Way way way way back (i’m beginning to sound like an old man)
As i was saying…way way way way way back, EP’s own algorithm for bpm analysis was rubbish. It was unusable for anything other than four on the floor. Throw in some Hip Hop or even Top 40 and it gives you wild values.
So we asked the devs kindly (just kidding it was a huge riot) and they provided this method of initial analysis to pull BPM data from the track idtags as most people would have analysed tracks in their other dj software anyways. So it was a workaround whilst the devs built an improved analysis algorithm.
Pound for pound the new algorithm is very accurate, i have done comparisons with other software and it returns correct results all the time (well for the genres i play. - hiphop, rnb, dancehall, afrobeats, dance and pop stuff…YMMV)
EP can still do a correct analysis with the first pass of analysis if the track file does not contain any bpm data… so there is that. I download from dj pools and most pools have already done analysis through Serato or MIK anyways. Serato and MIK writes BPM value in integer value to the id tags of the track.
The error you may come across is that even though Serato knows a track is 100.4 it will save it to the tag as 100 (flat), EP will assume the BPM is 100 (flat) and will build a beat-grid based on the flat 100, but as you guess right…thats incorrect, it may stay locked in for a few bars then it starts drifting.
So if you run the reanalysis…EP will now discard that 100 and update it to 100.4
I have tried just using Reanalysis as the first pass to see if it will do a forced bpm analysis but unfortunately it acts like the first analysis pass.
Thats why i said 2 passes, just as long as the second pass is Reanalysis.
A way to automate this is to have Autoanalysis active, meaning as you add songs the first pass is already done, you just sort by date and run the re-analysis pass to ensure everything is copacetic.
If you are a man of history and like reading long threads …knock your self out with these links