How to prepare music for use in Traktor

The only ones that comes to mind (I'm not near my setup) are:

Sucker DJ's - Lotta Lovin' (Original Mix) (Beatport)
DBK Feat Popcorn - Breathe (Vocal Mix) (EDM Digital)

Anyone else have these and can confirm I'm not just doing something wrong?

Good idea on the cue points too Vince; I do this myself, using them for reference points on where a vocal comes in, or a bassline, or where some significant event drops out.

 

This happens even when I tap manually to get an accurate tempo. I've tried rounding, and not rounding as well, and neither seems to make a difference.

 

Oh! One more thing that I just thought of that might be making the difference on my beatgrids that are giving me hell...

Does the beatmarker ALWAYS need to be placed on the downbeat in order for the grid to set accurately? i.e. the first beat of the bar?

 

You could use any beat, but for ease of use I use the downbeat always so I'd put it on the first beat of the second bar.

Another way to set the beatgrid on a difficult track is to first remove the beatmarkers, then set a cue point on two or more adjacent downbeats. Then set the beatgrid and see where the grid lines are placed, relative to the cue points you placed where the grid lines should now be located. This will tell you how far out of adjustment the BPM is, and you might be able to use the EDIT box to fix it up.

 

Yes, this is the method that I use when beatgriding ANY track. I set the cue on the first beat, then another on the second beat, then I change the second cue marker into a beatmarker; adjust BPM and then check for consistency.

 

Anybody knows how to remove a beatmarker? Can't find it in any manual.

 

All you need to do is to unlock the beatmarker.

 

unlock it, re analyze to be safe to remove grids previously stored

 

.aiff v. mp3 ?? ( ARRRGGGHHH!!!...Sorry! )

"There has been many and long discussions at which quality you should rip your tracks. Personally I rip at 320 kbps for the simple reason that I want the highest possible quality and since harddrives are so cheap today I see no reason to comprimise quality just to save a bit of space. Then why not use wav files you might ask? Simple really, by using wav files I can't use Traktor and it's features to the fullest."



Hi Pixeltrance, thanks for such a detailed account of the A to Z of preparing music for Traktor - very interesting for a Forum newbie like me. But, still the vexed question of format is mashing my brain. :schimpfen . I'm super-anal about quality and can't bring myself to use anything less than .aiff files, if possible. Will I burn in Traktor hell if I persist with this fundamentalist angle?! How would you, or other wise Traktor heads, persuade me to switch to 320 mp3s?? What am I missing in Traktor by using mainly uncompressed files??

Edit:
ps sorry if I'm getting the whole Thread etiquette wrong here - I'm brand new to the Forum, and still relatively clueless about Traktor..... poor me!!

 

Hey Guys
I was traing these new triks last night, the only thing that I did not try was rounding the beats. I got very good resoults but it looks that my grids are perfect at the start and the end of my tracks but they are off in the center of the traks
Can you guys help me?

 

I got it

Ok...
I got it, for some reson I was puting a beatmarker on the first beat and the last. Now I just put one on the first and fixed if I get any drift, and I also find that after you fix any drift for 1 or 2 times, it will match perfect when you get to the end of the file.
Ohhh.... I also find that most of the time when you hit "ROUND" on the first beat you don't even have to ajust, it will match the beat like migic.
I most tell you guys thise is a total difrent expirince to me using TK.before I was just using it as a manual turntable. Now it is so much easier and fun, even with latin music.:thumb:

 

Hi Jorgechez
I have said this in other posts, It's all about accurate BPM's, If you have that traktor becomes the most powerful DJ tool you can ever find. nothing comes close!
PS. Thanks Pixeltrance

 

I'm with you on that one. I just wish people talk more about this or better jet (THE MANUAL). I've been using TK for almost year and 1/2 and I never heard this was like this.
Thanks:twak:

 

Mp3 grooming?

Can any other Mac users here tell me what they're using to groom Mp3's for use in Traktor? For example, how do you normalize the gain, juice up the EQ, make it more crisp; all the little things that so many PC users use Soundforge for?

I bought Peak thinking it could do many of the same functions as Soundforge, but it just doesn't (so far) seem as if that's the case.

 

What can you not do in Peak? You have access to full DSP including normalise as well as all your plugins, including the Apple 31 band eq.

 

Smart Albums in Itunes

No one has really mention the smart albums in Itunes.

I use them extenvily and they help me organize my music and handle imports.

For those who do not use Itunes, Smart Albulms use criteria to live update the list.

For example you can set up an albulm to show songs added in the last week in the genre "HIp Hop"

I use them in the following way.

set up a smart album
Add new files to the Itunes
Then import the playlists into Traktor, make sure you check the import playlists checkbox on the itunes import

The playlists then can be accessed from within traktor. You can then go to the the updated new songs playlist.

This will work for any criteria available in itunes.

I have about 10 smart lists.

highly rated
new songs
various genres
various combinations

Itunes lets you use the regular playlists as well.

I find it easier to listen and organize to tracks in itunes.

does anyone else use the smart playlists?

 

Well, for instance, I can normalize, but Peak does it using a very strange (to me) method; and it seems to me that it only does peak gain normalization. What I'm looking for is something more like what Soundforge does, which is RMS (root-means-square) normalization. Can Peak do this?

Also, I cannot figure out how to EQ a file using Peak. Am I missing a plug-in?

It sounds like you may be using Peak just like one would use Soundforge. Any help would be appreciated!

 

Well, for one thing if you ever lose your Traktor collection file, you're going to be doing a LOT of re-analyzing and re-setting your cues since AIFF and WAV don't store meta info (at least not in Traktor). However, beyond that, I think the biggest thing that should convince you to use MP3s is asking yourself "can my audience tell the difference". Now, before you answer, you've got to take into account the system you're playing on. Is it a Funktion One? Because that's probably the only club system that could even come close to reproducing the difference between a 320 and an AIFF (personally I don't think you could even tell on a Bang & Olufson system much less any club system). Now, considering that, can YOU even tell in blind test in perfect listening conditions? I mean, maybe you can, but I HIGHLY doubt it...

If you feel better using AIFFs, then by all means go ahead. That's why Traktor has that option!However, you really should make sure that your decision isn't just based on the raw file size and what you think that should mean as far as quality goes.

@phpsocialclub

I hear what you're saying and I use them all the time. It's one of the best features of iTunes!

 

I agree about Smart Playlists in iTunes- they're great. I go even one further with the iTunes focus -- I use iTunes as my track browser; not Traktor. When I find the track I want in iTunes, I select it & hit CMD-R, which reveals the MP3 file in the Finder; then I drag that file into a Traktor deck.

I use the Traktor browser only to see what songs I've played already (if I'm not sure), or to see what songs I have dragged into the deck but didn't actually play yet.

I have 12,000 MP3 files, and with Traktor that would mean very long start-up & quit times, and heavy RAM usage. If you ever have to do a non-standard quit in Traktor, all your changes during that session are lost. iTunes, in contrast, handles 10,000 songs as easily as it handles 10. You don't have to worry about re-syncing playlists between it & Traktor. You can drag tracks into an arbitrary order to remind you of how you might want to play them, and then re-sort them by time (when you need that long track to cover grabbing a drink ;-) ), and then return to the original arbitrary order -- something Traktor can't do.

The whole playlist process is just so much more fluid in iTunes -- I prefer to keep them there and not worry about syncing and Traktor's limitations.

And then the iPod... When I get a new CD, I rip it in iTunes, and a Smart Playlist automatically loads it onto my iPod next time I connect. (Smart Playlist search criteria are: Tracks added in the last month; only tracks that haven't been rated yet; sorted by most recently added). Then I listen to the tracks on the iPod while doing other stuff (eg going to the gym) and rate them on the iPod as I hear them. When I re-connect to my Mac, all my iPod track ratings are automatically transferred into iTunes. I dump the tracks I didn't like and I add the good ones to the other appropriate playlists. So I can actually work on tonight's set while working out.

If I were using the Traktor browser, I'd now have to worry about the whole playlist import process, but instead, I'm already ready, and for someone who tweaks playlists as much as I do, that's a huge advantage.

 

It is also a good way to go through a lot of music and make sure you have categorized.

I set up a smart playlist to show me all songs in a certain genre that have no rating (zero stars)

Then I listen to tracks and put them in a category, then I click on the rating stars to rate them and the disappear from the list. Move on to the next one, and eventually all of you music is categorized.

Not to bad,

I just wish there was an progress bar on the itunes import, mines takes for ever and makes me nervous some times when I am pressed for time.