Recording Vinyl to use in Traktor - Beat Grid Help

Hi

Just got a a Numark USB record deck recording quality is fine at 320kbps.

BUT...

When I import the tracks into Traktor and try to put a beat grid on it, the grid won't line up to the beats(on multiple records). I'm guessing the pitch changes due to the record getting closer to the middle of the vinyl??

Is this a conmen problem is there a way round this? I cant be the only person with this problem surely.

Any help/solution would be much appreciated.:)

Stu

I've heard this is an issue. I haven't heard of any easy fixes. You might want to try to manually line up 3 beatgrid markers in the intro bars and 3 markers in the outro. Spread them out every 16-32 beats. I think this will let you mix in and out on sync. Remember to LOCK the beatgrid if it works.

Just looked up an old vinyl track I beatgridded. I put 3 beatgrid markers in the intro and then spread 3 others throughout the next 3 minutes on the downbeats and the last 2 minutes of the track SYNCED up perfectly.

Good Luck.

That's due to platter flutter on your turntable, and its normal. Its really just a matter of very small fluctuations in platter rotation which in turn cause spacings between the otherwise uniform beat timings.

One way to resolve this is to warp the track in Ableton to an absolute value which is close to its native BPM at 0% pitch (to avoid any key problems). Export the track after you warp it, and it should help considerably with lining up the beat grid since the timings on the track have been fixed (pending on how thorough the warp job you did was).

Yeah good idea as a get around, but the thought of doing this to all the old vinyl kinda defeats the object of using my vci to have some fun playing some old records.

There must be some software that stretches a record to a a constant bpm, well that's what i want any ways.

Have to try the lock feature not sure what that will do will let you know.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mmauve

That's due to platter flutter on your turntable, and its normal. Its really just a matter of very small fluctuations in platter rotation which in turn cause spacings between the otherwise uniform beat timings.

One way to resolve this is to warp the track in Ableton to an absolute value which is close to its native BPM at 0% pitch (to avoid any key problems). Export the track after you warp it, and it should help considerably with lining up the beat grid since the timings on the track have been fixed (pending on how thorough the warp job you did was).

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Thanks il give that a go right now. Maybe a good idea for an article on the djtech tools site me thinks.

Cheers, il let you know how i get on. :)

This is where you're gonna run into the same problem I did which prevented me from buying the VCI to begin with. My main problem is not having a accurate 0.02% pitch resolution to manually do normal DJ functions, otherwise you're kinda stuck with either using a workaround like assigning pitch control to the platters or some endless encoder which isn't limited to a certain amount of MIDI steps, or warping stuff ahead of time and making sure everything is accurately beat gridded.

Yeah. This would be a good article for DJTT. I don't get the flutter thing. A Technics 1200 is Quartz locked to a constant speed. The radial alignment problem sounds fishy too. I use to "AIRPLANE" (now referred to as Phaser) two identical records manually for long lengths without issues. I never had any problems manually mixing vinyl rips on CD players either.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mmauve

One way to resolve this is to warp the track in Ableton

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+1 for that

I ripped a load of vinyl using a USB turntable and then warped it in Ableton & it's fine - but it takes ages if you got a lot of records to do :(