Another Tidal track analysis workaround/workflow

Engine DJ Software Engine DJ (Mac & PC)
1

I saw the topic from last week for a workaround to analyse Tidal tracks.

I’m using a slightly different (but faster!) way to analyze Tidal tracks which also has a big benefit (see below). You’ll need although some third party tools to use this workaround.

First you need 3 tools: Pioneer’s Rekordbox, Lexicon, EngineDJ

Step 1: Import your Tidal playlists in Rekordbox. (Switch to Performance mode, select a playlist, righclick and choose “import playlist”). The playlist will now be imported to your rekordbox library and the tracks will be analyzed (if automatic analyze is turned on). The new playlist will be available in your (root folder) collection. I created a subfolder “>>TIDAL” where I also created several subfolders, based on genres. I move the imported playlist to the genre folder to which it belongs.

Step 2: Import your “>>TIDAL” folder from step 1 using Lexicon to your Lexicon Library*. You can do some nice things within Lexicon, for example import some extra tag information like “Year”, “Energy”, “Danceability” etc.

Step 3: Export your Lexicon library (or just the playlists you’d like to export) to your Engine libary. I’m only using an external SSD for my Engine library (I don’t have a local Engine library), so I will select my SSD as target. It’s also possible to export your playlists to a thumb-drive (I sometimes do so), it’ll only export the metadata of the files, not the actual music files.

Step 4: Select your playlists on your Denon gear. You can select a playlist from your SSD/thumb-drive (so you don’t need to switch to Tidal as source!). Notice that the files are displayed in red (it looks like if the tracks are missing). Unfortunately therefore it’s not possible to swipe your tracks to a deck. You can however use the hardwarebuttons to load tracks (e.g. SC5000/SC6000 use the rotary button and push on a track or use the load buttons on the Prime 2, 4, go). You now can also use the other nice features of Engine (sorting playlists for example), something you can’t do in the “Tidal as source” way.

*Remark: Importing (parts of) your Rekordbox library into Lexicon sometimes takes some time. If I want to import a playlist quickly, I first rename the Rekordbox library and start with a fresh one.

Another remark: you need to be logged in to your Tidal account on your DJ Gear!

2

Interesting procedure. But there is a small problem: it is mandatory to have a license for Lexicon, otherwise you can not do anything.

Or you could skip the step from Lexicon and convert the RekordBox playlist to Engine DJ directly, right?

3

Unfortunately it’s not possible to do it directly. In “performance mode” you can’t drag and drop tracks from Rekordbox to Engine and if you switch to “export mode” you won’t see any tracks in your “collection -tidal- playlists”. I also tried to export the Rekordbox collection to XML, if you open it in Engine, the playlists are also empty.

So in the end you need Lexicon. I also don’t like the subscription model, but sometimes it’s worth it. I do “huge updates” of my collection using Lexicon, which I use a month and then I pause my subscription, do only minor updates in my collection (directly in Engine DJ) and then 2 months later I take a subscription for a month. Lexicon isn’t cheap (if it costs EUR 5,- a month I think I wouldn’t stop my subscription, but EUR 15,- a month, every month, is too much for hobby purposes).

Besides of Lexicon I also use my own music database. I export a list of my Rekordbox collection into a csv, put that in PowerBI. I also feed PowerBI with another “Artist - Title” file (based on for example a Tidal playlist). PowerBI matches my collection with the “Artist - Title” file and generates an m3u file (which I import in rekordbox and than drag and drop to Engine) and a list of “missing” files, which I convert to a Tidal playlist. [this is a lot of work, therefore I like the power of Lexicon]

1 Like
4

Shame, how far you have to go for basics functions, little to no progress was made on firmware this year…

1 Like
5

Will they ever give us this feature!?