Why is it, in the US mojority of the DJ's use Serato

Here's a silly question, maybe you guys & girls can answer this for me... Why is it in the United States majority of the DJ's use Serato. I'm not knocking Serato in any way or form... But all the DJ's that I know use Serato. Not 1 uses Traktor. And I think Traktor is a GREAT program. I was just wondering.

 

First you say the majority of the US dj's use Serato (title), then you talk about "all the DJ's that I know". You know many people dude! Maybe it's because of the serato scratch extra?

 

I'm in New Zealand and the vast majority of DJs are on Serato too - then again, this is where Serato is from so theres perhaps some national pride involved!

 

From an old school DJ's standpoint here is my take on it. The first Serato Scratch Live version was made to run on a RANE SL1 soundcard. The SL1 card was built like a tank and Serato ScratchLive was very reliable. At the time there was a competing product by stanton Final Scratch that was a bit buggy from what I heard (bad word of mouth). The reputation that Final Scratch crashes sometimes mid gig scared old school heads from every trying it but since most turntablist and club DJs were familiar with RANE and trusted their products there were enough early adopters to in the US to build momentum. I switched in late 2004 to ScratchLive and people carrying records either were amazed or disgusted but they all either switched to ScrachLive or quit DJ'ing eventually.

Serato grew out ScratchLive very slow. None of the changes were so drastic that they confused DJs. If you look at ScratchLive's features as of 2.5 it's nowhere near as advanced as Traktor 2.5. Traktors features can work against it sometimes. Learning Traktor is a big learning curve for me. I had nobody to teach me anything since nobody I know is running Traktor but, after about a year I really don't want to use SSL/SDJ anymore but, still have to because venues don't have Traktor they have Serato hardware.

Serato DJs are very loyal and pretty much just make fun of Traktor. You can see DJ City kind of diss Traktor when QBert was on the MikiDz show. I usually get weird looks from Serato folks until I bust out a Tazer 2 click or some other advanced cut to show them I'm the real deal Traktor does the same things Serato Can.

 

"most" depends always on a lot of things.

in this case for example the market.
serato is might be more present in the US marketing, as NI.
or you are just looking on the DJs "you" see or know.

I have noticed just the following:
it depends hard on the country we talk about and on the genre of music the DJ is working with.
serato is pretty current within the HipHop scene, Traktor is much more current within the EDM or House scene.
On Minimal I´ve never seen any serato user as here the strong part of Traktor, the effects, are used most.

but all of this is

a) subjective
b) subject of change/move as serato made some step into the direction of Traktor and Traktor will, sooner or later, reply with a concrete answer

 

It is more down to the more popular style of music and what product the famous DJs in those genres use more often. People who spin dance music are more likely to use Traktor. Those who spin hip hop and top 40, Serato.

While EDM has taken off in the US in the last 5 years or so, most "DJs" culture in the US centers around hip hop and top 40 style mixing. DJs who spin those styles gravitated to Serato as a means to digitize their set up. They were more concerned with stability and scratching using turntables, than looping and deconstructing tracks on the fly. At the beginning, since most DJs local DJs who went digital were using Serato - clubs and bars started installing in house S1 boxes. This made it easier for a DJ to just show up with his laptop and headphones and so the Serato lead on Traktor increased.

The other factor is that Traktor is a very deep program and most DJs are lazy. They dont want to put in the time to set multiple cue and loop points, work with harmonic keys and master the deep complexity that Traktor offers. They just want to show up, play for 2 hours and go home. If you are using Traktor in that manner, you are not taking advantage of the rich offerings the program makes available to you.

In recent years, as EDM has taken off - more and more US based DJs have switched to Traktor. But it will be hard for NI to fully close the gap enough to make a dent in the head start that Serato had.

 

The house DJ's I know are all on Serato as well in NYC. I've only seen Traktor in the wild at big club only once and it was this past winter albeit I don't go to big clubs anymore. Where in the US are you located @mrk2013 that you see a lot of Traktor setups? I'm still not see anyone really using Traktor NYC. I can't really call hip-hop DJ's lazy for just wanting to rock parties and not remix on the fly, that's a style all it's own. I see your point about Traktor being deep but, I can't co-sign lazy. On the contrary I've seen some things done on SSL that don't really make sense. Really complicated routines/sets that Traktor would handle much better with it's remix decks but, the Serato DJ's won't touch Traktor.

 

IRV - I am in Boston, but play all over.....but see a ton of locals in the dance music scene here and in other cities (Chicago, Toronto, Dallas, LA, Washington DC) and of course out of towners all use Traktor.

As for lazy, maybe not the best choice of words....but to me, if you are going to upgrade from vinyl to digital - why not take advantage of all that digital has to offer?

Serato had the lead, but got stale and Traktor blew past them in terms of features and offerings. Now Serato is trying to catch up.

 

@mrk2013 good to hear there a lot of DJs around the US using Traktor.

 

lazy in the sense that they don't want to innovate , anyways with he latest version of serato , N.I. is now the under dog . It will be real hard for them to ever take the lead again.

 

with the smart play lists , flexible beat grids and track audio editing , serato is far ahead of traktor .

 

Far ahead - dont think so.

*Traktor has MUCH better effects and overall sound quality vs any Serato sound card - this really isnt debatable, as even the Serato trolls on their own message board, say consistently that Traktor sounds better.

*Traktor has much better controllers, particularly all of the modular controllers X1 / F1 / Z1- much more versatile than anything Serato has to offer.

*Traktor has a much cleaner look and feel making it much more logical to mix 4 decks or use samples and loops.

Use what you want, but dont talk nonsense about Traktor being far behind.

 

I hear serato has better sound

And keep the nonsense thing to yourself

 

Well you heard wrong.....A10 is miles better than any soundcard Serato produces.

 

@mrk2013 why drag yourself into a pointless Serato Vs Traktor thread if it's going that direction?

It's honestly not more advanced but, Serato does do somethings better than Traktor and there's no denying that. For one elastic beat grids and being able to sync to 150BPM tracks to 75BPM tracks etc. Also, Smart Playlists and automagically loading playlists contained in externals drives. Serato is still taking features from Traktor/Ableton but, it is building on them which is good but, Traktor had many of the features first.

@mastermc Traktor has better sounds in my opinion. My SL4/Serato just doesn't sound as good as my Z2/Traktor. Both soundcards are about the same specs so there is no way of knowing why this is but I can swear on big systems my Z2 just sounds better compared to my SL4. Like I said I am not sure why this is and the SL4/Serato still sounds pretty good but, not as good as the Z2/Traktor. The A10/Traktor also sounds better than the SL4/Serato. I've heard them both on big systems. Once again I am not sure why this is it just is. I never had a the chance to DJ on the Sixty series of Rane mixers. The Sixty series might sound like unicorns and rainbows being shot out of an angels harp but, I haven't heard one in action in a big club yet. Most people on the Serato forums that have used Traktor agree with me on the Traktor producing better sound but, nobody can pinpoint why. Actually A-Trak when he was on Traktor for a while (switched back to Serato) due to Serato's lack of sync said Traktor had better sound as well.

Here's a feature I use all the time that Serato does not have - Beat Jump. Sometimes I'll bang in a track and decide it's intro is just F'ing long for the short attention spans of the audience and will jump to the vocals to keep the audience vibe'n. I'm sure at some point Serato will integrate this feature as well.

Let's keep it respectful. You guys might see each other outside this forum and it would be awkward. I prefer people concentrate on skills.

 

Fair enough Irv.

Flexible beat grids are very new to serato, no idea how well they work - but there are easy ways around then using Traktor.

For one, you can set a new grid point later in a track to bring the track back to the original BPM. I agree that running a loop during a period when a track slows down and having it fall off in Traktor is annoying, but that is part of understanding your music. You could also run those wobbly tracks through Ableton and sort them out in a 2 minutes flat.

I do agree with smart playlists - and this is something users have been asking NI for for years now. Updating playlists in Itunes or wherever else you manage your music and needing to do a manual update across all your traktor folders that are effected is a god awful workflow - so totally agree there.

I am not opposed to Serato - it seems boring and simplistic to me - not much of a jump forward from using CDJs for years, but if people like it that is fine. Traktor is taking digital DJing to the next level, there use of samples and remix set, effects and all the modular controllers - are years ahead of Serato.

 

Serato does not manufacture any soundcard, Rane does.
Native Instruments soundcards in general are a bit hotter (louder).
I do agree that N.I. cards sound good, but the difference in sound that you hear is not the cards but the soundengine used in the software, at least that's my opinion.
I use SSL since 2004 or 2005 and TSP since 2007.
Rane's first card the SL1 was a solid card but did not sound that good when compared to the audio 8 for instance.
But this changed with the SL2/3/4.
However, SSL/SDJ and TSP use different soundengines.
I own an Rane Sixty two which has insane hot output, and when used with SSL or SDJ the sound is more focused on highs and midrange, the bass is deep and tight.
When I select the Sixty Two as a soundcard in TSP (no scratchcontrol) the highs are a bit rolled off, mids are a bit smoother and the bass is more hyped.

When using SSL I have my highs at 10 o'clock, with TSP at zero or higher.
Sometimes the sound from the Sixty Two can sound a little flat with certain tracks in SSL, mostly older 80's or 90's stuff, I have not expierenced this in TSP.

I tested this with my Dynaudio bm6a and bm5a mk2 monitors, on both sets you could hear the difference, it's not night and day but it is there.
Side note: monitors are designed to let you know what is going on in a song or mix, not for great sound, but if it sounds good on monitors it will sound good on 99% of the speakersystems outhere.
In both cases I listened with a mixer that comes with a excellent soundcard so your conclusions or findings with other mixers can show other results.

So you could say that the sound coming from Serato is more neutral and the sound coming from Traktor is a bit coloured which lot of people like.
These are my personal findings.
Use what you like to use

I would like to have some feedback on this subject, because I love audio.
So if someone with a Z2 for instance could set it up with SSL just for audio comparisations ( no Rane soundcard) and report his findings.
Any other mixer is welcome offcourse.
This is not meant to show which one is best, but just to show any differences, if any.

 

I heard what I heard , now right or wrong is the least of my concerns .

 

It's rare that if you see someone out side the internet(Or this forum) that it will be the same exact vibe as when you discussed something with them on a forum and also the people you see everyday(in person or other places than this forum) won't always give you there user names on of this forum .

 

Hey guys lets try and get this back on topic. The question is "why is Serato more prevalent in the US".
It is starting to get a bit personal and is turning into a Traktor vs Serato debate.