Hi there! I switched recently from Traktor to Denon. My problem is that engine DJ beatgrids drum and bass oddly. Often it doesn’t start on the first beat, and the major beat (red Line) is on the snare rather the downbeat. Is that on purpose?!
What to do? In Traktor they all seem ok. I know how to realign a track’s beatgrids and first cue Point etc., but any automatic workarounds? Redoing them all manually doesn’t seem like a viable option. I started doing it, but there must be a better option to re analyze those tracks in engine DJ? Any suggestions
Hey there - I play a lot of Breakbeat and have a similar problem! Quite often you just need to beatjump the grid back “1” and you are there - otherwise it is a manual adjust each time.
I have a bunch of 90’s DnB which is near impossible to grid anyway - some major drift going on!!
The odd part is that sync works between most tracks but almost all are off with beatgrid and cue is not assigned on the first beat neither, but commonly on snare. Hopefully there will be a better track analysis in the future but wouldn’t even know what feature to ask Denon for. Surprised that pro dj gear like sc6000 can’t do that, not sure what dj would want to manage manually all their beatgrids like that. Lots of time loss.
Another workaround could be to manage my library via Traktor first and then use mixo to transfer to engine, assuming the beatgrid transfers correct. Probably would need to lock it before allowing engine DJ to reanalyze. However, lots of in between steps.
Yes, it’s a really nice convenient way on the sc6000 (thank you Denon for that!), but once I do one track, the others start to be off with sync function which is a bit tricky during a recording session. I can manual beat match to fix it but it starts to be confusing. Hence I decided to check my whole library on the computer, it’s a bit messy some of the tracks are off others are not. It’s tricky I find…
I imported from Traktor library using Engine DJ, beatgrid got changed (it automatically had to reanalyze the tracks to get BPM, keys etc.) and also the first cue point for all tracks unfortunately. Other loops and hot cues were intact fortunately.
I don’t concider myself an expert but I do a lot of work on grids (thousands of songs manually gridded, wide open format application here)…
… the comparison pic shows a correct Translation between the 2 apps, no prob there. The issue belongs to the Engine algorithm and I’ve seen it thousands of times happen (exactly as you described it, one beat off). Only fix I found is to manually fix it and it is what I do in my preparation. It is what engine algo does. Sometimes, not every time … … but i must say that after version 2 they improved the analyzation significantly … imo.
[Edit: I think that the algo is not always wrong when it shows one beat off.
Par example on some hiphop tracks when there’s no correct phrasing, or when it is a definitely wrong phrasing … plus in many occasions of really bad musicians/producers (not referring to the picture song above, I speak generally). The algo doesn’t know all of that info, it just tries to read the poor data … also I find that the small “translation” differencies between apps completely normal, though I don’t know much about algorithms] … i know I don’t help much, just observate the issue too …
Looking at your feature request, it seems that request is different and has been partially implemented with the manual ankors feature but I might be wrong. I will have to read more carefully and comment there on your post to ask for clarification.
I will also upload some screenshots here for my problem, as engine has problem analyzing not only difficult DnB tracks, but some that actually start with a downbeat where the amplitude is smaller than the snare. Also first cue almost never starts one first beat. I wish Denon could talk to Traktor maybe to get insights how they solved it, that’s the downside of closed source software.
thanks for your comment. As posted, it’S a never ending story and here in the forum is more than one post.
My feature request contains two items, namly
proper beat grid
amending the beatgrid if you will find an irregular cadence
All posts regarding this item are correlating. Imo if the maximum problem will be solved, some / all other problems will be solved automatically in the same strike.
Seriously, though, it would be nice for D&B to be automatically analyzed fairly correctly in BPM, even if not perfectly in gridding & alignment location, for things like loops and beat jump in Engine OS. It’s a rude awakening to be blending two or more tracks, beat jump or loop one of them, and have it train wreck hugely and seemingly inexplicably, though obviously that’s more of an issue on old disco and live acoustic dupes from vinyl.
Gee, all the duplication of effort. There should be a metadata field with grid data so it could be shared across platforms. Rekordbox rolled out “cloud analysis” with 6.6.4. I.e., user shared “waveform, BPM, beat grid and vocal position”. But, I’ve never figured if its working.
Dynamic beatgridding with Rekordbox sometimes works ok with classic disco, funk and soul. Maybe it would halfway work with that 90’s DnB. The dynamic gridding throws in lots of anchors (not just on the downbeat). It will import into Engine DJ (thank you Denon!) and I don’t notice any offset (contradictory to this topic). If you don’t like where the anchors are you have to start over in EDJ. I can’t decide if it’s best to manually grid in EDJ from the start. You don’t really have to grid the whole song, just where you want cues, loops and, if you don’t mix by ear, a region for sync.
