djlotus Posted May 19, 2012 Share Posted May 19, 2012 I have had Traktor Scratch Pro for a while now and am looking to make the move to SSL. Lots of things can be done with Traktor, but none of them really appeal to me anymore other than setting cue points. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottie(the)goonie Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 Do you notice a performance/quality difference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djdiggla Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 The auto-sync in Traktor is crazy. No wonder it's "the n00b's choice". I can't believe how accurate it is. That's surprising! Even with hiphop?Do you like Traktor better than Serato? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djlotus Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 It depends on how the tracks were produced. if there is a lot of swing in a track or tempo changes it goes all trainwreck on you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 22, 2012 Author Share Posted May 22, 2012 That's surprising! Even with hiphop?Do you like Traktor better than Serato? Yeah, although it seems there was some luck involved. I had Traktor set to automatically beat grid the tracks I added into it. I tested out the sync feature with a few tracks that just happened to have had their beat grids set pretty much perfectly by the software. I have since noticed that I have loads of tracks where the beat grid is off. I would never be arsed to go through all of my songs and make sure all of the beat grids are set perfectly! As for Traktor Vs. Serato, I hardly ever used Serato and I will hardly ever use Traktor, but I'll fire it up from time to time to make a mixtape or record some cuts. I would give the nod to Traktor for 3 reasons based on my needs: - 1. The hardware works better as an external sound card and gives you all kinds of routing options. 2. The software supports more audio codecs natively, including FLAC. 3. If I turned the platter power off when playing a track in Serato, once it hit a certain speed it was going so slow that the Serato software could no longer read the signal properly. At that point the audio would just stop. In Traktor, it seems to accurately read the signal even when the time coded vinyl is barely moving, so it more accurately mimics a real piece of vinyl. If it wasn't for point 1 I'd have just stuck with Serato though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jopa. Posted May 25, 2012 Share Posted May 25, 2012 not sure if it was mentioned, but you can also adjust the "sync" grid yourself. so if the auto bpm didnt find the bpms or is off set, like in between the kicks on a 4x4 track, you can fix it your self. you can also set multiple grid start points in one track. so take Prince's Kiss for example, you can set a loop of just the break and grid it, then set a loop of the chorus and grid it separately.... and then use them intermittently. its like the poor mans ableton. you dont need to do that timewarp thing, but can still use a live recording seamlessly mixed with digital recordings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 Cheers, jopa. I knew you could adjust the grid and what have you manually, but I was a bit disappointed with the number of tracks where that would need to be done, assuming I could be bothered to do it. One thing that sucks in Traktor is key lock when scratching, at least with lossless compressed files (I haven't tried WAVs or MP3s). If it's in high quality mode, then the CPU usage is nice and low as the track is playing, but as soon as I start moving the record back and forth to cut it pushes the CPU usage up way too high. If I use the lower quality mode, it's utterly fucking useless for scratching as the sound just goes mental when you start moving the record. Serato handled this much better, as the key lock would disable itself when you were cutting and then kick back in when the track was just playing. They really need to optimise this software better for high end rigs IMO. Give me a 64 bit version that actually uses more than 1 thread on my CPU! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 Have you updated to 2.5 yet? It seems to be a lot more efficient - a lot more. Also, have you checked the 'use multi processor support' or whatever it's called in the preferences? It'll use as many as you have, but it may or may not be any better than using a single core. Maybe they're working on making traktor 3 natively 64 bit - it's, I'm guessing, a case of complete destroy and rebuild and a mammoth task. I don't know how much it would benefit either, are you much cop with this kind of thing? what would be the main advantages of a ground up 64 bit code... realtime decoding and streaming? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 Yeah, I'm on 2.5 mate. It's less efficient for me. On the previous version with the same buffer settings the CPU usage was low. With this version it's bouncing up high and scratching with key lock on is caning the CPU usage. The "use multi processor support" thing does nothing on my machine - nothing noticeable anyway. Whether it's enabled or not, it still only uses a single core. If it could spread the load over all 4 cores/8 threads, I'm sure it would work much better. On your Mac, when you have multi-core CPU support enabled does it still only analyse one track at a time? That's another thing I don't get with this compared to Serato. Do you know how to roll back the install on Windows? Usually you would just uninstall and reinstall the older version, but it seems you can't do that because of the licensing bollocks. As for the 64 bit thing, I don't know much about it. Perhaps it's not that that's the issue and it's just lack of optimisation in the code generally, cos this software really shouldn't be taxing my new computer like this. I could run Serato on my shitty old laptop, but I'm having to make compromises with this cos it's maxing out a brand new Core i7. Something's not right. I must say, I'm having a touch of buyer's remorse now after initially being very impressed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 as far as power goes, you'd be surprised just how much it takes to get something like traktor off the blocks. the audio engine has to support a humungous amount of streaming audio channels and mix them in realtime whilst manipulating them with all those effects etc - whilst i do get the impression serato has a somewhat tighter ship and sleeker code, traktor does a lot more especially as it has to have all that internal mixing stuff in there even if it's not using it. i'm surprised about your 2.5 woes, I experienced the opposite. 2.1 made 88.2KHz unusable on my macbook, although it was okay on 2.0, and now I'm back again with 2.5. It's also better for timecode (but timecode was severely bugged out on 2.1). As far as analysing, I'm not sure. I have a bit of a guilty secret in that my music library is fucking embarrassing lately, and has been since i stopped playing out a couple of years ago. because I mainly test stuff now and tinker about with ideas for workflows and mappings and so on, i don't play for the joy of playing much anymore and so i use the same old tracks again and again... i'm trying to shake free of this at the moment and actually play with my toys again rather than pitting them against each other! Is there something along the lines of 'high priority mode' for win programs? i seem to recall something like that? I'm not 100% sure on rollback either, but I did notice that when updating it asks to you if it can automatically back up your collection and library so that a rollback will be possible, so I assume you can. if you go to service center and poke around your installed software, i think there's some way to get previous versions from the repo through it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 I guess what happens with the Mac software isn't necessarily comparable anyway. Looking on the forums, there seems to be a lot of complaints coming from both sides, yet others seem to agree with you that it's an improvement. Fuck knows. You can change the priority for individual executable files in Windows. but I don't think that would make any difference here. I have nothing else running in the background and the CPU usage is otherwise at 0. There are other processes running of course, but they're effectively using bugger all clock cycles/resources. I was running Traktor earlier with Task Manager open and when the CPU load meter was spiking up into the red, the CPU usage was going up in Task Manager too as you would expect, but it wasn't going up that high - certainly nowhere near the 90-100% that the load meter in Traktor implies. Perhaps Traktor is just leaving some headroom or something. I'm not massively concerned about any of this cos I don't play gigs either and I'm sure over time it'll improve, but I don't like it when the software isn't rock solid cos it makes me paranoid when I'm recording mixes as I'm listening for little audio glitches and what have you. I might just dump it and go back to vinyl. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 i think 'load' is a combination of cpu and audio interface - it's more an indication of the likelihood of buffer under runs than it is cpu about to burst into flames, so that sort of makes sense. what settings do you have your audio 6 set to? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 When I was on the previous version I had the process buffer on 64, but because of the higher CPU load I've knocked it up to 96. What settings do you use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 i'll have to check again tomorrow because i've been testing the 4trak but i believe it's something like 88.1khz, 256 sample buffer... the latency works out more or less the same as 44.1 and 128, obviously. i have a 2008 macbook... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 28, 2012 Share Posted May 28, 2012 i should add that in traktor pro 1 i used to have a smaller buffer, but the newer software is more resource heavy - at the same time, the second generation 6/10 cards are faster than the 4/8 cards so there's a performance increase there. i think latency between 5-12ms is much of a muchness that you adjust for subconsciously, and only really becomes apparent if you're using real vinyl as a comparison. when you push into 13-20ms it starts to become increasingly noticeable to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted May 28, 2012 Author Share Posted May 28, 2012 I'm wondering whether I should just monitor directly off the mixer, then increase the buffers (which reduces CPU load drastically) and compensate for the latency in Audition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jopa. Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 just found out my traktor is version 1.2.7 anyone know if there are updates from this for free... kind of skint right now. not sure if i used skint correctly. i have seriously found no issues with traktor what so ever. i have noticed that on occasion traktor cannot read the source correctly. i havent been able to find a reason for this. when i replaced the styli the issue cleared up for more than a month, but now on occasion it comes back. basically i have to disconnect/reconnect and clean eevrything and it works again. i know this sounds incredibly hokey, but i have yet to find a definitive cause for my technical issue. i know the key lock feature is kind of a hinderance... i am always forgetting about it and end up scratching with it on for a while, or mixing with it off until i notice a drastic difference in pitch. i do think some sort of auto feature for it would be cool, but i think the obstacle there is how would traktor know if your just pushing a record forward a little to stay in sync or about to scratch? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djlotus Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 That is the last "stable" version. The update to 2.5 is found in the update center which installed on your hard drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dubba Dutchdj Posted June 1, 2012 Share Posted June 1, 2012 (edited) One thing that sucks in Traktor is key lock when scratching, at least with lossless compressed files (I haven't tried WAVs or MP3s). If it's in high quality mode, then the CPU usage is nice and low as the track is playing, but as soon as I start moving the record back and forth to cut it pushes the CPU usage up way too high. If I use the lower quality mode, it's utterly fucking useless for scratching as the sound just goes mental when you start moving the record. Serato handled this much better, as the key lock would disable itself when you were cutting and then kick back in when the track was just playing. Shame Traktor doesn't at least have the option for the same SSL auto keylock off when scratching, that would be nice to have. As I understand with Traktors key lock on, the pitch is locked until there is 30% change in pitch in either direction. Which is pretty lame for when your pitching beneath a 30% thresh hold as it gives scratching with key lock on an odd feel. As tight as Traktor is I still mostly use real wax for cutting and mainly use DVS for diy samples and instruments. The only time I like to occasionally use key lock with scratching is when I'm cutting with real instrument samples as it then keeps every forward/back scratch thats under 30% in the original key of the sample, Edited June 1, 2012 by Dubba Dutchdj 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lilmo21000 Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 I'm still trying to figure out how to set up my A6 -_____- any help would be cool, I'm just trying to figure out how to get my head phone to monitor. My setup is Novation Twitch, NI X1, 2 Denon Sc 3900's, MBP, A6 running Traktor 2.5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jopa. Posted July 31, 2012 Share Posted July 31, 2012 i would make a post or poke around djtechtools or the NI boards for that homie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.