Hey everyone,
So I'm posting this to let you all know about the issues I've had with Traktor. I'm not asking for help, but I feel like you all need to know about the absolute nightmares I've dealt with in this software.
A little background, I have three DJ residencies at the most prominent EDM clubs in Pittsburgh. I've opened for countless headliners (Bingo Players, Laidback Luke, GTA, Kill The Noise, etc.), played Life in Color in my home city this year, and basically spend all day, every day learning about DJ'ing.
Before you all ask, I've ran stable copies of OSX that had no issues with Traktor during the time of each of these issues. I also kept Traktor as up to date as possible the entire time as well. I travel with all of my gear in flight cases, keep dust out of it and have my laptop protected as well.
So, I play out every single weekend, with at least 10 hours of play time from Thursday through Saturday. That being said, I've had almost every issue imaginable with Traktor and the S4 system. I'd like to list them so you're all aware of what you're getting into before you purchase one of these things:
1. Complete loss of my entire library, playlists, etc. I opened Traktor one day, while having installed absolutely nothing new on my computer from the night before, and it took me through a setup menu you get when you first install. I thought it was odd, but I went along with it. I now use OSX to organize my files. When it was completed, it had erased all of my playlists. You might ask yourself, "why not use History and get it all back?"
That brings me to my next problem.
2. Months and months of no history being kept whatsoever. I called Native Instruments and they had no solution to this problem. Months of playlists, gone forever.
3. Extreme lag effecting audio consistency and causing short dropouts when I don't restart my computer literally every single time before I play out on it. I know this is standard procedure, but I have an $1800 Macbook Pro that I bought new three months ago, and it still has this issue. There will be times when I've been rushed to get on stage and start playing, didn't restart, and this has ruined sets for me.
4. The entire S4 unit losing functionality, jog wheels not working, and all buttons going completely haywire and not controlling the software entirely. This one boggles my mind still. My S4 worked fine the day prior, when I went to hook it up and practice, it had completely shit itself overnight. Nothing worked. I was under warranty, and it was replaced. It did, however, take weeks for this to happen. I lost a few gigs during this period.
5. RANDOM CRASHES. Traktor WILL, every once in a while, just completely quit itself and an OSX error message will pop up. This has happened numerous times, however, never while DJ'ing. The most recent time when it did this, I had finished a gig 5 minutes prior, and Traktor sent OSX into Kernel Panic, one of the rarest issues to have on a MacBook Pro where the entire operating system is forced to restart for no apparent reason.
...and now, for my current issue.
6. Complete loss of audio/connectivity between laptop and controller while DJ'ing. This is one that I've been dealing with for a while now. This has happened to me twice while DJ'ing live. All of my channels in Traktor will, all of the sudden, start crackling and hissing, make a horrible screeching sound, and stop my music entirely. I've gone through two different MacBook logic boards as well as a clean install when trying to sort this issue out, and it works for about a month before it begins again.
It's become apparent that it's not the fault of the computer, but of Traktor. I've checked my System Diagnostics and it seems as if CoreAudio is crashing, and takes Traktor down with it. I currently have a ticket in with Native Instruments on this one, just sent them a diagnostic and am waiting to hear back.
[TL/DR]: All of these issues can happen to you. I have a very standard, run of the mill DJ setup. Traktor is great software, but these issues are completely ridiculous. Had I known that any of these issues were to arise, I would have never invested time in this software.
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