No one (not even Armin ) can beatmatch in 5 seconds. Armin is moving a slider till the digital readout matches a BPM and a percentage which he’s memorized by practicing his set hundreds of times in his studio.
6 seconds?
With vinyl I’ll push / drag the record to match beats almost instantly. While controlling the speed of the record manually, I’ll use the pitch control to get the TT doing the work.
Literally like 5 seconds. I’ve seen tons of dudes do it, it’s not that big of a deal.
Exactly. Back in the vinyl days, it was considered impressive if beatmatching only took you 30s.
EDIT: Saying that, it depends on whether or not you actually know the BPMs of your track and/or play only one genre of music.
In fact, most good DJs will have it beatmatched by the following downbeat. 30 seconds is a long time to get your shit together.
i dont agree with you 30 seconds is quite along time… (nothing wrong with taking 30’s tho)
the point is with vinyl you used your Ears to judge if a track would mix rather than a mathematical sum
I’m convinced its a subtle trolling.
jprime out
op you should of started the thread on a different note…
“the advantages of learning to beat match”
Here’s my take. I don’t use sync just as a personal preference, but I don’t see anything inherently wrong with it, with one major caveat - you must be able to beat match by ear first. Expanding on that statement, let me clarify: if you are playing out, you had better know how to beatmatch by ear, because you don’t know when your equipment will fail on you. Absolutely perfect example of this was just last night. I went to Vessel in SF to see Sasha last night. Opening DJ was using some form of sync - not sure if he was using traktor (I think so, I thought I saw the sound guy pulling plugs out of an A10) but he would almost never have his headphones on, and was staring at his computer screen the entire time. I thought he was decent. Some of his transitions were a little wonky, but whatever, to each his own, and I know I’m highly critical. Anyway, suddenly about 20 minutes before Sasha came on, his computer started to flip out. A fair amount of clipping started up for some reason. The terror on his face was palpable. It wasn’t horrible - just a clip here and there. Then it started to get worse, enough that the crowd was noticing with lots of “oooooohh”'s. I have to hand it to him - he immediately went to his bag and rummaged, pulling out presumably CD’s or a thumb-drive. Next thing you know, he’s got headphones on the whole way and finished out the set actually manipulating the CDJ’s. He did slightly trainwreck once, but at least he was able to get through the rest of the show without it being a total disaster.
So coming full circle, here’s my point. If you are a young dj now just learning your way, and you’ve only ever used sync and never learned how to beatmatch, you are fucked when the above scenario happens. Dead in the woods. And that’s a terrible position for a DJ to be in, and frankly, is not professional at all. This guy, while using sync (via tracktor or ableton) still had the requisite skills to be a DJ without the new technology when it began to fail him, and that’s key.
Now, the flip side of this is of course there are times that I would LOVE to have sync in the booth but didn’t have it. Last time I played out the booth had one monitor, and apparently it was mono channel to only channel A of the mixer. So basically, when channel A fader had any volume, I got a monitor of that - but otherwise channel B I had nothing. So I had to catch the return sound and beatmatch in my headphones with split cue. That’s all well and good, but it was still next to impossible to hear what was being produced on the dance floor because once channel A had any volume, the monitor in the booth was overpowering the return sound, and unfortunately, there were no volume controls for the monitor to turn it off (that I could find at least). Right about then I was thinking “damn, wouldn’t it be nice to have a controller with sync right about now?” so there are definitely advantages. But you had better be able to revert back to the mean with skill, otherwise you are going to look like an ass.
sigh..
give it a rest…this isn’t reddit…
Very solid point Vandalus. With me being a new DJ (or whatever myself or anyone else wants to call me as this is a touchy subject too) I myself have never used the synch button. Not that I dont plan to in the future. I just know a lot of my tracks that I currently have dont have to correct BPM or the BPM even stated (which im in the process of fixing via Beatunes).I’ve had one friend inparticulary who’s synch button is his favorite one on his controller ask me how in the hell do you mix & transition without the BPM stated. I went on to show him how I use the waveforms and my ear to get the cleanest mix that I feel I am capable of doing. So far this has worked out for me. I am glad that I didnt find the synch button off the bat. Now that im working on like I stated to get all my BPM’s and keys correct. So when need be I can use the synch to focus on my FX or whatever comes to mind at the moment.
Please dont hate as I know im a new DJ and dont try to state that I know it all. I just do what works best for me and will learn from my mistakes as I have already
A couple of years ago, I saw someone using Traktor for the first time; I watched him for a bit, then realised he was mixing without using headphones, and didn’t even have them plugged in. I was shocked.
I said to him, “how are you mixing without headphones?” and he explained, “I’m doing it visually; Traktor shows me the waveforms and I do it off that”. Since then, I’ve done exactly the same thing. Personally I’ve found that your eyes are less likely to lie to you than your ears… even if your track isn’t properly beatgridded, you can start with things synced up, then disable it, pitchbend track B so the phase meter corrects for the difference between the beatgrid and the actual waveform, and then you’re perfectly matched up.
It’s a skill JUST as intricate as doing it by ear, but works just as well, if not better in certain circumstances. I find it also gives you a greater awareness of the way your mix ACTUALLY sounds (on the club’s most likely imperfect PA), which helps with EQ and levels compared to doing it in the headphones.
These days, the only time I pick up my headphones is if I’m swapping genres or previewing a track I’ve never played before.
I like N Sync
Good story Vandalus - I need to get back to my manual beatmatching practice.
I figured you more of a “backdoor boys” fan. 
Hehe that’s right - I heard you were president of the Boyz 2 Men fanclub.
But it turned out it was the Boyz 4 Men website
Nambla?