» Traktor Scratch / Studio Review

[Steinz]

Will keep this quite short but thought might be useful to anyone considering getting into a digital vinyl system .

I bought Traktor scratch but took advantage of the christmas deal they were doing which meant I got a free upgrade to Traktor studio 3.3 for free .I'll explain the differences later .

TS (as ppl call it on a forum ) is the most expensive of the systems at the mo at 395 quid . Serato is the next down in price and is more popular as its proven itself to be rock solid and is especially popular with hip hop dj's . The reason i went with Traktor was because it offered more features in its effects , looping , 4 decks and midi from what i could tell . I was abit worried that it wasnt as tried and tested as Serato but i went for it anyway.

Traktor needs a decent system to run on and pretty much only runs on Intel Mac laptops and above (im a mac user , similar specs needed on PC) so my old Powerbook wouldnt cut it even with 2 gigs ram . I got a new Macbook with 4gigs ram (which i havnt installed yet) .

What u get out the box is 2 control vinyls , 1 cd control ( yes it works with cdj's not just turntables) , an Audio8 USB soundcard which has about 8 inputs/outputs and special wires for connecting everything between your TT , Mixer and soundcard . They are special in that they have bundled all the wires together and labelled everything up which really cuts dow time wiring up . If u rocked up to a gig with the soundcard end of things all connected all u need to do is unplug the turntable/cdj , input into the female RCA and replace it with the Input RCA from the soundcard . Once you have your head around what wires doing what its very simple / fast.

I wish I could say Installing the software was simple but it wasnt. After a few failed attempts i had to download a specail installer patch as I was using Leopard OS which is giving them all sorts of problems apparently . Also had to download updated drivers for the Audio8 and TS . Took me a couple days to get it properly working but eventually it all fell into place.

Once your all setup it really is a dream to use , I get all my tracks from Beatport as WAV's , download and load them straight into the track library (tho i do have to edit some of the tags) . There is a feature to login to Beatport direct inside the programme which ive yet to try but hopefully this will eliminate having to edit the tags for the library . TS analyses each track when you bring it in and determines a bpm which is used for synching/fx and loops . Its spot on most of the time but not always in which case its very easy to alter , more later .

I use it in the the Absolute mode which means it works just like a turntable , if u take the needle off it stops , if the needle jumps so does the track etc. Theres also relative mode which basically means it cant skip and Internal mode which is pure laptop djing .

Sound quality goes up to 96khz and you can select what latency you want and also the quality setting for Key lock if u want to use it , also cache size for the decks . These are the setting that will be dependant on your system as to how well TS is gona run . I run it at 48khz with 5ms latencey with no problems tho i havnt delved into the drivers of the soundcard to get the most out of it so maybe could get better . When your settings are to good for your system you get glitches in the audio . Having fx on and key lock put more stress on the system so it takes a little while to work out which setting will suit your style / system .

The fx you have are HP , LP , Band Pass , Flanger , Reverb , Delay and Beatmasher . These can be applied as inserts on the channel or as Sends (if u have that setup) . The filters are emulated from the A&H 92 and sound pretty good .

So far this has all been about TS but as i said i also got an upgrade to Traktor Studio 3.3 There are quite a few differences between the 2 and im pretty glad i got the upgrade . T3 has 4 decks which can all be controlled via 2 turntables as you can swap a deck into internal mode and control another with the turntable as u like . The big thing is the synching feature and Master / Slave settings . Yes this is the auto beatmatch feature . Acording to the bpm that T3 picks up from each track T3 will adjust the pitch to match which ever deck is chosen as the Master . Pressing the sync button will snap the nearest beat to the beat of the master deck . It works to a certain extent but ppl with no prior beatmatching experience this is no holy grail you still need to make adjustments . To refine the feature you can set Beatgrids on tracks to get an exact bpm of a track and in theory make it possible to do 5-10 min mixes with no adjustment . It works by setting an exact marker on the first beat then placing markers on every beat after that according to the bpnm it picked up . You can then go through and check them , adjusting the bpm of he track by 0.01 untill everyt beat matches up and you then have an exact bpm of the track .

This synching thing doesnt interest me at all it takes alot of skill and fum out of djing and has opened the door to a flood of laptop dj's that literally cant beatmatch at all if things go wrong . I used it when i was on the plane to the States to mess around on and i Beatgridded my collection to pass the time . Its cool to use when your away from your turntables and maybe planning a demo mix or something .

The reason i got it was because i wanted to save money on buying tracks but still wanted to use turntables or cdj's . It saves you having to burn cd's or carry much around too .

I think theres 2 ways to use this kind of thing . The first is as i am now which is basically using it to play digital music through traditional means and using your mixer for everything else. The way to get the most out of it is to get a midi controller of some sort . You can then map the effects to knobs and buttons as well as the loops so your still controlling it in a traditional dj way but its coming from the software . All the fx and loops combined with 4 deck funtionality is a very powerful tool with so much you could do with it . Im gona get a controller ( I think a Faderfox or something ) purely for loops / fx then i think thats it as far as equipment goes .

If your considering getting cdj's then i would take a minute to look at Traktor cos it may have everything you need at a lower cost . That said its not without problems if you go to the user board its clear it could be so much better but its potential is massive .

If anyone has any questions just ask , reading back through this its probs not the clearest review ever but it was done on the fly cos i had a quiet half hour at work .
Peace

[Mong]

Really good review mate.

Me thinks you made the right decision getting Traktor scratch. BTW Traktor has been going for a long time so you can be sure they know what they are doing. In fact I started DJing on Traktor many many moons ago i.e. version 1.

[Steinz]

An interesting post on the forum about some of the issues with Traktor 3.3

a letter to NI and the traktor user community - NI User Forums

[Lunt Cips]

Yo Steinz, I use Traktor and a Vestax VCi 100 and I think it's a top piece of kit. I upgraded from 3.2 to 3.3 but very quicky jumped back to 3.2 as 3.3 was fairly crap (changes to the FX sucked, tks files were glitchy etc) If you can find a copy of 3.2 that has TS support I highly recomend it. As you've forked out for 3.3 I would say you've earned the right to seek out a dodgy copy of 3.2

Good review tho mate, but to be honest, as soon as I'm in the position to get my 1210s back I'll be using them as pure vinyl players and the VCI/traktor combo instead of a pair of CDJs

[Steinz]

I think 3.3 is the first version to get TS support . Yeah i been hearing ppl preferd the fx in version 3.2 , hopefully will be sorted in next version , having never used 3.2 it doesnt seem too bad for me cos i dont know any better