Internal Metronome (Tick) to confirm Beatgrid.

I've recently bought TSP and am currently trying to understand all the features inbuilt. I have TSP running through a Macbook, which is hooked up to two CDJ 1000's and a Allen & Heath Xone-62 mixer.

I have downloaded and read through the Traktor Pro Bible No.: 2 Beatgridding. I feel this is probably the best place to start.

To my question, is the Internal Metronome the best way to confirm that the manual beatgrid I have just completed is correct all the way through? (By allowing the track to play the whole way through with the 'tick 'activated).

Also, what are peoples thoughts on Mixmeister. I have read a few comments that BPM Analyzer is close to spot on and if entered into TSP, will almost always generate a near perfect beatgrid.

I mix both techno and house.

 

Bump.

Do people feel its worth 'checking' the beat grid with the Internal Metronome to confirm what you've done is correct or is it not really needed?

With my recent exposure to TSP I think I'll be looking at using the 'SYNC' function in order to best utilize 4 decks.

 

Hi The Internal Metronome is fine for getting your grids right I use it all the time, even more now I have been using all my old 2 Step garage, here is a little vid to help you.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAW8X9RSt7A"]YouTube - Dj TechTools- Traktor Pro Beat Grids[/ame]

 

I'm also using the ticker to set my beatgrids. If you place yr marker really on (or really just) before the beat it's not correct.

Better to you the ticker, then you are always right.

 

Yes, IMO the metronome is the best way to make sure the beatgrids are bang on. The Traktor Pro waveform view just doesn't zoom in close enough to be sure.

 

One more yes from here; the auditory response is better than the visual one. The tick helps to get the grid "exactly on beat" whereas - on my opinion - the visual grid is only "just about right" most of the time. It must be said, though that I have less than 1% of my tracks gridded at the moment ... since I do play more "by ear".
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Mixmeister has a good BPM analyser. Unfortunately it doesn't support AAC, so I can't use it at present

This very much reminded me of "Blues Brothers"...

"What kind of music do you usually have here?"
"Oh, we got both kinds. Country and western"

 

I agree that using something like the tick as the reference for your beat gridding is the way to go. My only issue is that to my ears (and I've read others say the same thing) the end result is placing the beat marker slightly before where you'd think it would go visually (to the point where there is a visual gap between the two). Whatever you do, make sure to leave keylock off while doing this.

 

Cheers for the responses. Have started to go through and beatgrid my tunes using the tips in 'Traktor Pro Bible No.: 2 Beatgridding' and the internal metronome without any issues.

Agree with what you had mentioned Socalieric007, the end result has the beat marker slightly before what looks to be the beat visually.

Wishing I had made the jump to Traktor earlier.

 

The beatgrid placement bothers me. I fear this is something that can come back and bite you in the ass. Consider this:
If there is something wrong with the way TP plays sound versus the way it is mapped visually, which would make sense b/c there is no way we'd put the beatgrid so that it's literally before the beat on the screen, then you'll have to go through and adjust all the mapping. Again, I see no reason why the marker and the visual beat should be different, but doing it by ear produces such an effect.

This and other items, identified as bugs or not, has made me reconsider TP for DJing. This is Pro for "Professional", meaning this is for performances, not just a bedroom. I keep encountering one little item after another and each one takes time to figure out. My list so far:
1. Basic features that don't work correctly
a. Key lock crackling
b. Pops/cracks, even after adjusting all settings in the OS.
c. Beat gridding different visually vs aurally (what's the point of mapping if the sound and the mapping are different)
d. Buffer size
e. BPM detection (how they f---ed this up, I don't get)
f. Drivers (not for TP directly, but the NI Kontrol 1 soundcard I'm using with TP); they wrote the drivers in such a way that there are continual, periodic processor spikes (50% and above) even when idle. Unacceptable.
2. Support - I'm a pretty easy-going guy. Whoever I spoke to on the phone was curt and rude. In my experience, when customer support for a company behaves in such a manner, it IS a general reflection of the company as a whole. That's a stereotype, yes, but consider a company like Apple, who is known for taking care of its customers. In general, good philosophy, good product, good support, good people. Their customer support is helpful and easy to engage. The people and products and company are consistent. The faces on the front line are almost always a reflection of the company. I've never seen otherwise. If that premise holds true, and my experience thus far confirms (for me), is that this product is not as "professional" as it markets itself to be. Again, this is a stereotype, meaning not 100%, but a high %. My experience of the product aligns with my experience with the company's support, and thus the company, itself. Once you see the landscape, you have to choose whether to continue on (and accept it for what it is) or elect to follow another path. I am nearly convinced that I will be following the Serato Itch path. What I concede in features I more than make up in functionality, imo, but I don't need lots of fx or extensive loop functionality (though I really want another deck...and they are working on that feature, as well as fx).

So...way off-base, but the "tick" issue combined with taking a step back to look at all the pieces and subsequent frustration was channeled into words in this post.

Best of luck! Maybe I'll reexamine TP in the future to see if it finally makes the "professional" cut.

Oh, yeah...last recommendation: Do NOT use the internal metronome. Use a kick-drum loop. That loop will never change; TP does.

 

I experience the same problem as socalieric007. files that used to be perfectly beatgridded with TS using the tick are suddenly off, and if I align the tick to the track, it doesn't correspond to what you see in the waveform. Wherever the problem lies, that's not the foundation you want to base all your beatgrids on.

Anyway, does anybody have a WAV file with four ticks? Similar to socalieric007's kickloop. I want something a bit more clear and precise than that. Unfortunately I do not have ableton or something similar, so I can't create a loop on my own. If somebody could do that for me, that would be awesome. Just a tick like in TSP @128bpm would be perfect.

Thank you very much!

 

In my experience, beatgridding to the tick of the metronome is the best way to achieve a very good beatgrid.

In Traktor 3.4 I used to tap the tempo before cueing up the Beatgrid marker. Unfortunately, the tap tempo seems to be broken in Pro. Can anyone confirm this or have a workaround? Sometimes, you just don't know what the bpm of a track is and then it really takes too much time guessing when you can't simply tap it in...

 

i have no clue when and why but sometimes TP does not react at all to tap and/or gives wrong result. Since I am pragmatic type, instead of whining and blackmail NI and the Universe that I will never use TP again I use hardware beatcounter then type in the value and fine adjust.
Would love to find a watch with bpm counter to have one always around but these are hard to find, scanning Ebay regularly for Tokyoflash and Casio both out of production. The current counter also found on Ebay, bit better then Behringer trash.

 

That is a known bug/feature in the current version (1.1.2) ... this has been improved a lot in the latest beta (1.2).

I think the way it works currently is that your tapping doesn't directly affect the BPM, but instead the application attempts to be "clever". It multiplies and divides the value it already has to better match the tapping frequency (at least, this is what it seems like it is doing ... and if my assumption on this one is not correct, the rest of my message is completely inaccurate).

There is a sort of logic behind this. It begins with the assumption that the BPM-detector is rather good - which it actually is. The logic continues that if we're currently not at the right BPM, it is very likely that there is something we either missed or erroneously took as a beat while it wasn't. Therefore, it is highly likely that the actual BPM is 3/4, 1/2, 1/4 or maybe 5/6 of what was detected. And by aligning the detected BPM with the tapping we can find out very quickly what the divisor/multiplier is.

Of course, the described logic more often than not fails, and ends up returning the exactly same value we began with. Also, if the original value was not anywhere in the range, the approach doesn't work at all.

But as said earlier, this has been improved a lot in the beta version.

 

when i first started using traktor, the whole beatgridding thing was confusing me~

i followed all the "guides" on youtube and they all seem to rely on Visually adjusting the grid, and then afterwards they'd just LOCK the grid? I tried this countless of times and always ended up getting a bad grid, tried matching two tracks together and the phase meter is ALWAYS OFF

it wasnt until i used the TICK that i can finally make "perfect grids" or at least one that is in line with the phase meter~ What i do is i simply set a beat grid marker on the first grid, turn on the TICK and then beatmatch the track to the tick, sliding the grid left or right depending on how properly the grid and the tick beat matches~

Im pretty happy with this method, i was djing for 5 years on vinyl and cdjs and really hated using my eyes to "align the grid" at least with the tick i can just put the first marker and then use my ears to beatmatch the grid to the tick.

One thing also worries me - as everyone stated - if you grid your tracks this way then the waveform will be slightly OFF the grid - about one Milimetre to the left of the beat? (im using a 23 inch monitor)

Im also very worried that if one day traktor updates the software, and then changes the grid method - then i'll be FXXKED up coz i spent countless of hours beatgridding 10000's of my tracks~ if this happens and i'll have to re-do everything then i will be VERY UPSET (as anyone would be!)

at least they should make zoomable waveforms like in acid pro - beat warping in sony acid pro takes like 10 seconds~ and you can REALLY ZOOM IN to the pixel-on-the-dot and accurately set markers

 

I find that the tick is not as precise as it should be. When I used the same feature in Ableton, the "tick" (wich in Live is REALLY a metronome) works perfectly spot on, and you can trust it with your life. If the track doesn't match the metronome, it's off (unless u have loads of effects and there is MIDI sync involved - that can make channels have different tempos, or be slighly off of each other).

In TP, I found that when I have two track in sync, and their beats match perfectly together, if I turn on the tick, it is a little of, on either track. WTF? How can the downbeats match perfectly together (all locked to the master clock) and the Tick (which should be locked as well) be off?

And another question: if that happens, which is really off? The tick or the tracks? Either way, I don't care. If tracks are gridded and their beats match I couldn't care less what the tick tells me, so I hardly use it - prefer to beatmatch one track to another deck, works everytime.

 

here you go , i made 5 loops with different sounds, all 120 bpm. i wonder how they sound compared to the metronome in tp.

 

I don't use the tick - I set mine by the waveform and by scratching across the kick drum. I drop my grids just before the kick and it works fine 98% of the time. I rarely use sync when I mix by ear I will very occasionally find the phase meter is out. The tap tempo needs fixin' though.

 

Does the production team behind TSP browse/post in these forums? Maybe they can confirm or atleast be made aware of the worries of using the 'tick' feature, which have been raised in this thread. I will continue to use it and hope that this feature of TSP is not modified.

 

There are different expectations for every kind of user of this software, as in any other software. Some people are just more critical then other regarding to a certain feature.

As an Ableton Live user, I've participated in many of these discussions on this or that feature, that some users hate and the other love. There was never an agreement, unless it was clearly a bug or something.

I don't think the Tick has a bug in its functionality. I just don't like it and prefer to use other methods. But if you are happy with it, I'm cool with that too.