Traktor Pro v. Serato Scratch Live (US club use)
So I was talking to a friend of mine who is a DJ and I had mentioned to him I was finally about to plunk down some money for a controller and Traktor Pro and he immediately mentioned that Serato Scratch Live was far more commonplace in clubs in the US.
Is this accurate?
You can bring whatever you want to a club as far as i know.
And you should use whatever you like.
Serato is more the club standard in the bigger clubs. You can bring your own sound card and controller if you like but always check with management. If your worried that learning on Traktor will hinder you in some way just remember that the majority of clubs don’t have either. Most clubs are still on CDJs of some kind especially the smaller venues. I wouldn’t expect to play too many places with nice setups though so get used to either bringing your own gear or being very versatile on what you can mix on.
Good points to know. 
SSL is more common here, never seen a Traktor box for a club install yet. Either way, most just have CDJs and no resident soundcard. But you’re comparing DVS to software + controller so its not much of a comparison.
Until Native Instruments brings out a box with two USB’s, there’ll always be a slight problem with changeovers. They’re kinda repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot on this issue.
Pioneer or Allen and Heath need to make a mixer that supports both, all clubs will install it
In a perfect world yeah but… i dont see that happening anytime soon.
i would think it’d be much easier to make a mixer that can have 2 sound cards with 4 stereo outputs each plugged into it efficiently.
Al you would need to do really is have 8 stereo channel inputs (2 per channel) and make all of them phono/line switchable.
First…changeovers are easy. Run an FOH mixer like you probably should anyway.
Second…changeovers are easy anyway…as long as the DJ isn’t a moron. I seriously don’t understand why this thing has ever been an issue. Run live sound for anything once and you’ll learn enough to change over anything you’ll find in a DJ booth without silence.
It’s impossible if there’s not an FOH mixer, but I’ve changed over an entire booth…including the mixer…with no silence. In the dark. In a club. While performing. It helped that the FOH mixer was at the back of the DJ booth instead of out in the middle of nowhere, but still. It’s not that hard.
If we had been able to leave the mixer in place, you could have done it without the FOH mixer.
Seriously…why is this an issue? Are DJs so convinced that they’re such amazing artists that they don’t need to learn anything about the technical side of what they’re doing today? Come on. Not knowing how to use a freaking cable pisses me off more and makes us all look more retarded than constantly arguing if auto sync is cheating.
Third…CDJs dominate anything that uses a computer by factor of like 3 to 1. In the EDM world where I’ve been, SSL beats TSP slightly with Ableton coming in a close 3rd…but there are still 3 times as many CDJ-only DJs as anything using a computer combined. And I’ve never seen anyone IN REAL LIFE (other then me and one guy I spin with) use any controller-only setup and not suck.
yes it is accurate. However I wouldn’t be concerned by it for all of the reasons noted in the other posts. That said, pick the platform that offers you the most flexibility. You can chain Serato and Traktor together anyway so it really shouldn’t make a difference as far as the technical side goes.
hahahahahaa. That was funny.
But to the thread starter. Your friend is accurate. In clubs in the US (i live in Miami) SSL is what is most used. Especially in hip hop, open format music. EDM I’ve seen TSP much more down here, but mostly from headliners. Local residents are mostly on SSL.
Yeah, SSL is very much more predominant in US Clubs, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Traktor install at a club. Doesn’t stop me from taking my own stuff to a lot of gigs. That’s also the joy of Serato letting you DL the software for free. I have it on my computer, and depending on the set I’m playing, I’ll just use that at a club that has the SSL box anyway.
Why? I’ve also never seen a DJTT member perform IRL. I’ve never seen Hawtin IRL. When I saw Sasha with his Maven, he was really off that night.
I’ve seen videos I like a lot, and I know there are a lot of DJs on here that I would happily pay to see. But none of them are places I’ve been.
Also…I realized it was a slight exaggeration. There were 2. Pete Tong was actually very enjoyable at a pool party this spring, I just forgot he was on Traktor. And, I guess Nadastrom would count…they were using SSL but didn’t appear to touch anything but the mixer and the laptop, so they might have been using internal mode and the keyboard.
I guess I should say I’ve never seen another local DJ on controllers-only not suck. But Atlanta doesn’t seem to be much of a controller town…and most of the places I’ve been going to lately still have 1200s in the booth and DJs that use them. No, I don’t know why.
Yeah I hate this stupid imperfect world we live in 
Honestly, I’ve seen a huge variety of things at various clubs.
Most of the time, as people have stated above, there will be two 1200’s and two CDJ-1000/2000’s hooked up. I’ve seen people hook up Serato, Traktor, and even Torq before.
Really, I don’t think unless you get into a weekly resident kind of deal, that you’ll have to worry too much about “what” software you choose. It’s a matter more of finding a spot to play and get paid more than the small things.
If anything, straight CDJ’s are the easiest transition and most common thing installed these days.
This has been true in my short time in Miami. I have seen some excellent local DJs on serato and I have seen one or two good headliners on controllers but I’ve never seen any good local DJs on a controllers only setup down here. A lot of the awful ones have been on NS7s and other itch setups though.
When I was in NY I saw a lot of talented DJs on controllers with traktor but almost all were all affiliated with dubspot.
I’ll say that’s I’ve never seen a good traktor/VDJ DJ in the flesh.
I’d seen plenty of good ableton DJs but that’s because I go to breakcore nights.
Ive seen hawtin and slam live, both traktor DJs, both brilliant. However ive seen a lot of local DJs on s4’s etc, and they suck, hard.
I would say SSL is more dominant in clubs BUT, if your a controllerist you can use an SL box with traktor without any problems
Excellent point hoodless.
Traktor Pro vs SSL is a silly choice. TPro doesn’t do DVS and SSL doesn’t do midi very well.
Turntables? SSL.
Midi? Traktor Pro.