Posts tagged Control

Traktor is the most popular DJ software in the professional market and that’s probably because the developer, Native Instruments, is a well-known brand in high-end audio software and hardware. It also helps that Traktor is available for both Windows and Mac OS X, so they get the full word-of-mouth effect. Traktor is designed with the experienced knob twiddler in mind, with none of the DRAGONTRANCE! skins or flourishes of some of the consumer-oriented DJ packages. Its interface is likely to turn off some newcomers to DJing but I personally like its no-nonsense slickness.

The nicest thing about Traktor’s lack of reliance on skins is that it works well in a variety of layouts and screen sizes. You can have it in a window, stretch vertically and the width of the waveform preview will change size to accommodate the width and the playlist stretches out, and it won’t look sloppy. Combine this with three available type sizes and you can basically work comfortably playing out on a laptop or honing a mixed CD on a giant LCD.

While there are a lot of buttons visible in Traktor, it manages to reduce clutter by not presenting every single option at the immediate level. Instead of showing a wackload of loop length preset buttons, you can right click to pick from a large list of loop presets and the button then switches to that setting.

1/8 loops: good for those epilepsy fundraisers

Since Traktor basically set the interaction standard for other DJ apps, a lot of the toggles and tricks you find in other programs are close to the same here: right-click and drag to position the sliders and then click the left mouse button to instantly snap to that temporary position, good for quick crossfading or more subtle EQ kills. A few Traktor-only interface goodies are a Snap mode for navigating the waveform, good for use with beatgrid testing and a track ending warning that uses a user-set time for blinking a warning that your track is ending. The Dead Air Preventer 9000.

BPM setting and the beat grid

While Traktor’s BPM detection is very good, accurately guessing the tempo of some really fractured drum ‘n’ bass beats I have, relying on a single BPM guide is not always enough to get tracks to line up properly, so Traktor lets the user set their own beat grid manually. Unlike just setting a global BPM manually by tapping it out (also available), a beat grid is like overlaying a must-follow guide for when you hit sync. For most house and techno, manually setting a beat grid is not going to be needed, but it’s essential if you want to mix an acapella or have any music that is too complicated or sparse for the app to figure out. Also, it comes in handy if you have music that switches tempos mid-track for a break and then resumes its first BPM later.

You set the beat grid by cueing up the first beat in the track and then selecting the Grid popup from the Cue Edit menu.

From there, enable the Tick option in the BPM menu and then click Cue on the channel in the mixer to hear a tap of the beat grid (the Tick) as you cue your track. Don’t worry, the tick never plays through the master channel, only the cue. Play back your song and manually change the value in the BPM menu (or slide the number up and down to interactively change it) until your beat grid overlays your track perfectly. This is a significant feature since loop lengths and beatjumps in DJ programs are invariably linked to the BPM and if it’s not dead on, then you’ll have problems when trying any of those.

Cue points and looping

The nice thing about cue points in Traktor—other than you can have ten of them—is that you can edit their names. This may not sound like much, but when you have a large collection of music and your brain is fried like mine, you need all the help you can get to remember where the vocal break is.

Cue points are saved for files as are loops, the most powerful part of Traktor. Aside from just having the option of using a bunch of loops for mixes, they can also be moved around so that they align better to beats while the track plays.

Master and slave tempos

Master! Master!

When you get into four turntables, the main problem—other than losing your mind—becomes what to use as a reference tempo. You can’t just sync to the three other tracks since they all have independent BPM, so Traktor lets you set a deck as a master for syncing. You can also use an internal BPM clock or an external midi clock if you prefer to have something more centralized for reference. If you show the full four-deck layout, you can set the master clock.

Click Master and then any time you hit sync on a deck, the tracks will sync to the tempo specified in the Clock panel. You can also use this master tempo to change the speed of multiple decks simultaneously by enabling the Slave setting on each deck. That way, you could have a mix of three tracks going and speed them up while still retaining sync. Most people won’t be using four decks, but the ability to keep two decks synchronized by setting one to master and one to slave is definitely of broader appeal.

4-band EQ

Newer versions of Traktor have brought emulation of real-world mixer EQs and instead of throwing the old versions away, you are able to choose from a list of available EQs (the top three all being different 3-band versions):

It may seem really redundant to have three 3-band EQs, but audio people are more fanatical than religious zealots, so heads would roll if they disappeared. Version 3 added a four-band EQ designed after the Xone:92 mixer.

It’s hard to say whether the sound and cut for each of the four EQs is exactly like the Xone:92 but I’m assuming that if the company would license Native Instruments the name, then they’d have to do a good job of imitating it. Either way, the benefits of a 4-band EQ are clear and having more control over the depth of the mid-end is only going to make your mixes potentially fuller-sounding.

Keep in mind though that if you’re going to use the Xone:92 as your choice, the kill button for bass disappears. Fortunately, there is a simple way to get the same channel kill functionality back: right-click the + sign next to the EQ and choose Switch. This makes hitting the -/+ buttons work like a kill toggle.

Filters

If you live and breathe filters for mixing, then Traktor might disappoint since it provides only six and there is no plug-in support for adding your own.

The good news though, is that filters can be applied to either the master, the deck, or both. That way you could put a flanger on the deck and slap in a receding delay with the master channel. Still, this is the part most in need of updating in Traktor and hopefully the future version will bring VST and Audio Unit/Direct-X plug-in support.

Mix recording and reworking

Although Traktor supports the usual recording straight to an audio file, it also lets you record to it’s own Native Mix recordings, which are like event scripts and not actual audio files.

One benefit of this approach is that you can play back a full mix that’s much smaller than an uncompressed audio file and relies on your existing library. But the main advantage is being able to rework mixes to perfection and not having to rely on an audio editor to remaster a mix by splicing together multiple audio files. To edit a mix using the Native Mix Recorder once you’ve recorded a mix, hit play and then when you find the spot you want to rework, hit record again and release the play button to start overwriting the changes.

This is a huge time-saver and you can use this to rework and hone your mixed CD so that people think you’re a superstar. Just remember: you’re not avoiding playing in public because you can’t actually play that tight, you’re just “increasing the mystique.”

Playlist management

Most DJ programs are happy to let you add your collection and organize them fine and Traktor has very nice options for saving sets and things, but the most important playlist feature it has is Consistency Check—the ability to save you time redoing anything by relinking files and maintaining a clean library. If your collection is a mix of dead links in most apps, you’re often left to fish them out individually or start from scratch. If your application manages cue points and loops with an internal database then that’s not an exciting option, throwing away your database of loops, cue points and track analysis. The Consistency Check in Traktor looks for the physical file on your drive and sees if it’s missing and then lets you connect it back up if you can find the missing tracks. All the associated metadata is then relinked to the files.

This kind of polish is what makes Traktor a good long-term option since it is made for professionals who have extremely tight mixes and gigs to play.

Traktor gripes

Overall, Traktor is enjoyable to use and in its current version, has very few bugs that I can see. That said, stability is still a mixed bag for the Native Mix Recordings. In my experience, I’ve crashed numerous times in a day reworking a mix with the Native Mix Recorder. While it fortunately doesn’t affect live playing, it still needs to be fixed since most metadata changes in Traktor are not written until the app quits, so you can lose work if it crashes.

Also, the zoom +/- buttons for tracks are overlaid at the right of tracks and it’s way too easy to click and stop the track by missing the buttons.

Conclusion

For my own needs, I like Traktor DJ Studio and unfortunately for Mac users, it’s really the only good choice for serious DJing software. I think that while some potential bedroom DJs might be turned off by its austere design, it provides a ton of growing room and creative mixing potential. In its strict emulation of a hardware rig, Traktor lacks a built-in sampler or some of the cooler innovations like an EQ crossfader; sure, you can accomplish the same thing with two knobs going in the opposite direction, but that’s not an option for people without a midi controller; hopefully upcoming versions will fix that. Also, of the high-end packages, Traktor is the most closed with regards to filters, forcing you to use only the ones provided. If it had support for VST plug-ins or OS X Audio Units, it would be near-perfect since what’s in Traktor is executed flawlessly, not the least of which is the high-quality 4-band EQ.

At its usual price of $280, it’s probably too pricey for many who just want to have something for parties, and there’s no Universal Binary yet. That should be out within the next few months and will be a free upgrade for existing users. If you’re considering picking it up, be sure to test it, as it’s the most demanding on hardware of the DJ apps tested.

Pros

• Professional-quality mixer EQ emulation, one with four-band EQ
• Interface is highly customizable while remaining clean at different resolutions/aspect ratios
• Unmatched loop editing
• A wealth of presets for beatjump/looping/etc.
• Top-notch playlist management
• Reworkable mixes
• Master/slave tempo syncing
• Exhaustive tag editing support

Cons

• No EQ crossfade
• No sampler
• No undo for any options like beat grid edits
• Hardware activation is too sensitive to system changes
• Supports only included filters, not plug-ins