Mar 19, 2020 5G can be used to combat Coronavirus: Know how this can happen China has suggested ways as to how 5G can help deal with Coronavirus outbreak. Read on to find out. Unleash TRAKTOR PRO 2’s full potential with the huge choice of custom MIDI hardware user mappings available online. There are few TRAKTOR features as powerful as its MIDI mapping capability. Twist knobs, push faders and punch buttons on your MIDI device to control anything you like, from track prep and selection to looping and effects triggering. Apr 01, 2012 Ean's going through the Traktor Preferences window and taking us on a tour of what the most critical, need-to-know settings are for anyone DJing with Traktor Pro 2. Read more DJing and Traktor.
In this video, Native Instruments DJ product specialist and Dubspot instructor DJ Endo shares a quick tip on how to use Traktor’s built-in auto gain feature to make DJ mixes in Ableton Live. By using Traktor to detect volume differences between tracks in a mix, this method allows you to create smooth transitions between tracks in Ableton, eliminating the guesswork and the need to make detailed gain adjustments. We’d like to know if these videos were helpful to you? Do you have questions? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
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Jan 20, 2012 In part 1 of the series, Endo walks us through Traktor audio setup and timecode configuration, revealing all the nuts and bolts and showing you how to make Traktor work the way you want it. The following summary is a exert taken from Endo’s previous mega-post Traktor Pro Preferences Guide – Troubleshooting + Setup Tips by Dubspot’s DJ Endo. Is there a way to assign a gain value to a track in the Traktor library instead of changing it manually during recording? I'm mixing a lot of sound design and different bpms, but not all levels are the same (some quieter than others due to being ambient etc.). I can't seem to find anything about it, so i'm not sure exactly if it's possible.
A Lot of professional DJ’s today use Ableton Live to produce Studio DJ Mixes and mix compilations. Ableton Live is great for arranging your DJ mixes and doing creative re-edits of your tracks so each mix drops exactly the way you want it to. Ableton also allows you to EQ your mix, and then go back afterwards and draw in your EQ curves so they are perfect, and also has some great effects that you can use to polish off your mixes with.
One thing that’s very important in a DJ Demo is that every track you play is played at the same volume (gain). If your volume levels are all over the place, the person listening will have to keep turning their stereo up and down, and it will annoy them.
In Traktor Pro there is a very handy feature (called “autogain”) that will make sure that every track is the same volume when you load it into a deck. This is crucial for digital DJ’s since most tracks are mastered at different levels. With Autogain turned on, you can set the gain (volume) of each channel on your DJ mixer to the same level, and not have to touch them all night.
One thing that Ableton is missing is an autogain feature, which makes it difficult to get the levels for every track equal when doing Ableton DJ Mixes. I have found a great workaround for this using Traktor Pro’s Gain recognition.
Traktor Pro 3 Auto Gain
When Traktor Imports a new track, it scans the track for overall volume (gain), transients and BPM (Beats Per Minute).
In the Traktor preferences, there is an option to turn on “Autogain” so that every track you play is the same volume.
With Autogain enabled, Traktor will automatically raise or lower the gain knob when you load into a deck, based on the gain value it detected when analyzing the track. This way, all of the gain adjusting is done in the software, which is about 1/3 of the battle when DJing.
There is actually a column in Traktor’s Browser where you can see the exact values in Decibals that Traktor will have to adjust the gain of each track so they are the same volume. The column is called “Analyzed.”
To show this column, right or ctrl click above the Traktor browser in a grey area and choose to show the “analyzed” column. This column contains all the autogain values.
You can even print out these values in an html style list by right or ctrl clicking on the playlist and choosing “save as webpage”.
Make sure that the column called “analyzed” is checked.
Depending on which categories you selected your list may look something like this.
You can see the column on the left is the track title, and the column on the right tells you how many dB Traktor will adjust each track so that they are equal in volume.
Now when you go into Ableton, drop your songs into the arrange window, and adjust the “clip volume” for each track to the autogain value that Traktor came up with.
Now all of your tracks in your Ableton DJ Mix will be the same volume when you play them, and your mixes will have a more stable volume level throughout the mix. Happy mixing!
Article written by Mike Henderson aka DJ Endo – Endo is a DJ and product specialist for Native Instruments and lives in Brooklyn. Listen to mixes from him at www.djendo.com.
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When I’ve taught friends to DJ, one of the things I try to get across early is the importance of matching the levels of the two tracks being mixed. A sudden big drop in the volume is a surefire way to lose energy on the dance floor – or even clear it if you’re really unlucky! The way Traktor handles metering and the labels on its volume controls can lure you into making a real mess of your levels.
When I first realised this on switching from CDJs and an analogue mixer to using Traktor and a sound card, it prompted me to take a deeper look into the best way to get the level right. Today I’m going to explain why turning the master volume down in Traktor is essential if you mix “in the box”, ie in internal mode – which if you use a DJ controller, is exactly what you do.
The problem:
You may have already run into this problem. You’ve just dropped a dancefloor-filling track, but when you try to smoothly bring in the next tune, it’s too quiet. Faders and the main volume control are already all the way up, and there’s nowhere left to go. If you’ve got the master limiter disabled, turning the channel’s gain further just results in nasty distortion. If you do have Traktor’s master limiter switched on, you can crank the volume further, but at the expense of sound quality again.
The limiter is basically a compressor, which quietens down the loudest parts of the track, “filling out” the sound to give the impression of more volume. (You know you are hitting the limiter when the red lights on Traktor’s output meters come on.)
As most dance tracks released these days are already heavily compressed, adding further compression is not a good idea if you want your set to sound good (see the Loudness Wars video for more info on the effects of over-compression).
The solution:
I’ll explain the whys and wherefores in a moment, but here’s the simple solution to the problem:
- Turn Traktor’s master output control down – somewhere around -10dB works well (assuming you have a decent sound card)
- Turn the gain on the amp or analogue mixer you’re plugged in to up to compensate if necessary – this will give you plenty of headroom, so when you drop that track that hasn’t been mastered quite so loud, you can crank up the channel gains in Traktor without worrying about distortion
Tip: If you can, sound check before your set with a track that you know is quiet – make sure it sounds loud enough and that you aren’t clipping (driving into the red) the in-house equipment that you are hooked up to.
Why it works…
The key to understanding what’s going on here is to understand what the “0dB” setting means in Traktor. dB (short for “decibel”) is a relative measure of volume – it tells you the difference between two levels.
Many analogue mixers have “0dB” marked on the VU meter – this usually corresponds to 0dBV, which means it is measuring the difference between the current level and an output voltage of 1 volt. You can push the level above this and still get a nice clean output from most mixers – on the best ones, up to +20dB on the mixer’s output meter.
But in Traktor, 0dB means “maximum output”. If you are using a good DJ sound card (or controller with a decent one built-in), this could mean you are putting out up to a walloping +20dBV. Leaving the master gain set to 0dB in Traktor is like turning every control on your mixer right up to maximum at the start of your set. Not a good idea. So why would Native Instruments choose to mark the gain control like this? Well, it’s actually fairly common for digital equipment to designate 0dB as the maximum output. If you had auto gain turned off and were using Traktor in external mixer mode, sending each tune out to your sound card at maximum volume wouldn’t be such a bad thing, as most DJ mixers can handle a pretty hot signal coming in.
Why use -10dB?
Earlier I suggested -10dB as a good setting for your master. There are a couple of reasons why.
Earlier I suggested -10dB as a good setting for your master. There are a couple of reasons why.
The first is simply experience; I’ve found this gives enough headroom to level match tracks without slamming into the limiter. If you play lots of older tracks you might find you need to use an even lower setting.
The second reason is related to the actual output voltage you are sending to the next thing in the audio chain. If you’ve every played on a big system with a sound engineer, you’ve probably been asked to “keep it out of the red” – ie to stick to a maximum of 0dB on the mixer. A clean 0dBV signal allows the guy running the system to crank it up to full volume without worrying about it being destroyed.
I use a Motu UltraLite sound card which has a maximum output around 17dBV, so in theory I should set my master output in Traktor to -17dB or lower in order to give a real output of 0dBV. If I was hooking my sound card up directly to a pro amplifier or a big sound system, that’s what I would do. In most cases though, digital DJs hook up their kit to one of the mixer inputs. DJ mixers are usually optimised these days for the relatively hot output level from a Pioneer CDJ (around 6dBV). Bringing the master level up in Traktor to -10dB with my set up gives a similar level on my mixer as I get with a CDJ.
Traktor Pro Auto Gainesville
Remember…
The key thing to take away here is that 0dB in Traktor really means maximum output. Using a master setting of -10dB (or even much lower) will give you a fighting chance of keeping the levels kicking on the dancefloor without distorting.
Traktor Pro 3 Torrent Mac
• This was a guest post by Colin Brown, who is a DJ with over 10 years’ experience, and who is also system tech for the Babble Collective Soundsystem.
Do you have level problems when using Traktor to DJ out and about with? Have you battled with a sound engineer about how the settings should be? Let us know in the comments.