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!