Traktor compatibility issue with Club gear

It is the combination: Traktor + Windows + CDJ USB drivers… can always lead to disaster.
The driver model of Windows is a nightmare and if you have multiple audio drivers and HID drivers installed for use in Traktor it only gets worse.

This simply is one of the reasons why most of us use Macs. Not because Macs are better in general (they are not), but because of this simple fact.

From a Windows Admin: Only thing you can do is re-install the whole system with newest drivers and hope for the best.

Meh. People love to rag on Windows, but go to the technical support forums and there are piles of Mac users experiencing issues as well – they just choose to ignore that fact when they preach “it just works”.

The bigger question is this – what else is on your PC? Most PC issues are caused by conflicts, and those start happening when you have a lot of crap on your system. Is this a dedicated PC or are you using it for day-to-day stuff too? Did you do a clean install of Windows? Do you run an optimizer before you DJ on it? There are lots of ways to make a PC run smoother than anything else available, but you do have to know your way around a little and take some time maintaining it (I do give Mac points on this front – you don’t need to be as knowledgeable about maintaining your system).

Oddity the problem is not windows per se, or that it would not work.
The problem is if you go to different clubs and use different gear (and Traktor is picky on gear), so one club has Nexus players the next you use an S4, then again use a Denon mixer etc. all the driver models will be loaded and it will create a huge mess within Traktor in Windows. On a Mac all gear will be dealt with with the same generic HID and USB MIDI driver container and there is no mix and match happening in the driver model. Also all drivers on Mac are in a protected sandbox, hence even if the driver crashes, it will just be immediately reloaded and best case you wont notice, worst case you have a small sound glitch, but Traktor will not crash. I have experienced this dozens of times when I was still using Traktor and club gear. It is just the way it is.

If you have a Windows Laptop and use it only for example with your own NI controller and Traktor, you would be fine.