VDJ vs. Traktor

I agree with Hee in many points and I have used Traktor myself for a longo time and still do not hugely dislike it or anything. The main feature that is missing for me is parallel waveform and I cannot get “warmed up” with how some things work in Traktor. Hee is right that with the grid and that “indicator thing” above the decks (Traktor users prolly have a name for that white moving bar) you do not need the parallel waveform, but it is just more intuitive to me.

Also VDJ is largely depending on 2 things:
– You need the Pro Version for it to really shine and most people compare an LE version to traktor
– You need a custom skin, the default is really bad and I can see why many people have problems with it

Also you need a lot of time to make it do anything like you want it to, but you can… this can be an up or downside (for Hee it is a downside). For me, well I prolly move to Serato DJ once it is there…

Then of course there is a cost factor. While Traktor licenses are cheap (nowadays anyway) usually NI lets you buy a new license once a new major version comes out. So either Serato or VDJ might be cheaper in the long run, as you get free updates for live.

And last but not least there is broadcasting. For Internet Radio I will always use VDJ. I know you can setup Traktor/Serato with shoutcast or something, but the tight integration of broadcast with VDJ, broadcast routing directly in software etc. just makes me love VDJ for that kind of stuff. Maybe I give icecast with Serato a testdrive, but so far I really like the integration there…

In VDJ you could add a sync command to all mappings of hot_cues, play buttons and other places where you would want to snap to the beatgrid after making a jump through the song. Of course, for this to work you need perfect beatgrids which requires a lot of preparation. But that would be necessary in traktor as well.

you should take a look at the mapping of the buttons that you use for triggering your cue points. It most likely says something like ‘hot_cue 1’ for the button that triggers cue 1. If you change this to ‘hot_cue 1 & sync’ it will also sync your track after triggering cue 1 (this effect should be nearly instantaneous).

Marcelo Neri, post: 31260, member: 4405 wrote: Hee Won Jun, what you said is just to put songs in beatmatch and phrase matched. Ok! I can do this on Traktor but and then? How many beat jumps to “pull” the CUE point to the right place? See my point?
And more:
Still on VDJ, sometimes even matching those 1sts beats, and jumping by 16 beats (at a time), I just go closer, not accurate. So I got to keep beat jumping just one beat at a time time to “pull” the CUE point to the right place. Thanks to the overlapping wave forms I can fix it at time.
That happens ’cause sometimes songs are not 4/4 (“quaternário” in latin), or whatever.
I mean, in Traktor I didn’t see yet a 100% secure way to make this kind of advanced mixing technic without error…
Thanks anyway.

Okay i think you are missing what Quantizing really does.

Here is my workflow: With Every song that i have I setup up Cue Points. Normally My cue points are as follows:
First beat of into, 32 beats after first into, 1st breakdown(Chorus), The Drop(body), 2nd Breakdown, 2nd Drop, 64 beats before the end of the track, 32 beats before end of the track.

This gives me a total of 8 cue points. If there are iconic pieces within the song i may not set cue points for the outtros and cue point the iconic pieces. I do this so that i can mix in at any point of a song, as well i can jump and do live edits on the fly, eg…I bring in the 1st breakdown…and as it is about to go into the Drop i cue point to the 2nd Drop, to cut out the first drop and will make my mixing into the track a lot easier.

Now with Quantizing, what this does is…if your beatgrids are set properly, when i jump to ANY cue point i am still right on beat.

Using this method you do not need to have your songs sync’ed as the quantize feature will keep your songs on beat once they are beat matched.
After its just a matter of counting…when i know that the first track is coming to the 1st beat of 32 i will bring in song 2 by hitting the cue point that i already have set on the 1st beat.

Now there are some tracks that may do some really off beat crap or drops not on a 32nd beat. This is where the beatjump feature is really handy…I can move up or down 1-32 beats depending on how much i am out of PHRASE.

Beat = 1, Bar = 4 Beats, Phrase = 32 Beats

If you need me to upload a video of this i can…but i think its pretty self explanatory.

the 3000 is more tightly integrated with VDJ ChrisGames

I simply have both and use both. When im in need to display videos I simply use Virtual DJ. When I dont use videos and want better quality and more effects I just use Traktor.
Basically if I want to entretain the crowd with music and videos: Virtual DJ
If I want to entretain the crowd with music, effects and live remixes: Traktor