A history of violence (upgrading to TSP andbeatgridding without a decent result)

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

A history of violence (upgrading to TSP andbeatgridding without a decent result)

Hi to everyone (yes I know, I tried to gather attention with the title :slight_smile:).

Before I start I wanted to say that I watched the video on beatgridding done by Ean Golden and that I checked as much discussions as possible but without getting an answer to my problems. There are some discussions which get close to the point but I do not get my answers anyway. So i decided to start my own thread hoping that I will get more attention and help than I got on the NI forum.

Well, it all started when I upgraded one month ago from Traktor Scratch (TS from now on) to Traktor Scratch Pro (TSP from now on) …i use both vinyls and cds depending on where I play. The software version is 1.2.2.
I have to say that I never ever had problems with beatgridding with TS, to the point that I never ever had to manually beatgrid.

I spent this month (not the whole time :wink: ) in configurating my midi controls (I use also an akai LPD8 for loops and effects) without caring about the tracks too much, since I took for granted that importing perfect automatically beatgridded playlists from TS would result in having perfect beatgrids also in TSP. Man,I couldn’t be more wrong.

Not only the beatgrids are not set, but I find it impossible to manually beatgrid them, because if I follow step by step what Ean says in his video, it results to have the first 4-5 beats in line and then the track starts drifting and then is ok again (later on in the track) and then starts drifting again, even the other way. DRIFTING! This is a word I learnt yesterday. I readthat my problem could be related to vinyl drift since the tracks I am having problems with are eighties/italo disco tracks (although i still did not check the “new” tracks - electro and house). OK.It seems impossible to correctly beatgrid some old tracks. Fine.

But then I have a few questions:

  • why did it perfectly work in TS, without any manual fine tuning???
  • why if I open TS (yes I still have it installed fiuuuuuuu!) and copy paste the BPM on TSP it still does not work?
  • if the cause is just a minor vinyl drift, why the beatgrids, set with the correct BPM rate copied from TS, start drifting noticeably (1/3 of a beat) after only 4-5 beats?? and anyway, where was the drift in TS?

I read around but I did not find any answers to these questions.

Then two days ago, I realised that the tracks which are in the playlists imported from TS do have already a GRID CUE POINT (like the one shown and stored on the first beat by Ean in his video). The ones which have beatgrid problems also have a grid cue point set far from the beat. Now, given that I never ever set that grid cue point, if I follow Ean’s video suggestions the problem stays. The first beats get aligned but after a while the beatgrid moves and then goes back in and then moves again, etc.ect.
What I found out, and I found it very interesting because it made me feel closer to the solution, is that if I delete that grid cue point which I found after the playlist import in TSP and of which there was no trace in the same tracks stored in TS, the beatgrid gets “magically” on the right place, without any manual intervention (basically like it did in TS).

Although I knew I would have to cancel all the “false grid cue points” in all the tracks which are not working (at least the “vinyl era hits”, so more than 1500), I felt close to the solution, because I finally saw a correct beatgrid (by doing nothing) after days of trials. Again, I could not be more wrong, because even if the the beatgrids seem allright and locked on some tracks where I manually cancelled the “false grid cue point”, I still cannot sync the two tracks… even I put the BPM rate equal on two tracks, the beat are synched for a few seconds and then start drifting heavily again.

For now, I really cannot see another solution than using the “good old TS”, because I have a few sets coming up and even if I would go beatmatch by “ear” I could still not relay on the BPM count on TSP for the above explained reasons.

Help, anyone?

Luca

p.s. for all the rest TSP seems a freakin’ good piece of software, although I did not start yet to use it professionally

thanks for your time

2

I had the same problem - then I turned off “set beat grid when detecting BPM” in the settings then all was fine.

3

first of all thanks for the answer. I will try as soon as i get home (I’m at work now :smiley:)… and I so hope it is going to work!

4

and checking out your website, seems like you had the same problem because you play vintage music as well… checking out the “lover in a colder climate mix”! but do not want to go off topic, at least not before I solved the problem :slight_smile:

5

Go wtih what Curious People said as a start. Unfortunately it means you’re doing to have to remove all of those “fake” grid points.

You’re going to need to clarify your clock settings as well. Make sure it’s set to Auto, not Manual or Internal when you’re mixing like this.

Pretty much, to get a solid sync going, make sure your tempo is spot on, your grid is set accurately, your tempo is locked and your clock setting is at Auto. If it still doesn’t work after this point then we try other things.

6

Yeah - I tried to set the beat grid but then found out Traktor does a good job at it - yes it does go out on some parts of most tracks but that’s also the case with “real records” so I know how to deal with it! :wink:

7

I’ll be home in two hours, and then i have another hour to try. I’ll give you a feedback.

By the way, does it make a difference if I do these operations with the internal sound card? I mean, is there any way in which the absence of the Audio8DJ soundcard (which i obviously use during djsets, but not when i am at home sitting in front om my computer) can influence the bpm detection or beatgrids?

Thanks

8

It won’t influence the BPM detection or beatgrids but it will influence the way it sounds.

9

I’m sure you are doing this if you watched the video, but just to make sure, you are using the metronome right? My pal was trying to beat grid all his shit by eye and couldn’t understand why he couldn’t get it tight enough. The ear is by far a better reference than the eye (you’re working with sound so that’s obvious).
I’m on TSP too, before that I was rocking final scratch so didn’t experience anything in between. The only reason I can think TSP is different grid wise to any other versions is because it is a totally new restructured software, it states this in the manual. It could have something to do with it reads the waveforms in a different manor or some shit like that. Have you downloaded the latest version from the NI website? I might be completely wrong here and just tripping (or just using tracks that are easier for Traktor to grid automatically by coincidence) but I found that since the latest update I could swear the auto beat gridding is a lot tighter off the bat then it was before.
Any tracks that are either played by a live band or recorded from a turntable are going to drift, you are aware of this now, but if you are desperate to beat grid them you are unfortunately going to have to stick them in ableton, warp them, then reimport back into Traktor. Bit of a bitch but I’ve had to do it on numerous tracks.

10

well well well, I just did what Curious People advised, unflagged set the beat grid when detecting bpm and things seem to be much much much better. not perfect, but the beatgrid is more or less on the f**kin’ beat and not half the way like before. I also (as read somewhere else) modified the bpm detection range according to my music (100 to 140) and not like it was by default (70 to 190 :eek:slight_smile:…

so that’s all for now, I obviously did not check all the tracks (did not have time). Will try to make a mix with my old italo disco tracks tomorrow or thursday to have a more or less final verdict on the issue. I’ll keep you posted!

thank you!

11

By skimming the the above posts I gather you are playing music that was ripped from vinyl? If this is the case, you may be having issues because the tracks themselves are not 1 tempo, but rather, suffered from Flutter during encoding. If you cant beatmatch it to a metronome by ear, then traktor cant either. It doesnt know how to deal with warps.

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the fact is that i had no warp in traktor scratch (previous version) and when I imported the music and playlists into traktor scratch pro everything (well the older tracks) looked so wrong.

Now, thanks to a few precious advices which i got here (see previous posts), everything looks much better… although yesterday i did not have much time to check it carefully…

13

Do you still have the sync problem? It doesn’t stay synced in a way that the sync button on your deck is not lit yellow? I had that same problem when traktor automatically setted my beatgrids. In breaks there would be no white bars at all and some would be way to close. I now let traktor set an auto grid, then i put a beatgrid cue point on (most of the time) the first beat. Then put tick on and check if the track is good.

14

yesterday i did not really try playing so i cannot tell you if the button stays yellow or nor (do not remember). I think the answer is no, because what i can tell you is that if I press the sync button the bpm of the slave deck equals the bpm of the master deck and the tracks stay in sync but the sync itself is not “locked”. I never use sync because I use timecode and move the pitch with the physical faders of the turntables/cd… i needed the beatgrids to be in place for loops and to have not only an audio feedback but also a visual feedback on the sync (thanks to the horizontal bar which is on the top of each deck, do not remember its name sorry).. but i basically sync the tracks on my own…

15

As far as I recall, when there’s no beatgrid marker, there is no beatgrid per se. Traktor will sync to the spikes (i.e. kicks) in the waveforms. TS wasn’t better at gridding your tracks, it did not grid them at all. TPro on the other hand lays its strict, unwarpable beatgrid on top of your ungriddable tracks per default which causes this unwanted behavior.

16

assuming that what you say is right (that those white lines are different from the beatgrids lines), well I do see these “white vertical lines”… do not know if those are beatgrid or not… they are less, true, they are just on the beats, true, they do not appear in the breaks, true, they are similar to the ones which I had in TS previous version (which make me feel really at home :slight_smile:), true… but they do work with loops in snap and they do give a sync feedback through the horizontal bar which is on the top of each deck (again, somebody tell me its name!!!) so that is enough for me.. it’s automatical, it’s on the beats (where i mostly do the mixes) i really do not feel the need to “really beatgrid”, especially if I get a headache with old songs due to drift…

might be not enough for somebody else though.

but this raises a question. If you are right, and those are not beatgrids, why do they place themselves exactly on the beat and work fine even on drifted vinyl tracks, while the automatical beatgrid option is not able to set beatgrids correctly and avoid this problem?

17

It’s the phase meter.

They aren’t beat grids. They are beat markers. They are where Traktor thinks the beats are. In minimal songs (the style, not the genre) those lines will be more accurate because there’s less going on and Traktor can accurately map the tempo. But if you throw on something more chaotic, yet still 4/4 there are a LOT more occassions of it going wrong.

And if you’re using loops and not gridding your tracks manually it’s only a matter of time before something goes horribly wrong.

I think it’s more than likely that something is wrong with your BPMs or grids if it’s drifting that bad. If it’s drifting within 5 beats then I can almost guarantee your tempo is wrong.

Also, the thing with TS is there was a Slave function which just matched the tempo’s and didn’t do anything with the actual grids. I always Slaved when using TS.

But TSP doesn’t have that feature, or at least didn’t the last time I looked, and instead they kind of used Sync as a Slave as well now.

18

i’ll just check that beat markers are on the beat… this would be sufficient… i hope. The BPM is exactly the same as detected in TS (where everything worked fine for years with beatmarkers) so I do not see a problem of BPM detection.

At least now, thanks to Curious People and you, I do not have beatgrids off-set, which made playing impossible, I do not have beatgrids at all, I just have beatmarkers, but for now, that appears to be enough (like it has been for ages with TS). I still have to deeply check if everything is really working better after the modification suggested by Curious People though, I just made a few tests this week (half an hour)… I guess I will have some time this weekend.

Fingers crossed and thank you.

19

Alright, let’s just get our words straight so no one’s confused.

when you load a new track into a deck and remove all automatically placed beatgrid markers, the little white lines are beat markers.

When you put in your own beatgrid marker those little white lines will snap to the beat, pending the BPM is correct and the marker is placed properly.

Now you have a beatgrid. :slight_smile:

Just making sure we’re both on the same page.

20

got it!

if I understood correctly you warned me because if I use beatmarkers (and not beatgrid) for loops and so on it might be risky since is something which is first of all not locked and secondly automatically generated by the software which could leave me “in underpants” (we say so in italy) during a set.