Traktor Scratch Poor (a.k.a. Ghetto Timecode Control)

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Traktor Scratch Poor (a.k.a. Ghetto Timecode Control)

So after a few hours of tweaking, I have a working timecode vinyl control setup within Traktor Scratch Pro without the Audio8, or any other pricey 4in/4out card. In fact, my external soundcard only has 2 inputs! Since Traktor only allows you to use one sound device at a time, combining your available devices involves a little bit of software trickery. Here’s my current setup:

  • 2 used Technics SL-1200MK2 turntables ($200 each)
  • 2 Traktor Scratch Control Vinyl ($12 each)
  • Four RCA female-female barrel connectors and two RCA-to-1/8" adapters ($6 shipped from Monoprice.com)
  • VCI-100 1.3fw w/ Black DJTT SE Skin ($300, bought from NateD)
  • Miglia HarmonyAudio 2in/8out Firewire Card ($30 from Amazon)
  • Macbook Pro Santa Rosa 2.4ghz ($600, bought broken and repaired)

Oh, and a free copy of Traktor Scratch Pro from a friend who bought it and decided he liked Serato better :smiley:

Total: $1360.

Here’s how my current setup is connected:

  1. Technics Deck A: Connect barrel connectors to phono output, then use RCA-to-1/8" to connect to Macbook Pro’s stereo line-in.

  2. Technics Deck B: Connect barrel connectors to phono output, then use RCA-to-1/8" to connect to HarmonyAudio’s stereo line-in.

  3. Onto the software trickery! Open up the Audio Midi Setup app in /Applications/Utilities and create an Aggregate Audio Device. More information here: http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/aggregateaudio/. My Aggregate Device is:

Macbook Line-In (2 in, resampled)
HarmonyAudio (2 in / 8 out, set as clock)

You’ll want to set the clock to whatever device you’re outputting to, and resample all your other devices to keep them in sync.

The order of your devices in the list is that order that Traktor will see the inputs/outputs on the Aggregate Device. So if my list is in the above order, then in Traktor I would see:

“Aggregate Device (4 in, 8 out)”

…which would correlate as listed below, for me.

Aggregate Device In 0 – Macbook Line-In Channel 0
Aggregate Device In 1 – Macbook Line-In Channel 1
Aggregate Device In 2 – HarmonyAudio In Channel 0
Aggregate Device In 3 – HarmonyAudio In Channel 1
Aggregate Device Out 0 – HarmonyAudio Out Channel 0
Aggregate Device Out 1 – HarmonyAudio Out Channel 1
Aggregate Device Out 2-7 – HarmonyAudio Out Channel 2-7

You’ll likely have a different soundcard, and therefore a different quantity and combination of inputs/outputs, so I’m just defining the connections to clarify my example setup.

  1. Now open up Traktor Scratch Pro. Set your audio device to the Aggregate Device, map your Input Routing/Output Routing, and go to Timecode Setup. Should now be seeing a timecode signal for Decks A and B!

I had to adjust my inputs until I got a strong enough signal for Traktor to read the timecode. On my HarmonyAudio box I just turned the input gain all the way up, and for the Macbook Pro line-in, I went to Sound Preferences and set it Line-In to 75% gain (just before the 4th tick). Once everything was set, I had a solid, responsive vinyl setup, with a 2.5ms latency.

Right now, I’m only using two of my soundcard’s outputs into my monitors. For when I use this in a club, I would just use the HarmonyAudio’s 8 outputs into the club mixer. 4 for Decks A&B into the mixer, 2 for monitoring and 2 for rec/ other line out.

I’ll put a vid of this setup working if anybody wants it, but a lot of you should have similar enough gear to try this out for yourselves. Good luck!

–

Charlie Tran, Brooklyn bedroom DJ / web developer

2

A video would be great!

3

really … no way .. so what exactly doesthe audio 8 do as far as scratch pro is concerned ?

4

If you would like to write up a tutorial and put it on the blog hit me up and we can sort something out.

5

No way! This is the first time I listen to something like this. Please go ahead an make the video, really looking forward to it, and lookkng forward to figure out how to make it work on XP.

6

awesomeness!

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Thanks guys! I’ll make a video later tonight and post it up. It’ll even be in HD :smiley:

Currently it appears that Traktor Scratch Pro does not use the Audio8 as a dongle / authentication device of any sort, like how Serato won’t work without an approved mixing box. Basically all the Audio8 does is boost the phono input from your turntables up to the appropriate level.

I’ve actually been e-mailing Ean for a while about this, heh. Dude is busy! Sure, if you want to make me a Wordpress login I’ll reformat it. Although, my concern is that if this technique gets more popularized, Traktor may lock out generic sound cards out of future versions.

8

…
Native will dongle again…

…

9

nice work ctran, it looks like you put some serious work into getting this working. I hate to say it but once NI catches wind of this they will most likey patch it in the next update.

10

Upon further research, maybe not! NI has been aware of this since at least November 2008:

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/forum_de/showthread.php?t=75024

While it’s possible that maybe they just haven’t allocated any dev time towards patching this out, it could also be that they just don’t care, or can’t do it?

11

…

Cool!

hahahaha

…

12

yeah ive seen the video with the 4D, but just to make sure, you need TSP unlocked, not just Tpro?

13

Yeah you need Traktor Scratch Pro. If you just have Traktor Pro, you’ll see a “Scratch Disabled” message when you open up the scratch pads in each deck.

14

kool, thanks for the heads up, I have T-Pro, but dont have too much time to mess with it.

15

Send me your details via pm-
The username you want to use
The email you would like to attach to your account (this isnt public)
and a webpage you would like us to link to so you can get some of our traffic :slight_smile:

16

That was for the Xone 4D which was going to be Scratch certified anyway. I’ll bet the loophole will be patched by the next update which ironically will be the one that has the algorithym that’ll make keylock and timecode actually sound bearable.

17

Ah, good call then. Any ETA on the next update?

I’m going to hold off on the video for tonight – BentoSan brought up a few good points and I want to clean up my setup a bit. I’m probably going to toss my vestax mixer into the setup to clean up the phono signal – I left it out intentionally to try to make this setup as minimal as possible, but obviously anyone who has two decks is probably going to have a mixer too.

BTW, a big :smiley: for the NI forum dude who assumes I’m using a cracked version of Traktor.

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It is ‘In development’ - my guess 8 weeks. But that is just a guess.

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I was so excited about the fact that the audio 8 does not make any special trick or decoding job, decided to try it my self with a PC running XP and Traktor 3.4.

What I did was the following:

  1. Got a Traktor timecode cd
  2. As actually I dont have any truntable or dj cd deck at home just loaded the traktor timecode cd on my other laptop running another copy of tracktor, so I could have the cd decks features and try some pitch changes.
  3. Conected the line out the second laptop to the line in of my M-Audio Audiophile which is connected to the main laptop.
  4. Configured tracktor with the line input mentioned above for deck A
  5. Loaded a song on deck A
  6. Press play on the laptop running the tracktor timecode CD and guess what…
    I am still smiling… It gives a perfect timecode signal… so perfect that as a matter of fact I tryed some pitch changes and mouse scratching and it works flawless until now. I will do some more testing but guess what… tomorrow I am getting back my old TTs which I could not use because my lack of vinyls and I am going try this out in combination with the vci to see If all works together.

Thanks for posting this, I will have a very fun weekend…

20

i think i should order some timecode vinyl and get my mate to bring his decks around !