Native Instruments Traktor Pro 2 — Review, Thoughts and Opinion
Hello everybody! Long time no see! Been busy…
Anyway, lets get right into it, today I finally upgraded Native Instruments Traktor Studio 3 to Native Instruments Traktor Pro 2. Ive only used it briefly so far, but Im impressed, I really like it. Its totally different from Traktor Studio 3. The interface has been completely redesigned and I gotta say its much easier to use now. Everything is big and clearly marked and its very intuitively laid out (it was before as well, but everything felt kind of squished on the screeen, especially the mixer controlls). The black and gray color scheme with orange and blue highlights is easy on the eyes as well.
So everything you know and love from Traktor Studio 3 is still there, the navigation through your files and playlist is pretty much the same, the way it shows the files in the main window is also very similar, expect now it includes the cover art if its available (I dont remember this being an option before). I find the cover art to be kind of distracting when looking for songs, so Ive turned it off on mine. I am a little confused by all the new icons though that are next to the files.
One feature that I though was very cool was the automatic setup wizard. It checks for any controllers or mixers or other hardware you might have and attempts to make them play nice with Traktor automatically. During this setup process you get to select what kind of deck setup you would like, 2 decks, 4 decks, or 2 decks with 2 samplers. I went for the 2 decks with 2 samplers, which turned out to be a pretty good choice. The 2 samplers give you 4 loops each for each track that you can play and stop as you please, its something you would use for additional effects or something. Its pretty cool.
The only thing that I dont like, or maybe am just not used to yet, is the way the tracks wave forms are displayed. In Traktor Studio 3 they were clear chunky blocks that denoted beats and other sounds, it was pretty easy to just look at a wave form and know what it was going to sound like. Traktor Pro 2 has a new way of displaying the waves. Its much more detailed I guess, but the additional detail takes away the clarity and purpose of what those visual cues are supposed to do. Perhaps there is a way to adjust this that I havent found yet, but the regular + and – on the right side of the wave window doesnt help, the adjustments actually make it harder to see. The only other complaint I have about it is the color schemes for the waves. The various half-tones of blue, red, black and white or spectrum, depending on which color scheme youve chosen, make it even harder to clearly make out the wave forums of individual instruments in a track. If anybody out there knows how to make it look like it did in Traktor Studio, please let me know how to do it!
Overall though if you have Traktor Studio or pretty much any previous version of Traktor, spend the $80 to upgrade you wont be disappointed. And those of you who want to get into the digital DJ game and arent sure if Traktor is what you want, download the demo, try it out and believe me, I bet you buy it!
Software Review: Platinum Notes 2.5 (Win/Mac)
I recently bought the Mac version of Platinum Notes from the makers of Mixed in Key. Platinum Notes takes your music library and applies a bunch of filters to it to fix things like clipped peaks and low levels, it also adjust the pitch to make sure the song is correctly in key and fixes the levels so all your songs play at the same volume. You need a very powerful computer to fun this software, otherwise its going to take forever to analyze and correct your library. It took four and a half days to analyze 990 songs on my PowerBook G4 laptop with 2gb of RAM.
However, there is a serious flaw in the software, it will completely wipe out your ID3 tags unless you go through a complicated process of covering and renaming and redoing the tags BEFORE you run Platinum Notes. Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either. After waiting four days for it to process I loaded the newly processed tracks into Traktor 3 to test out the sound quality, and guess what.. NO TAGS! The only information I had left was the tracks name and the artist. There was no key, no genre, no label, no remixer, no nothing other than the most basic information.
So where does this leave me? It leaves me with 990 tracks that I have no idea what genre most of them go in just by name alone. Im going to have to play each and every song and then edit the tags to fix Platinum Notes errors. It will probably take me an additional four and a half days to fix it.
Im most likely going to seek a refund for the purchase as I feel the software is incomplete, buggy and not functioning properly since it cant keep your track information in tact. If they were able to fix this problem and Platinum Notes was able to keep your information in tact after its work is done, then yes I would recommend this program to everybody, but until then, I suggest you save your money and wait till they either fix it or something better comes along.
Update #1 (2/18/09 9:20am):
I just got an email from the authors of Platinum Notes, and they are indeed working on fixing the tag problem for version 3.0. I am looking forward to the new version as I hope its able to fix the problems with the ID3 tags.
Update #2 (2/19/09 12:03pm):
I talked again with the authors of PN and they have advised me to give it another chance and they provided me with some instructions on how to preserve the ID3 tags. Let me start by saying that it took forever to strip and re-stripe the ID3 tags (this computer is just not as bas ass as it used to be) into a format that they say should be compatible with Platinum Notes processing. So, I have started the process over again and I am once again waiting the four and a half days that it takes to process the library to see if it indeed comes through with all the original tag information intact. Update will be posted when the process is complete.
Update #3 (2/22/09 8:19am):
After running the library through Platinum Notes for a 3rd time, following the directions that they gave me, I have once again come up with the exact same results. Completely missing ID3 tags except for the basic information about Artist and Album. So Im giving up on this program for now, Ill keep an eye on it for future updates to see if these issues are resolved, because I feel that once they are resolved this will be a very powerful and useful utility for all DJ’s to have and to use. But until then, its just a toy and not worth the money or the time.
Software Review: Mixed-In-Key (Win/Mac)
So I just found this cool program called Mixed-In-Key. It will analyze all your music and tell you what key its in so you can mix you mixes better by selecting songs that are of the same key. Its pretty cool. It works on the principle of “Harmonic Mixing.”
From their website:
Bottom line, harmonic mixing eliminates key clashes. When you mix harmonically, your vocals, melodies and basslines will all be in key (harmony). Harmonic mixing helps you achieve a ‘live mash-up’ effect and encourages creativity. You’ll discover unusual song mixing combinations, like The Beatles vs. Jay-Z, or you can simply enjoy flawless DJ mixing, like Armin Van Buuren, Paul Van Dyk and Sasha.
With harmonic mixing, it’s essential to know the key of every song you play. Mixed In Key software scans your entire music collection (MP3s and WAVs) to make this easy. When scanning is done, Mixed In Key displays your results in the Camelot Easymix notation (e.g. 4A, 6B) or Flat/Sharp notation (e.g. F minor, B-flat minor).
Mixed In Key is easy to use. Simply add your music to the Analyze Songs window, click Start Processing and Mixed In Key will show you which songs mix together without a key clash. Using the results will give you a harmonic mix every time.
Our software works perfectly with all CD decks, Ableton Live, Traktor, Torq, and all other mixing software and hardware. You can use your current DJ equipment with Mixed In Key.
Ive got a Powerbook G4 with 1gb or RAM and it took about 5 hours to analyze 560 mp3 files. Mixed-In-Key is available for both Mac OS X 10.4+ and Windows 2000, XP and Vista (if your unfortunate enough to own a Windows PC).
Its not free, it cost $58, but its worth it. Check out their website (click the link above) and watch the demo, youll be sold in a minute once you see it in action. However, it did take quite a while to analyze my files. But another cool thing that it does is that it will write the key information to the ID3 tag of the file so you wont forget your songs key. And it also lets you choose how and where it writes the key information.