The “stick” you talk about does not come from your primary customers, the audience and not even from most venue owner and promoters (who are mostly interested in drink turn-over and number of people in the house anyway), it only comes from (basically insecure) other DJ’s.
Yet for some reason we sometimes seem to be more bothered by a “fellow” DJ’s opinion than we are by our crowd.
Tools are there to help you. Yes, it pays to be able to drive a stick-shift when your rental company ran out of automatics so you don’t get stuck, but there is no shame in enjoying the pleasures an automatic car offers. It allows you to spend less time moving a stick and pressing extra pedals. Time and energy you can put into other things.
Same with DJ-ing. Sync and beatgridding offers some (power) mixing options that just can’t be obtained with regular gear and/or make it so much easier that you’d be crazy to do it manually if you didn’t have to. I say use the tools when you can and do it manually when you must (or just for your own pleasure, but never for the sake of other DJs).
Just my 3 cents as usual.
.
