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Beatgrid drift on 90s & 80s dance tracks.

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  • May 22, 2012 at 7:13 am #1004784
    backtothefront
    Participant

    I’ve similar frustrations whilst ripping my vinyl and not really found a proper solution other than getting the outro spot on to make mixing out simpler and then riding the pitch and/or jog wheel to mix the track in. If only NI would work on flexible beatgrids instead of remix decks for Traktor I’d be a happy chap.

    May 23, 2012 at 12:35 pm #1004878
    Reason808
    Participant

    Yeah better beat grids from NI would be great, but I’m not holding my breath. Supposedly the beat detection is better in the new version.
    I suspect that slight wobble or mechanical drift from a turntable could be the culprit for vinyl rips.
    I’m wondering if the quality of the MP3 affects drift, seems unlikely though.
    I’m hoping there’s an engineer in these forums who can weigh in.

    May 23, 2012 at 1:57 pm #1004880
    D-Jam
    Participant

    Most of the music made in the 80s and 90s were made with actual machines over a DAW. Yes they had sequencers, but many producers back then were rank amateurs and thus did not have easy tools to make things as tight as they can today.

    The only real solution is to manually beatmatch or do every trick you know to fix those beatmaps.

    May 23, 2012 at 11:51 pm #1004931
    Steelo
    Participant

    backtothefront, post: 20642, member: 1433 wrote: If only NI would work on flexible beatgrids instead of remix decks for Traktor I’d be a happy chap.

    The new beat detection has been improved quite a bit and is much better at analyzing tracks with more advanced or broken up beats. They have stated that when 2.5 comes out, the grids will be more flexible, particularly with songs that have changing BPMs

    May 23, 2012 at 11:54 pm #1004932
    Steelo
    Participant

    I’d say it comes down to a combination of what D-Jam said, just above, and the fact you are using dicey MP3s from dicey sources. I find its typical of most vinyl rips to have atleast a minute amount of drift too.

    May 24, 2012 at 4:21 am #1004948
    Reason808
    Participant

    Thanks for the replies guys. Good to know beat detection in 2.5 is better.
    I’ll upgrade after I DJ a party this weekend 🙂

    Has anybody seen beatgrid drift go away when they bought or found another mp3 of the same exact track?
    I’d like to know before I buy a bunch of ‘catch up’ mp3s.

    For what its worth, I’ve been adding cue points to old Yello songs this week.
    It illustrates this problem perfectly:

    • I Love You (extended mix) / 3rd album, 1983 — Beat Grid Drift
    • Vicious Games (extended mix) / 4th album, 1985 — Locked on!

    . . . . Okay so their production improved with time, right? Wrong!

    • Bimbo (album version) / 1st album, 1980 — Locked On!
    May 24, 2012 at 4:39 am #1004951
    Steelo
    Participant

    reason808, post: 20808, member: 831 wrote:

    Has anybody seen beatgrid drift go away when they bought or found another mp3 of the same exact track?
    I’d like to know before I buy a bunch of ‘catch up’ mp3s.

    I have found this to definitely be the case. In the past I have downloaded lots of crappy MP3s from dicey places in attempt to getting my hands on hard to find tracks. It often ends badly, with them either having poor audio quality, being too quiet or drifting badly. I’m willing to bet if you get the original CDs or purchased the MP3 legally, they would be fine.

    May 24, 2012 at 5:41 am #1004952
    Reason808
    Participant

    I’m willing to bet if you get the original CDs or purchased the MP3 legally, they would be fine.

    Actually, not always. My ETBG example in my OP was from the general release CD single, and I’ve had drift from other rips of my purchased CD tracks. However, I did my CD rips years ago and wasn’t careful, maybe that affected the beatgrid. However, my cue work on this section of my collection yields conflicting results. My “Bimbo” example cited above was also part of the poorly ripped batch of CDs I purchased, but it has a perfect beatgrid.

    Have you specifically found an improvement in beatgrid drift as opposed to audio quality when you repurchased an mp3?

    As I understand it, crappy mp3s can still have perfect beatgrids. Even if the audio is terrible, the sync can be perfect.

    May 24, 2012 at 7:08 am #1004958
    Steelo
    Participant

    They can still have an ok beatgrid but I often find if the mp3 is dodgy then there will be problems somewhere whether its sound quality or something else. I would suggest ripping CDs with another piece of software. I’ve got a Mac and use a free one called MAX. Its not the fastest but you can choose which encoder you want and the sound quality is excellent.

    PS Traktor 2.5 has just been released early! Check out the thread in the DJ software section for instructions. Apparently its significantly improved.

    May 24, 2012 at 10:54 am #1004964
    Reason808
    Participant

    Probably right on getting legit mp3s, but its not always possible. Supposedly everything’s on the internet, but I’m finding many of my old favorites and b-sides aren’t – certainly not at 320bps. And frankly, some of these obscurities are not worth the effort, but are nice to have for completeness. But I need to dig deeper beyond the four main stores I search. Happy to hear the early reports on 2.5 are good.

    May 25, 2012 at 1:46 am #1005024
    Reason808
    Participant

    Just thought of something. Could VBR encoding affect the beatgrid?

    The technology clusters data in bursts around the “busy” parts of an mp3.
    I’m no expert, but it seems possible that the encoding process could introduce subtle tempo shifting during these bursts. The general consumer wouldn’t notice it but DJ’s would.

    Steelo (or anybody else) have experience or knowledge about this?

    I don’t wanna drop $300+ USD updating my collection with a format that might be creating drift.
    Amazon.com encodes all its mp3s with VBR. They’re the biggest source of legit mp3s I know of besides iTunes.

    May 25, 2012 at 2:14 am #1005026
    Steelo
    Participant

    I’ve always been a bit suspiscious of VBR MP3s. I avoid them although I have nothing to really base this off except what other people have said. I have a feeling the tracks I’ve had issues with in the past may have been VBR. Some people swear you can here changes in sound quality when VBR tracks are played on a decent system but I’m yet to hear it myself as I don’t use them.

    May 25, 2012 at 3:16 am #1005034
    Reason808
    Participant

    Well the recent blog post on this said early attempts at VBR were dodgy but are now better. Hard to know when things were encoded. Most likely the old catalog stuff was mass encoded for iTunes and Amazon years ago and probably using older technology. I used to work at big media websites and mass digitizations like this were usually outsourced to a variety of smaller companies.

    I’m sure iTunes/Amazon VBR’s are better than the semi-legit Russian mp3 sites, but they may not have the extensive back catalog the Russians ones do. Amazon was definitely missing a lot of old YMO tracks.

    If there’s another legit source for 80s/90s dance tracks it’d be good to know. A Beatport for old dance music would be great. And yes, I might be getting a little to anal-retentive here. 🙂

    May 25, 2012 at 3:18 am #1005035
    Steelo
    Participant

    I often find obscure tracks that I didn’t think I could get (legally) anywhere, at Juno Download.

    May 25, 2012 at 4:18 am #1005046
    Reason808
    Participant

    Thx.

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