DJ Vintage

This is one of the reasons we like using iTunes for collection management. You can use the collection in Serato AND you can use RekordBox to copy playlists from iTunes to USB-stick.

Not sure if there are currently any direct options from Serato to RekordBox, I think not. But I might be wrong.

Anybody else on this one?

Speakers with latency? That is new to me. Unless they are wireless speakers in which case you are not able to DJ with them (or any other wireless speaker).

I am not even sure if you can burn CDs from within iTunes (seriously, who does that anymore LOL), so I will have to leave the answer to that to others.

You are right about them not supporting USB or MP3 playback, so going audio CDs is the only way.

I’d seriously talk to those guys about bringing my RX.

At the end of the day the result stays the same, if Traktor gets it right you are in luck, if it doesn’t there is painfully little you can do to correct the situation. If you use music that needs either very good flexible beatgridding or the option of manually correcting a beat grid, Traktor is just not the most logical choice.

It shines in many areas and has a large following of DJs who find it the best tool for their trade, just as all the others have their own specific forte and resulting fans. Unfortunately (even for quite a few Traktor users) beatgridding is not one of those areas.

As I said, I use Mixvibes Cross with Pioneer DDJ-SX, before that the MC6000 and probably soon the MCX8000

First of all, please look where you put your posts! Help us make our (moderator) lives easier, by not posting in what so clearly is the wrong forum.

On-topic: You wouldn’t. You’d wait til you had a track playing on deck one again, then the new DJ can put his USB stick into deck two, load his track and mix into your current song. So, timing is of the essence. As the new DJ will usually be there on time, it is pretty easy to make a deal about how many more tracks til hand-over.

KRKs or any studio monitor should be kept there, in your “studio”. While they are all called monitors, the job of a studio monitor or playback monitor while practicing DJ-ing is significantly different from that which you need at a gig in a live environment. It needs to be louder, no problem if it’s a bit colored in sound, should have option for stand attachment and have a grille in front of your cones.

Just my three cents.

There are two distinct things you can/might have to do to correct a beat-grid.

1) Assuming the software got the BPM right, then setting the first down-beat should solve your problem. If it doesn’t, you move to the next point.
2) If it gets the beats wrong you may have to either expand the grid or shrink it. Thanks to nice wave-forms today this easy to do. You see if the grid is wrong, just setting the first one right is not gonna help. By changing the grid itself, you can correct that problem.

As Bill said, not all tracks are steady (quantised) beats. And Traktor is known as the worst software for gridding tracks with varying BPM. So if you have tracks like that, tough luck as Traktor won’t be able to handle it correctly. Furthermore NO DJ software gets it right all of the time. Anywhere from 70-90% of the time correct is reasonable.

If you feel you are restricted by this, then it really does pay to invest time and effort into the art of manual beat-matching. Sync is a nice tool to use and clearly can only be used properly with correctly gridded tracks, but it is still that, a tool. If you are dependent on any tool as a DJ (clearly outside the obvious of having some kind of platform to allow you to play tracks and mix them), then you might want to revisit your priorities.

We are not judgmental here about using sync, we think it’s a wonderful tool that can help free you to do other creative things, at the same time we do believe any DJ worth his/her salt should be able to do manual outmatching, for all those times that a synced beat-match is just not in the books.

Hope that helps some.