Traktor Pro's Gain Structure

Why is it so messed up?

Is there a reason the master volume does something when mixing externally?

Is there a reason why traktor's gain detection (which is "good" and "works") will cause signals to clip sound cards when the master is set at 0dB?

Obviously, you can work around the issue, but I'm wondering if anyone knows why in the name of :eek: that NI decided to do it that way. Traktor's mixer appears to use some of the same kinds of tricks that Ableton does in the mixer and effects (using floating point numbers or at least 32-bit integers instead of 16- or 24-bit integers to give the illusion of headroom).

I mean…it's great that the mixer won't clip even when the mixer's meters are pegged to the top and aren't actually giving you any information (/sarcasm. I guess it really is better that it does that so that people who can't read them and think the red LED on a mixer's channel meter means "loud enough", but the whole picture still doesn't make sense. Since most of us use 16-bit audio files and a lot of us own 24-bit sound cards, we can get away with running them down to about -24dB before we actually lose any dynamic range. And since most of us run Traktor into either a DJ mixer or a FOH mixer, we can make the signal as loud as we want…as long as we're not stupidly using 20'-long RCA cables. But if you set Traktor's master to 0dB, you have to choose between its limiter squashing all of your dynamic range or clipping the outputs of every sound card I've tried.

Why?

Obviously, I've worked around it, since you lose nothing by running traktor at -20dB and turning up something else before your signal hits the amp, but simply for my own edification…what's the point of doing it that way? Is it just another step in the loudness war…that all this BS is because they're trying to sound louder than SSL?