Analysis vs Reanalysis - Explained - Engine DJ Desktop 2.0 (Nov 2021)

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Have you wondered what the difference is?

Did you notice a slight drifting the beat-grids of some tracks in Engine DJ, though its showing the “similar” BPM value as your other software?

:nerd_face:

This explanation may help

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    1. Analysis (Manual or Auto)

  • When a new track is added to Engine DJ (desktop) from another software library or from a DJ pool, Engine DJ will check the file to see if it already contains a BPM value, if it does, Engine DJ will use the BPM and beat-grid (if importing from another DJ software).

This is Analysis and you may notice It is a fast process.

    1. Reanalysis

  • After an initial analysis, if you choose the same tracks again for “reanalysis”, Engine DJ will do deeper analysing, It will discard all the tracks BPM and Beat-grid and recalculate everything. Reanalysis is slower but more accurate for majority of music styles. This is helpful if you notice a progress drifting in your grids despite the track being quantised.

:bar_chart: :chart_with_downwards_trend: :chart_with_upwards_trend:

The reason for this is that (i paraphrase) there is a slight difference in how different dj softwares store the BPM values in their libraries.

  • Let’s take a track that is 120.46 bpm (accurate), Software A may decide to store the bpm as 120.5 bpm in its db, whilst software B may round it up to 121bpm. Now you are adding the tracks from software B to engine dj, it will be added as 121bpm and grids will be generated for 121bpm hence the grids will look ok for the first few bars but subsequently start drifting as the track progresses. This is the type of situation where “Reanalysis” can help.

:lab_coat:

  • As the excellent Engine DJ Development team continues improving and tweaking the software, they may also add improvements to the bpm and grid analysis, so it’s advisable (not compulsory) to run a library reanalysis periodically say every other year or annually.

  • There is a padlock option :lock: to lock tracks that you absolutely want excluded from reanalysis - e.g that notoriously drifting “Kool & the Gang - Ladies Night” track that took you 20 mins to grid manually.

:stethoscope:

Reanalysis can also help if the BPM imported with the track is completely wrong. Eg Track is 90bpm, Software A wrongly detects as 120bpm, you import track from Software A into Engine DJ and do analysis (Engine DJ will stick to the incorrect 120 bpm value provided by Software A), but as you are screening/previewing the track in Engine DJ, your ears and eyes tell you “hey this song cant be 120”. Running reanalysis should fix this.

:thinking:

You may be thinking , I’m just going to use reanalysis instead of analysis. Unfortunately, before re-analysis can do a deep analysis you have to run regular analysis first.

:thinking: :thinking: :thinking:

Next thought, why don’t they just remove analysis completely and always do a deep analysis - if you have tracks that are flexi-gridded (manually gridded) from other softwares (eg funk and disco), “analysis” keeps your flexible grid and BPM intact so you don’t have to re-do them in Engine DJ. Kudos to the thoughtful Dev team for including this time-saving feature.

Nobody wants to start manually gridding Kool and the Gang again (I don’t)

Both are equally important :muscle:t6:

Hopefully someone will find this helpful.

PS

I don’t know how it affects “Keys”, if any one wants to add info on that…go ahead

20 Likes
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perhaps the terminology “analyse” and “reanalyse” serve to confuse slightly

maybe simple wording change eg: “analyse (tags)” and “analyse (engine)” would help show they are 2 different things - i didn’t get it for a while at the start and you could be forgiven for thinking that the scan was inaccurate.

thanks for this

2 Likes
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I don’t know how it affects “Keys”, if any one wants to add info on that…go ahead

If the initial key tag exists it will not be overwritten by analysis or reanalysis. It stays until you delete it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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So you guarantee me that if I have padlocked the tracks that I had to grid by hand, they will not be touched by a “reanalyze”? :thinking:

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:nerd_face:

Padlock - protects the grids and bpm.

I stand by it, I guarantee it

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I am always come back to this post occasionally when I add music to Engine. How were yo able to determine that? The manual does not come close to explaining this. Trial and error, a mod?

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Engine Science :sweat_smile:

I spent a lot time with engine

2 Likes
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Haha that’s the only answer.

Question, (and you might have already answered this for me) In what situations would I use re-import track information?

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If you have changed file tags outside Engine. Using apps like TagScanner for instance.

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It takes a long time to figure out how to use Engine DJ because the manuals are missing some important information, I.e. bugs/issues, and there are no recommended workflows.

The manuals explain how each feature works, but they do not tell you how to use the software and hardware in a coherent workflow. That’s simply not good enough in my view.

I don’t think any workflow is issue-free when using Engine OS and Engine DJ together. You have to be very careful, or you can easily lose playlist data.

A good start would be for Denon DJ to upgrade to online manuals like Denon Hifi: https://manuals.denon.com/avrx3600h/eu/en/index.php

They also need to be upfront about what workflows they are prepared to support fully.

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Got it. Thanks.

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I agree that the manual is barebones. There are many keyword features, but no CLEAR wording on how to use them or what they do. The example is the subject of this post. It always confused me.