How far can you take Traktor w/o an API?

[kiss-o-matic]

the stability argument has a bit of merit, but its just pushed by NI because they hate their customers ideas

I agree. I'd blow someone at NI if they'd display the beat offset in hundredths of a second instead of just tenths. I know I can use the BPM counter, but I don't like to rely on it. W/ the VCI-100, it's too easy to have no clue whether or not you actually moved the fader or not. It's a freakin' line of code... seriously, WTF?

furthermore there are plenty of vst's out there and they do not seem to crash ableton. then again for the anti vst stance they say that all of their filters work "in-time" which wouldnt be possible with 3rd party vst's.

I'll probably give Mixxx a look. It's open source so you can go crazy with it. Obviously not nearly as feature rich. But yeah, whadda ya gonna do. Maybe Traktor will get a serious competitor sometime that offers an API.

[pepehouse]

Instead of dreaming about fancy features to do what it has always been the DJ job, espend your time playing your tracks and knowing them, get only the tunes you are really going to play and don't download all the shit off torrents sites only cause it's free, that way you won't need a program to automatically tag your billion files cause it's humanly impossible to do and you'll always remember which tracks go well together without having to write a full chapter about it in the tags, we are djs not programers, technology is good but lends people to become sooo lazy.

[BentoSan]

Moving to Ableton would kind of defeat the purpose. Well, totally for that matter. Isn't Ableton all about having your tunes all beat-matched pre-gig?

M4L allows you to do whatever the hell you like as long as u got the skillz to make it a reality - your imagination is the only thing holding you back with m4l

[sj03w4t]

... we are djs not programers, technology is good but lends people to become sooo lazy.

I think M4L fades this line.

Yeah, traktor has many features to wish, but let's look at the bright side: they have soo many features already incorporated and let's be honest: they enable you to do a lot with regards to (midi) mapping, beat gridding etc.
To be honest with you, I'm not sure what you mean by 'adding tags' to collection and 'add and remove tracks from a playlist'. Why would you do this using another program anyway? Sorry if the answer is too obvious, I don't want to sound insulting/denigrating

[kiss-o-matic]

get only the tunes you are really going to play and don't download all the shit off torrents sites only cause it's free,

Cool. Way to bring up completely irrelevant shit. I buy all my music.

you'll always remember which tracks go well together without having to write a full chapter about it

This is not true in the least. I had the same issue w/ vinyl. I agree there's no substitute for knowing your tracks, but there's a breaking point where memory is not going to remember sometimes crucial details. I'm talking of no more than a fancy way to organizing your tunes. Was I wrong in organizing my vinyl in some type of order back in the day? Going off your logic alone works, but at some point you ignore your old tracks and only show love to the new.

we are djs not programers

I am both.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'adding tags' to collection

Techno is a melting pot, and I find simply labeling something as "tech house", "techno", or "minimal" is crap and horribly ineffective. Why can't I have 10 flags of my own creation? funky, housey, hard, soft, deep, electro, minimal, etc. Setting the genre will not work as plenty of tracks, if not all overlap many of these sub genres.

and 'add and remove tracks from a playlist'. Why would you do this using another program anyway?

adding & removing from a Playlist is the only way I can see it being done in Traktor now. Why would I use another program? B/c Traktor won't let you do it. I'm all for highlighting appropriate tracks in Traktor... that'd be ideal, but not realistic.

[lsmith]

I think M4L fades this line.

Yeah, traktor has many features to wish, but let's look at the bright side: they have soo many features already incorporated and let's be honest: they enable you to do a lot with regards to (midi) mapping, beat gridding etc.
To be honest with you, I'm not sure what you mean by 'adding tags' to collection and 'add and remove tracks from a playlist'. Why would you do this using another program anyway? Sorry if the answer is too obvious, I don't want to sound insulting/denigrating

Here is how I tag my songs:
http://ifnotwhynot.me/getting-myself-organized

Basically I add names of tags into the grouping field. Now the problem is that when I am DJing, I am not loading the tracks into iTunes, heck I do not have iTunes loaded. But what if I want to add new tags? Sure I can do in and edit the grouping field in Traktor. But if I am DJing, I will be doing typos because it doesnt have my focus. I want to just click from a list of existing tags or get autocompletion etc.

Anyway, having an API here could also enable stuff like DJing together with someone else, you could just bounce new tracks into their library and stuff like that.

Again there is no reason why they couldn't provide an API for the track browsing/editing/loading yet still maintain stability. Ok there are other stuff they can spend their time on and NI does come up with new stuff. But at the same time they also kill all efforts to creating better UI's for MIDI mapping (hello tiny screen, hello merging MIDI layouts) by changing their MIDI format to be binary encoded.

[MrBim]

all i want to do is read the names of the tracks i have in the browser and which one is currently selected so i can send the info to a touchOSC patch. simple really or at least i would have thought.