Recordbox – Any good for me

Hey Ian,

A few things strike me as interesting in your post.

Your concept of using a controller: “I find the whole button pressing thing a bit robotic for me” for example. Then there is key detection and finally the bothersome proces of beat gridding and music management.

Let me try to address those before answering your question, beginning with the last one.

There is, as is often the case when transitioning from one medium to another (true for vinyl to CD as it is for CD or vinyl to digital) always a certain amount of energy that goes into prepping your collection. As the capabilities of each medium increase, so does that amount of energy.
Once that initial session is done, the upkeep and maintenance shouldn’t be all that much higher than with vinyl. I know, I was on vinyl from 1987 to the late 1990s. You mention things like beatgridding (which Traktor does notoriously bad for anything other than electronically produced music with unwavering or at least only one BPM per track by the way). Since you don’t mention what your particular style/genre of music is, I don’t know if that contributed. As for music management, yes there is some work to do, but it shouldn’t be all that time consuming. Clearly setting cue points, loops and such is extra work, that pays itself off when in the booth. And something that remains true even if you move to RekordBox.

There are programs that do beatgridding better than Traktor, with Serato and Mixvibes Cross amongst the two that I have tried (after becoming thoroughly disappointed with Traktor) that are very good at beatgridding (I adapt maybe one in every 15-20 tracks). Also beatgridding is only important if you want to use sync, which I am kinda guessing is not something you find very important and/or want beat-matched FX to run in sync with the track (this IS important of course). My point is that with the right software, you don’t need to beatgrid every track manually and the ones that you do, shouldn’t take all that much time.

More importantly, if your collection is dynamic to the tone of, say, 10 new tracks a month, then the whole process of prepping your tracks should take less than an hour or so. I do sessions of an hour a week or so. I collect during the week, listen during the week and at the moment I set aside for my collection, I decide which tracks to buy. Seldom more than 2-3 a week. I run them through a few tools (Platinum Notes and MixedinKey), set all the metadata (tags) straight and add them to iTunes. I then open my DJ software and import them from the “recentely added” list in iTunes. My software does the beatgridding, I check if everything is as it’s supposed to be and I am ready.

I use MixedinKey (paid software) because it is, imho, the best in it’s field. With a rate of over 95% correct, no major/minor misreads and only 2 tracks off by a single fifht, I feel confident trusting the results it generates and I can live with 1 out of 20 being wrong. The next best thing is freeware Keyfinder. It does about 77% accuracy, which translates to one in four being wrong, which I consider bad odds already (would you keep using your navigation software if it delivered you to the wrong place every 4th time?). After that come the DJ softwares, other keyfinding tools and RekordBox (35% !, granted not current version 3 tested, but still). So, even with having key detection in your software, chances are huge that it won’t be all that brilliant and thus, in my eyes, pretty useless. Clearly trusting your ears is always prudent, but it would be nice to be able to have some faith in what the system came up with.

Here’s why this was a point of interest to me. One of your biggest gripes with using DJ software (i.e. Traktor) was with the music management part of it. The thing is that RekordBox in it’s core is just that, Music Management software for compatible Pioneer gear (yes, it only works with/on selected Pioneer boxes 🙂 ). So, moving from Traktor or any other DJ software to RekordBox removes a lot of the extra’s and leaves you with … tata … beatgridding and music management!

The other point is about your conception of controllers. At the end of the day, a controller is nothing but two decks with a mixer in the middle and all the associated buttons you’d find on any club gear. Player controls, hot cues, loops, EQ, FX and of course a few extra buttons for searching and loading tracks. The last few years pretty much all controllers (not all but pretty much) have added pads, some only do your cue points and loop controls, others have as many as 4 different functions that may include stuff like Slicer control. In which case the term “performance pads” seems warranted.
My point is, that you don’t HAVE to use a slicer or Serato Flip or samples or anything else that you see others use in their sets and which indeed do require a bit more intense use of the buttons/pads on a controller. I own a Pioneer DDJ-SX and it comes with pads. I only use them for the cue points, and to fire off an occasional sample (happy birthday come to mind LOL).
So, they are there, but they rest in peace when I use it.

For me, RekordBox is something I use when I need to go out and play on a Pioneer club set without the option of bringing my own gear. Other than that, I can’t be bothered with it. I keep my tracks in iTunes. Do my prep work for a gig on the couch in my living room (deciding what music to take to a gig). I don’t feel the kind of time crunch you are describing when it comes to maintaining my collection.

Hope that helps some in your decision making process.

Hey Ian,

We have moved to a unified login a while back. Much handier as you can access blog, forums and courses you own with one login, but some have problems with their old logins.

I hear you on the Abelton thing. Done that, and didn’t know how fast to get away from it again!

You might wanna check out the XDJ-RX, it could tick most of your boxes:

http://www.digitaldjtips.com/2015/01/namm-2015-video-pioneer-xdj-rx-talkthrough/