Xone 1d- whaddya think?

[B33SON]

if you want to control 4 decks and keep them in sync using pitch sliders, and leave out an awesome feature that traktor gives you, then thats your perogative, but i sync up all my tracks instantly using master sync cause i dont like having to worry about it so much, i just set up beat grids and then focus on effects, loops, cue point juggles, and so forth. i don't even use the pitch sliders on my vci, and i've totally remapped everything to help with 4 deck transporting and fx/looping (also with the mpd24). point is, the vci was made for two decks, to control 4 decks you have to do your own thing... but if you want to continuously monitor the bpm with the pitch sliders on 4 decks, then you might not have time for much else.

Could you explain a bit more about how you use your controller and master sync to keep 4 decks in sync? Like... how you activate the master, how you sync tracks as they're loaded and what controller buttons and knobs you use related to loading and syncing.

[smallfry]

@Walidism: Thanks. I suppose you're right; I'm too used to beatmatching [with vinyl] that I often forget about the sync feature. This next week I'll try not to even touch the pitch slider and see how that goes.

[B33SON]

It's not just the sync feature... you need to beat grid your tracks. That's the key! You'll love it.

[Walidism]

Could you explain a bit more about how you use your controller and master sync to keep 4 decks in sync? Like... how you activate the master, how you sync tracks as they're loaded and what controller buttons and knobs you use related to loading and syncing.

yea sure, basically, i'm using one jog wheel (right) on the vci 100 to scrub through tracks the midi control is called the "seek position", now i use the 4 buttons below that jog wheel as play buttons. heres a few things you can do to get an idea of what im talkin about:

1. on the panel at the top, right click and activate clock. this will be the master of the tempo, make sure you have master button selected. now, on all your decks, click the slave button just below the letter of deck. so far so good, you've set every track to the tempo of the clock.

2. now that every deck is the same tempo, you want them to start in sync whenever you bring them in. there are two ways to do this, but there is one important step....BEATGRIDS. they really help with keeping tracks playing constantly... without it, traktor would just sync every single beat, even though the beat is not neccesarily part of the 4/4 rhythm. so make sure you have mapped beatgrids for everytrack if you want the sync button to be pressed all the time, its hard to explain without pictures, but ill try my best.

3. if you want traktor to keep them in sync for as long as they are playing, then the sync trigger on your midi setup should be set to toggle. if you just want it to sync just as it starts and then turn off the sync automatically, you should set it to hold.

what i do is this

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0 0 0 0 <==== If you can imagine these 4 circles as the 4 transport buttons below the jog wheel, i have set these to not only play the track in deck a,b,c,d respectively, but also to sync up the track, either by toggling the sync on and off, or to hold. this way i dont have to press two seperate buttons to play and sync.


the jog wheel, pictured above, only scrolls through the focused deck, which i toggle through the cue and effect buttons in the middle of the vci, above the channel faders.

to load a track, i use the 4 black buttons on the top left of the vci, that go vertical. i initially tried to assign it to the focus buttons, but realized it was a bad idea cause it would load the selected track into the deck when i just wanted to focus on the deck. i dont do any scratching, so i don't need to manipulate more than one deck at any time, and i dont see the point in having to manipulate 4 decks at any time, which sort of defeats the purpose of having more than one jog wheel (unless your a scratch dj) (or if you're using non-computer hardware). i mean, if you can assign one knob to control multiple effects or what have you, then why not assign it to control each deck. plus for me, having only one jog wheel really helps cause i can use the other for whatever i want, like scrolling through my playlist, or something like that.

now i do a lot of looping, and i assigned the top 4 knobs above the right jog wheel as the loop length for each deck, and the 4 buttons below it as the loop on/off switch. i also assigned a sync trigger on the loop on/off buttons, because when you loop with sync on, it doesn't loop for values less than one beat. so when i'm done looping, i click the loop off, and, it resyncs the track with the master clock. i got the idea from richie hawtin, and i have to give credit where its due, but i guess the idea behind it is to try it and if you like, keep it.

now for searching for tracks and stuff, i use the laptop, cause i don't want to activate the search from the vci and then go to the laptop cause it gets kinda confusing, but yea i have a bunch of keys that on my keyboard that scroll through the track lists, and when i find the track, i press the little black button that i want the track to go to, and voila, it loads, and is not in sync until i press play. so i scroll through the track, find the spot, play, and it syncs, then i carry on doing other stuff. meanwhile, i route the audio to an external mixer, where i do the equing, and fading etc, cause i love my korg zero 4, and then bring the track in.

when i started out with the vci, i was only using two decks which was fun, i enjoyed the psudo scratching and stuff, but then decided to try 4 decks, which really interested me, and so at first i decided to buy another vci 100, but thought, do i really need another one? so i tore out all the controls that i wasn't neccesarily using, and realized i took out almost everything, so i deleted the tks file, and started to build my own. i realized that while the vci was not meant for four decks, it did have a nice arrangement of 4 sets of buttons/knobs. like the transport buttons, the effect buttons above the right jog wheel, the 4 eq knobs, the black buttons, the browser buttons in a weird diamond shape etc, and so i said that it could work, for the absolute essentials and a few creative things, then i realized the midi pages, and i how i can layer controls, which i'm still building as i write this, but that's a different story. finally i decided to get a (xone 1d) type midi device, it was an akai md24, which is just beautiful for cue point juggling and stuff like that, and i can layer those, but yea i mainly use my vci 100 for transport, playing, looping, and then the md24 for cue point juggling, effects, and some other stuff that slipped my mind. im going to stop here as i'm sure this post has taken up the bandwidth of the internet. hahaha. hope this helps.

ps, the xone 1d is a great tool, you would only need one of them if you wanted full control of most features in traktor, as long as you have the vci there as well.

[Walidism]

@mycole: sorry thought i was directing this post at the thread starter, disregard that ps message.