NAJM Dance Music Gear Reviews - Traktor - The NEW Face of DJ Mixing!


Until a little over a year ago if you had any desire to mix CDs or MP3's on a computer, you only had one singular software package to choose from; VisioSonic's PCDJ Digital 1200s software. But if you really wanted to go all out, you needed to shell out big bucks for their Opera package which included some fancy hardware but cost as much as a small car. PCDJ was a novelty, but lacked some of the simplest of features such as automatic beat matching and DJ vinyl scratch effects. In order to determine the BPM (Beats per minute) of a track, you even had to manually tap your computer's space bar in order for a close approximation! Oh how I longed for automated beat counting and matching. When I want to play a set, I want to focus on the mood of the music, not the mechanics of the software, a sad state of affairs indeed. I had a $3500 computer running a $300 piece of software and I still had to tap my keyboard along with the music in order to figure out a BPM? A few months passed and some really promising hardware CD players (Tascam) started to emerge on the market with some really advanced features that automated many of these mundane DJ tasks, but fell in the pricey $1500 range. Hope began to fade about being able to mix on my computer. Back in the early summer, I received a little box from NI (Native Instruments) called Traktor (TRAKTOR DJ is now distributed exclusively by Steinberg through their European retail channels)- The New Face of DJ-Mixing. It touted that it would mix, transform, and more importantly automate my CD and MP3 mixes! I'll admit I was a bit skeptical that on the heels of PCDJ, a software package would actually do what I wanted and needed it to. Simply put, after installing Traktor, I never looked back! So what does this elegantly designed software package do? First and foremost, it is two high quality CD / MP3 players combined with a mixer. But it doesn't stop there. There are so many high-end goodies thrown in that the mere value of this software far exceeds its suggested retail cost of $199! And you don't need a super computer to take full advantage of this software! I ran Traktor on my Dell PC Pentium II 400 Mhz with a Sound Blaster Live Platinum sound card running Windows 98 with no problem. (Please note that you will want a sound care similar to the SB Live so that you have two discrete outputs for individual deck monitoring.)



Let's begin with the Playlist, which is conveniently located directly below the player and mixer. This is where you simply add folders containing your MP3's or drives containing your audio CDs. The Playlist replaces your crate of records or box of CDs. All sorts of valuable data about the tracks are displayed here including the track names, artist, time (length), BPM's, album name, cue points, fader points and so on. Everything you would need to know about the track is at your fingertips. All you have to do it load a track into one of the players, hit the play button, and the BPM's are automatically calculated for you! (This tool alone is worth the retail price… Bravo!) Then you can drag them into a playlist order and arrange them how you plan to play them. Adding tracks and entire folders is a breeze and you can easily remove any tracks from the playlist without affecting the files on your hard drive. You can even save these playlists for quick access at a future date. And if any of your files are missing or were moved from their original location on your hard drive, Traktor lets you know by highlighting them in red. No more surprises! The only feature that I would like to see added to the Playlist would be a print / export list information for printing and archiving purposes. The main beef of the program is the dual audio players (MP3, Wave, and Audio CD) that are of the highest quality and are based on Reaktor technology. All of the standard controls you'd expect are provided including a pitch shifting bar that really does a good job with speeding up and slowing down tracks. Traktor boasts a unique beat recognition which is very accurate to the tenth of a BPM. Traktor's aligning feature does a great job at lining up the beats for you as well. Tempo and phase of two tracks can be automatically matched, allowing you to focus on the mix. Phase shift is displayed for easy manual beat matching. One of the best things about the players is that the waveform is displayed in a preview window, so you can actually see the data while it plays - which is extremely valuable if you are playing a new track that you are unfamiliar with and you're not sure where the breaks are- so see them coming! You can even click on the waveform window to do some digital scratching which is extremely realistic. Granted all you vinyl junkies may turn your nose up at this kind of thing, but this is the future of mixing! The Mixer is where you create all the magic and offers a cross fader with selectable sensitivity and a convenient auto-fade feature (you set the length in seconds) as well as punch-in, boost and mute buttons. A 3-band EQ with individual kill switches per band is present on each deck. There's even an 8-pole bandpass/notch filter that allows you to totally impose your own sound on the mix. The Cue section of the program is where you can create all of your customized Loops for extending intros and outros. Traktor's beat detector makes it possible to set tempo accurate loops on the fly. Simply hit the loop set button during playback and the playback goes into a non-stop loop. Shift the loop position forward or backward and finally leave the loop - all this without getting out of groove. All user interactions during a Traktor session can be recorded with sample accurate precision. For the first time it is possible to generate a mix as a pure control file without replicating the audio material. Interrupt and resume mixing at any point or edit parts of a mix in a second pass for additional effects. Traktor files contain all information needed to identify the tracks used in the mix and reduce hours of performance to a size perfectly suited for sharing and distributing mixes over the internet. In addition you can record a mix as a WAV format. This allows you to burn your mix to an audio cd. (I recommend Sonic Foundry's CD Architect for splitting up the wav file into audio tracks). Traktor is by no means absolutely perfect, but it certainly is the most promising DJ mixing software I've laid my hands on to date. As with all music tools, practice makes perfect. I will admit that it's a little difficult to do too many complex mixing tasks live with just a computer mouse. Native Instruments does offer a control unit (4Control) specifically designed for use with Traktor that would free up your hands in those instances.



My greatest complaint is the unpredictability of the player should you not lock the correct deck to the locked BPM. (Believe me it's easy to do this and when you do- they player will emit some horribly warped sounds!) The player will simply go haywire if you don't do things in a specific order. What I mean by this is; load song into deck, start playing song #1, set pitch to desired speed, load next song into second deck, lock it's BPM to the set pitch, start playing song #2, lock the auto beat lock, wait for synchronization, start your mix. The only other pitfall that Traktor provides is its ability to let you load a new track into a deck that's already playing.. much to my surprise! Perhaps future versions will not allow you to do this and temporally "lock" the deck that is currently playing? Bottom line is that Traktor is an absolutely amazing piece of affordable technology. Don't get lazy with it! Pay attention to your mix. Take advantage of Traktor's automated features in order to take you're your mix to the next level. Prepare your files and loops in advance. Set a regimented list of tasks and follow them in the specified order and soon you'll be mixing like a pro in the digital domain.

NAJM Product Scores:

	Originality & Innovation	9
	Hands On Usability	8
	Features	10
	Exceeding Expectations	10
	Quality	10
	Learning Curve	9
	Musicality	8

TRAKTOR AT A GLANCE Interactive waveform display Inspect the track ahead of time on the interactive waveform display. Check and correct the position of cue points according to the represented beat events. Click and drag the waveform with your mouse for precise positioning or for realistic scratching. Filters Shape the sound, change the frequencies and turn up the resonance of the superb 8-pole bandpass/notch filter to boost your mix and create the unique club sound. Beat Sync Section Survey the relative offset of the tracks on the phase display. Automatically match the beats and keep them in line with the austosync function while you focus on the crossfader and the filters. Mix Recording Record all control movements during the performance in TRAKTOR's dedicated file format. Interrupt and resume the recording at any point of your set. Add more effects to your mix in a second pass. X-Fader Assign a MIDI controller to your X-fader or any other panel element for immediate control and live performance. Playlist manager Load tracks into your deck and rearrange them by drag&dropping into the playlist manager. Or you can just relax and listen to an automatically generated mix of your playlist. Monitor Monitor the second deck with headphones separately from the master signal with a multichannel, 3D or second soundcard. Powerful cue section Snap any cue point to the next detected beat. Loop your track with a single key hit. Return to normal playback without dropping the groove. FEATURES MP3, WAVE and Audio-CD players with professional sound quality based on REAKTOR technology. Interactive, previewable waveform display with cue points, pitching, scratching, seek mode and reverse play. Dedicated control file format for recording and editing a mix. Real time recording to hard disk. Fully automated tempo and beat matching available. Beat accurate loops can be set on the fly. Auto-fade function with adjustable time, crossfade with selectable sensitivity, punch-in, boost and mute buttons 3-band EQ (-24dB...+12dB) with 100% kill switches per band for each deck. Powerful 3-band limiter for the master signal. 8-pole bandpass/notch filter with variable width, resonance and cutoff frequency for each deck. Separate monitor output supporting multichannel, 3D and secondary or 2 mono outputs. Assignables MIDI control over all relevant panel elements, optimized for the NI-4CONTROL or any other MIDI controller SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Windows 98/ME/2000, Pentium-II 366 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 16-bit sound card INTERFACES ASIO™, DirectSound™, MME™

For More Information Check out Traktor Online!



			9.5 out of 10 (by HM)
		The New Face of DJ Mixing! TRAKTOR brings professional DJ mixing to the digital domain, unifying listening, interaction, mixing and composition. The modular concept of TRAKTOR integrates two high-quality players with a convenient playlist section, DJ mixer, beat matcher, digital scratcher, cue section and filters.