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!

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.

So Ive had the Novation Remote Zero SL for a while now and Ive used it a few times (been kind of busy, havent really had the oppertunity to dedicate the kind of time it really needs to it) and I think its pretty alright. There are a few things that I dont like, but Im not sure if they are issues with Traktor or issues with the Zero SL.

My major complaint is that it doesnt read the settings from Traktor to the nobs. For example, if the volume of Deck A is all the way up on the screen in Traktor but the fader or nob is all the way down on the Zero SL, it will take the position of the Zero SL when you touch that nob/slider. So it will instantly reset from full to zero as soon as you touch the nob or fader on the Zero SL. I think it would be better if it knew the position of the slider on the screen and didnt effect its position until after the hardware was moved past that position on the screen.

My only other issue is that the pressure sensitive settings for the trigger pads on the bottom left side is difficult to get to the right settings. Its either always too high or too low, its hard to get it just right. You either have to slam it hard or barely tap it, its hard to get it to respond like a regular button.

Other than those two things, all and all its a pretty good product. Im still kind of pissed about being decieved about the “Automap” feature. They want you to believe it will work with anything, but thats just not true, its only designed to “Automap” with 4 or 5 software packages, for everything else you have to DIY the old fashioned way. Maybe someday they will fix that, but dont hold your breath.

Since Im a lot cooler than about 99% of the assholes online, Im going to hook you up with something thats just about impossible to find online: a working, well defined, easy to use Traktor .tks and Novation .syx files so you can truely plug and play with your Novation Remote Zero SL and Native Instruments Traktor DJ Studio 3.3.

The deal is this, I have defined this file to use the most common features. This is by no means complete nor will it work for everybody. This simply lays out the most commonly used features in what I feel is an easy to use and instictive layout. There are 12 empty buttons for you to customize with functions that you use. Below is a picture and description of what each nob, slider and button has been programmed to do.

CC Numbers:

0 – FOCUS DECK A
1 – FOCUS DECK B
2 – LOOP SET IN
3 – LOOP ACTIVE
4 – LOOP TYPE 1
5 – LOOP TYPE 2
6 – LOOP TYPE 3
7 – RELOOP

20 – A-FX 1 NOB
21 – A-FX 2 NOB
22 – A-FX 3 NOB
23 – A-FX 4 NOB
24 – B-FX 1 NOB
25 – B-FX 2 NOB
26 – B-FX 3 NOB
27 – B-FX 4 NOB

30 – A-FX 1 BUTTON
31 – A-FX 2 BUTTON
32 – A-FX 3 BUTTON
33 – A-FX 4 BUTTON
34 – B-FX 1 BUTTON
35 – B-FX 2 BUTTON
36 – B-FX 3 BUTTON
37 – B-FX 4 BUTTON

40 – A – EQ LOW
41 – A – EQ MED
42 – A – EQ HIGH
43 – A – EQ BALANCE
44 – B – EQ BALANCE
45 – B – EQ HIGH
46 – B – EQ MED
47 – B – EQ LOW

50 – A – LOW KILL
51 – A – CUE
52 – PAGE 1
53 – PAGE 2
54 – PAGE 3
55 – PAGE 4
56 – B – CUE
57 – B – LOW KILL

60 – DECK A – GAIN
61 – DECK A – VOLUME
62 – CROSS FADER
63 – DECK B – VOLUME
64 – DECK B – GAIN
65 – CUE MIX
66 – CUE VOLUME
67 – MASTER VOLUME

70 – LOOP MOVE BACKWARDS
71 – LOOP MOVE FORWARDS
72 – LOOP SIZE DECREASE
73 – LOOP SIZE INCREASE

80 – A – SYNC
81 – B – SYNC
86 – MASTER FX SELECT
87 – MASTER FX ON

90 – UNLOAD TRACK
91 – LOAD TRACK
92 – STOP/PLAY
93 – CUE PLAY
95 – AUDIO RECORD

How to use:

Download TKS (Save Link As)

Download SYX (Save Link As)

Download Zero SL Template Editor (Mac Version | Windows Version)

1) On your Novation, under the ‘N’ logo your going to select “Play” mode.

2) Press the Data/Select jog-dial until “Template” is selected. Scroll the jog-dial until you hit whatever template number you want to use for your custom template.

3) Open “TRAK-ZERO.syx” in the Template Editor. Press the “Upload” button located beside the Novation logo in the template editor program. Quickly look at your Novation display to check that the template is being received. You should see the custom names for the buttons in the LED spaces if it worked.

4) The template is now temporarily loaded into the Novation’s RAM. If you scroll away from this template, the upload will not be saved. To save it to memory press the “Write” button from the center column of buttons. Press the “Write” button once again to save the template. The template is now saved in the device in the location that you chose.

5) Now we have to load the controls into Traktor. Open Traktor and select the MIDI setup from the preferences page. Click on the “LOAD” button and then select “TRAK-ZERO.tks” and load it into Traktor. Now you will see that the MIDI buttons in the window now reflect the settings that you see in the Novation template editor.

Thats it, your done. Now if you did everything right, you should be able to twist and slide all the major features in Traktor DJ Studio 3.3. If you have any questions or it didnt work for you, leave a comment and Ill do my best to help.

UPDATE #1 (1/28/09):

Ive made a few adjustments to the files to add a few features I forgot and to make the layout easier to use. The picture of the CC buttons has also been updated to reflect the changes.

UPDATE #2 (2/12/09):

Ive made this picture to help make it easier to understand what does what. I found after using this layout for awhile now that at first I was a bit confused about which deck I was controlling. I the image below, the RED is Deck A and the BLUE is Deck B. So as you can see, if you visualize it like that, it makes it much easier to understand which nobs need to be twisted.

UPDATE #3 (3/27/12):

I have upgraded Traktor to Traktor 2 and no longer use the Zero SL as my controller for Traktor. Because of this I can no longer support this post with answers in the comments. Sorry.

First off, let me say that I think that its really cheesey that Novation used the alternating lowercase-caps thing to name this device. Are all your users 12 year old hax0rz or something? Anyway, on to the review of the actual product….

Over all the quality if pretty good. Its solidly built, but its made entirely of plastic so Im not sure how long it would last if you actually were kind of rough with it. The buttons and faders are of decent quality, the large trigger buttons at the bottom of the left side are kind of stiff and dont respond well to being pushed unless you really press hard. Also the end-less rotary nobs are also hard to get working correctly with Traktor. The Zero SL doesnt sit flat on your desk either, it sits up on some legs and at a slight angle. Im not sure I like this, I prefer flat and out of the way.

Using it with Traktor is not as easy at they make it sound. The “Automap” feature that Novation jocks so hard in their advertising and descriptions only works with 4 programs. Yes, thats right, it only works with 4 programs. If you want it to work with anything else, your going to have to manually edit the midi settings for each and every nob and slider via Novations editor program (which is also kind of difficult to use). Then you have to program everything a second time inside traktor to match the settings you just saved in the device. Its a huge pain in the ass. And dont go looking for any help in the various dj and audio forums, nobodys going to share their template with you since they had to spend hours and hours after being lied to by Novation about its “automapping” abilities and they are all very bitter about it.

The device is loaded with “templates” but none of them are for anything thats actually useful to the average person. Unless you own 40 keyboards or a shit load of virtual keyboard software, your not going to get much use from this device from its default settings.

Another thing is that it kind of lags. When you side a fader up, sometimes the software doesnt react right away, it might delay a second or two before it moves on the screen. So say you move the volume up, it will move on the slider but the actual volume wont change for a few seconds after, very annoying. Im not sure if this is because the device sucks or I dont have a fast enough computer or enough ram.

The screen above the nobs and faders is nice. Its bright and displays some basic information about whats going on with the nob or fader that your using. Thats about the best part of the whole thing.

The documentation is also pretty bad. It doesnt really explain anything, you only get about 2 or 3 sentences about each feature and about how to program it and those two sentences arent very informative either.

Overall, I would give it a 3 out of 5. Its a nice toy, but until Novation steps up and makes the Automap work with ALL major software and not just a select few, its really not worth the money that you pay. I would buy this device again for $199 but I wouldnt pay $299 for it again, its not worth that much the way it is now.

UPDATE #1 (1/28/09):

The lag is caused by bad settings. Be careful when you set it up that you assign the right type of nob or button type to each nob or button or youll have funny problems. Once you get it all set up, it works pretty good. I also learned that the trigger pads on the bottom left side are pressure sensitive and that you can adjust the sensitivity in the onboard settings. Once I figured out how to adjust that, its made using them a lot easier.

The ReMOTE ZeRO-SL from Novation to controll Traktor 3 with. Its got 50-something MIDI assignable buttons so there is a nob or button for just about every Traktor feature. Im excited, I cant wait to try it out. Stay tuned for full review in a few weeks..

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.