Traktor Beat-Gridding Dilemma

Great tip bro.

The beatgrid in Cross actually feels like a good mix of Serato and Ableton. Which per se is no bad thing as both have excellent gridding.
Also Cross does something similar to Serato’s “smart sync” when you need it, which is a really cool feature.
Add to that the key detection etc. and Cross does look really nice for the price point.

I can’t comment too much about the sample drops. But there are 4 decks, two of which can be set to sample decks. I used sample decks in Traktor in the early days before they became remix decks, after that I was lost and didn’t feel I really needed more than 2 decks (in part because I usually have two CDJ-type players with me anyway as ch1/ch4 inputs). MC (just realised that is the shortcut for MixVibes Cross, must have been made for Denon controllers … MC … 6000 :-)) has two nice clear buttons in the top bar that say 2 and 4 to very easily switch between 2- and 4-deck operation. Great if you only use your sample decks some of the time.

Library works fine, all buttons (view, load A/B and such) operational, you can choose between regular list mode add albumbrowser (horizontally “run” through you track/album covers) and/or genre (like RekordBox, no surprise!). There is an analyze and an info button to the right of the browser for quick access to these function which I find handy. They are right above the preview player which I like.

Workflow-wise I’d say the parallel waveforms are a beauty and the sync operation is a) intuitive B) easy to use (you effectively have two play buttons, one for regular play, the other will start the track synced) and C) intelligent (you can sync on any beat or choose phrase sync (it syncs on the 1-beat, regardless where you hit Sync). This is the only thing I would change about the mapping. Now Play is mapped to Play on the MC6000, and Sync to the small round sync button. If you predominantly use the sync mode, I can see how you’d like to switch those two mappings and have the MC6000 Play button control the Sync button in MC. Even if you want to use regular play button and not sync, I shows you in one easy circle in two colors if the beats are in sync and where in the phrase you are, which is nice if you are trying manual matching and need a visual aid to what your ears tell you.

All in all I’d say clean, pretty intuitive interface. Most, if not all (need some more hours on it playing gigs) buttons seem to work as they are supposed to. Takes a (very) little getting used to the FX, they are set up differently, but once you get it, it makes sense. I can see how some would think it looks a bit boring. I love that, I don’t look for nice graphics, I need functionality and everything that distracts from what I don’t need.

As I said earlier/elsewhere, I love the fact that (since 2.5) not only there is key detection (for those poor souls without MiK 8-)), but that you can choose between the two ways of notation and are not forced to either use an outside tool, do a lot of manual replacement work or learn a different notation). YOU are in charge, good job MixVibes! The key shows in the player window, which was something I missed in 2.4. BUT, they made it so that I really don’t need it there anymore (I wanted it so I could see the key a song was in when looking for the next track without having to look it up in the library first)! If you look for a new track, regardless of what search/selection criterium you chose, it will show the matching keys in ORANGE. Showing you instantly what songs are good (I can imagine for the hard-core harmonic mixers that they’ll want an option/button that allows you to ONLY show matching tracks) as harmonically matching.

Import of Traktor info is of course very clever if you want people to go from the number one software to you. It’s compatible with RekordBox which, I would think, is a very big PLUS for people playing out on CDJ’s with RB support a lot.
There is an iPad app which I haven’t tried yet, but might be an argument for some as well. Where Traktor DJ is really a separate app, the MC version is more of a remote control I think. Again, I need to toy with that one yet.

Another nice little feature in my opinion is the smiley system for track quality. From dark green to red, a series of smiley faces indicate the track quality in kbps. Wav, 320 MP3 or 256 AAC is the brightest green with a sunglass smiley, red being 128 or lower (sic) with a very red sad smiley. For a visual guy like me it’s so much easier than having yet another column of numbers. Obviously this is only handy when you have a big collection that isn’t all wav, 320kbps or 256 AAC. If you have a small collection and everything is the same than it doesn’t offer much extra (well, all the green happy smileys should make you happy of course).

Hope that helps.

Greetinx,
C.

Free 30-day Cross DJ full feature trial (no DVS) = impossible to beat 😀

Greetinx,
C.

P.s. Tip: next time you quote such a lengthy post, leave the first sentence, insert a few … an then delete the rest. Just leave the /quote in brackets at the end.

Chuck van Eekelen, post: 42761, member: 2756 wrote: Free 30-day Cross DJ full feature trial (no DVS) = impossible to beat 😀

Greetinx,
C.

P.s. Tip: next time you quote such a lengthy post, leave the first sentence, insert a few … an then delete the rest. Just leave the /quote in brackets at the end.

Oops, forgot my forum ettiquette 🙂
Thanks again.

Same here. Only have found the free version which doesn’t support controller use, only keyboard-mouse. If you have a link, that would be greeeaaatt!!