the most amazing piece of software you can use for dj'ing (even though it is not really designed for this and could definitely do with more features dedicated to this). most people i've seen use it for dj'ing seem to use it in a deathly boring way but if you delve into it you are only limited by your imagination / creativity. you can mix anything with anything and edit tracks live on the fly as well as do myriad other crazy stuff. BUT, as previously mentioned it involves a LOT of prep (something i like doing so not an issue for me). i use it in conjunction with vinyl so not sure about the experience of only using ableton in a dj setting but it is also incredible for creating mixes. imo 100% worth the prep time and endless fun (i've been using it for 15 years and still get a massive kick out of it), but really depends on how much time you want / are prepared to dedicate to it.

How do you beatmatch from vinyl to Ableton? By ear or are you sending some midi signal from your Turntables?

by ear. i mix ableton in the same way i'd mix a record in. when the tempo is highlighted, the cursor up and down keys will lower or raise the tempo so i use those exactly the same way i'd use a pitch control. it's a bit fiddly until you get used to it but once you are it is just like mixing a turntable and once the track is in time you can micro speed up or slow down as required simply by increasing or decreasing the tempo for a fraction of a second.

Thanks everyone. I noticed that some Pioneer controllers come with Serato and others come with Rekordbox. A lot of friends seem to use Serato, so I'm starting to consider this, but I was led to believe it's more geared towards DJs who are used to mixing vinyl and want to DJ mp3s. I'm probably wrong about that. Not really that interested in using timecoded vinyl, but might be an option in the future.

I want to mix everything from disco to afrobeats and outernational rhythms, also the usual house and techno. I like the idea of constructing and layering rhythms and sounds on the fly. Ableton sounds good in this respect, but again it's quite a different beast and I'd rather be able to shove a USB in my pocket and set up on anyone's equipment if I get asked at last minute. I used to have to prep a lot and I'm therefore used to doing it, but I'd rather get away from that, tempting as Ableton is.

I think all 4 programs work for mixing whatever you want you just have to work on your beatmath and transitions.

And lots of people (most?) use Serato without the vinyl controller these days.

yes - i didn't realise you could do that. One option I'm considering is Serato using Pioneer controller. Now it's a matter of choosing the right controller of course - they range quite widely in price. I don't mind splashing out a little and making sure I have the right thing, but also don't want to be overrun by features I won't use, or a massive controller that isn't practical or portable.

Like I said I really like the DDJ-SB2 in terms of features for the price, but it's on the big side. It's kinda nice that it doesn't look too chintzy/toy-like, but it's too long for any bag I have that closes, so I've had to haul it around sticking out of a big ol' tote bag.

I use the Traktor Kontrol S4. It works out of the box and is a fantastic all-in-one mixer. My friend uses the separate components from NI, but he loves those too.

Hey - so I go the Pioneer DDJ-SR with Serato and I'm really happy with it. Still working my way around it and figuring out how it works. I've managed to segue a few tracks together, although I'm not really sure what to do if it analyses a track at the wrong speed and how you're meant to correct it, especially if it's wildly wrong and the pitch adjuster doesn't go that far. Guess I need to watch some more tutorials

I've also been organising my music into 'crates' and it's pretty arduous. I've noticed that on rebooting, Serato sometimes decides to rearrange the order of my crates which is weird and frustrating. I'm sure it shouldn't be doing that.

I put the bpm in all my file names, because I know there are some tracks it can't analyze. That way I can at least remember the starting tempo and adjust it manually.

but how do you adjust it manually if the pitch slider only goes up (or down) to a certain level? i realise that's a noob question. I can hit the sync button and do that, but I feel a bit like that's not the right way.

I'm confused, because the pitch slider should be adjusting it based on the actual tempo of the song, not the calculated one? You'll have to turn sync off so it doesn't start by jumping the incorrectly-analyzed track to some nonsensical tempo.

not sure about serato but in traktor preferences you can adjust the range of the pitch adjuster

for example i can set my pitch adjusters to +/- 8% as normal or i can adjust them to +/- 100% if i want

Oh huh apparently you can do that on the Pioneer controllers by holding shift and the 'Tempo Range' button under the sliders. Never messed with that but I'm certainly going to now.

ah thanks I will try that!

So what's the practical purpose of those laptop stands...is it just to make it eye-level, or to keep drinks from getting spilled on your computer? Because I just, like, put mine on the table and it works fine.

both, and sometimes because there isn't room in the booth for a laptop otherwise. i find them annoying and also like to have it on the table.

controversial!!

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3087

I've been really enjoying my Pioneer DDJ and using Serato. Gonna be playing a relatively high-performance (for me) show on NYE.

Got another couple of questions maybe Ilxors can answer:

1. What's the skinny on using other people's equipment? So I've got my track info, hot cues and other stuff set up at home. If I don't want to bring all my equipment to the club with me, is there an easy way to get this info and the tracks onto a stick? Someone mentioned Rekordbox but I didn't know where to start. It looks like Serato. Do I need to start over again? I hope not.

2. My computer desk is quite low down and I like standing up when I DJ. This is starting to give me a few back issues. Is there a reasonably cheap and efficient solution like an adjustable desk riser for DJs out there ?

https://m.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/spr/29084966/ ?

2. My computer desk is quite low down and I like standing up when I DJ. This is starting to give me a few back issues

dig a hole in your floor and stand in that

might not work in an upstairs flat though

Just put them on cases/boxes imo.

I think if you're using Serato on someone else's computer, you can copy your stuff to usb and preserve hot cues etc (w/out Rekordbox).

I recently djed somewhere where I could have used nice CDJs, but chickened out and stuck with my controller that I'm super comfortable with. I think I'm going to have to go to the dj store and figure out an arrangement to practice on their CDJs though, it would be really nice to have that option.

So I played out on someone's lovely £1500 all-in-one system. Great club, great soundsystem.

To my horror when I transferred a crate over to USB and plugged it in, none of the track information appeared and I ended up having to mix completely blind (couldn't even organise my tracks in order of BPM, they came up alphabetically).

Turned out okay in the end, but having painstakingly analysed all my tracks, set cue point information and gotten used to mixing in key, it kind of messed my flow up a bit. I was told that you have to use Rekordbox to get all this information on another system. Seems like a longwinded way of going about things and I'm not sure exactly where to start. I downloaded the free Rekordbox programme but it looks like another Serato-style mixing programme. I realise that this is what Rekordbox can be used for, but all I want to be able to do is transfer the info I've already fed into Serato on another person's version of Serato. It doesn't feel like too much to ask really?

https://serato.com/latest/blog/16877/pro-tip-copying-crates-to-a-usb-flash-drive

haha, i read that whole forum and commented on it in the end. seems to say the track info is locked into the mp3s so it should just transfer over when you save the files to USB, but that's not what happened when i tried it, so I've no idea what I did wrong

Well, if you just copy the mp3s from your folder, the info will be lost. But as long as you copy it from within the files section in serato itself it should work just fine. At least it does so for me.

I did it in Serato, but now I come to think of it, I originally put it on a folder to a portable powered HD, which didn't work when I plugged it into the controller. So I ended up transferring the folder onto a borrowed laptop and then onto a USB stick. That last step was done outside of Serato so maybe it was that.

So apparently all CDJ systems use Rekordbox. Bugger, so why did I opt for Serato again?
Another thing I noticed is they don't really like FLAC files. So why did I download all those tunes on FLAC again?

JFC

obv they're not pioneer but numark cdjs are mostly serato compatible iirc

it's more the compatibility issue with other people's systems. Twice I've been asked to play and been told 'you just need to bring a USB with your tracks and everything's set up for you', only to discover that a quarter of my tracks won't play and the rest have all their cue, bpm and key info missing.

it's just useful having all that stuff in there if I want to do fast cuts etc.

Can anyone school me on DJ pools? I'm having difficulty finding download sources for the kind of music I like to play out (mostly afrobeats/dancehall/soca/global beats) since the demise of Google Play. DJ Pools have been mentioned, but I've no idea how these work. I mean, really I don't want a massive glut of tunes - I like to download things on a track by track basis.

Is this thing on?

Getting ready to DJ some again and updating all my digital stuff. Updated Rekordbox and turned on the "phrase detection". Is this thing useful at all? So far everything I've analyzed has been pretty wrong. I mean maybe it's helpful if you take it as a symbol of some sort of "change", but it's def not getting "verse" and "chorus" anywhere near correct.

Yeah it's not so impressive at this point, although I guess it saves you some time if you previously did this all manually.

Speaking of apps & new features, I'm very impressed with Djay Pro 5 (came out a few months ago), I think these guys are ahead of the pack and I've particularly enjoyed two new tricks:
- 'fluid beatgrid' detection, this works remarkably well, obv most useful for funk/disco with real drummers but even machine-drummed songs with tempo changes benefit a lot from it. Basically, allows you to auto-warp your incoming tracks to the wavering tempo of your current playing track
- Crossfader FX, which auto-applies certain EQ/FX 'macros' to the crossfader. It kind of feels like cheating (like many other things in digital DJing do), but it does free up one hand to do other stuff

(and yes, feel free to make the obvious joke here)

Getting ready to DJ some again and updating all my digital stuff. Updated Rekordbox and turned on the "phrase detection". Is this thing useful at all? So far everything I've analyzed has been pretty wrong. I mean maybe it's helpful if you take it as a symbol of some sort of "change", but it's def not getting "verse" and "chorus" anywhere near correct.

Cute. I was just reading your Facebook posts about your new setup!

I believe I co-authored the method and wrote the implementation for their “phrase detection” feature (I’m not 100% sure, I see they included the compiled code in the package, but I don’t know whether they are calling it), so I took the plunge and bought an annual subscription and installed the app.

I cannot believe I just spent $360 on this. The app itself is Unity garbage and the web service functionality is half-baked. What about the analysis features? From a signal processing and machine learning perspective, horrible. Tempo? It’s the mean tempo. I play mostly dance music and useless when you care about phasing and want to to accommodate minor tempo changes. Key? It’s the mean key. Especially useless for dance music from a mixing perspective. I appreciate searching for an average tempo or key from the perspective of managing a large collection, but it is entirely useless for mixing. Finally, I knew beat detection would be an issue the moment it prompted me with the following dialog:

“Track Analysis Mode: Normal or Dynamic”

I can’t believe they show this to a user. The “Normal” option is followed by a list of seemingly arbitrary BPM intervals. If I were to guess, “Normal” means “register your track to some predefined grid” and “Dynamic” is “register your track to a predicted grid.” As far as I know, neither option is ideal for anyone. In my opinion, the far better option is what Ableton provides by letting users define their grid and the way the track is registered to the grid.

How do I turn on phrase detection? I really want to see it.

I found it. I don’t understand this. It looks like it’s doing some type of next token prediction but, like you said, it’s garbage.

Yeah I've never been very impressed with Rekordbox as a platform, I guess that's also why AlphaTheta went out and bought Serato.