Great Hardware, Frustrating Software: My Engine DJ Desktop Experience

Hi everyone, I love my SC Live 2 because it’s practically perfect (apart from a few minor issues). But I hate Engine DJ Desktop. I don’t know what the developers were thinking. If you have to use it to prepare your set, you’re in for a rough time. It starts with the overly sensitive scrolling and doesn’t stop there—it’s even worse when creating cue points. The software isn’t intuitive to use. You can’t see which tracks are already included in playlists.

The play count only appears in the playlist history. Quantezise can’t be enabled in the player, so setting cue points on the fly isn’t possible. When using the search function, I have to keep thinking about the keyboard shortcut to activate multiple filters at once. Plus, it would be super handy if I could assign rating stars directly on the controller—after all, that’s where I immediately notice which tracks are awesome.

What do you think? I actually miss the old version of the recordbox software—the one before it switched to a subscription mode

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Yes, somewhere, sometime! Those are basic features.

Yes… so basic that those who aren’t buying products from this range, may no longer need or use those basics.

But it’s just a case of seeing which of the hundreds of the requests, each and every one absolutely essentially needed and /or basic, according to their requester, so get added, and which don’t.

What do you mean by that? I use quantise all the time.

Anyway, Engine dj is working perfectly fine. All the basic features that are needed to make a playlist are there. I work on Engine dj almost every day, and adding, editing hot cues, loops, and beat grids is super intuitive and works as intended. When adding tracks to a playlist, the tracks appear in the playlist, how else you want the tracks to show, that they are there? Engine also asks you to confirm if you make a duplicate in the same playlist.

This whole rant doesn’t seem to have any logic…

Compared to the standalone hardware, the desktop software remains the weaker part - but that’s spoken in relative terms, it still does the job fine. It is well known, that at least for library organization, Rekordbox is more powerful (but also pretty convoluted).

Would still be nice to see eventually:

  • More filter/tag options
  • Track colors
  • Chronological Hot Cues
  • Define custom Hot Cue colors
  • Robust auto-relocate
  • Faster Export times
  • Bonus: A kind of performance / DJ mode, to make several inMusic controllers (e.g. Platinum FX, NS4FX, Rane One, Denon MC4000…) independent of 3rd party software solutions

That being said, I have no such issues that you mentioned, including the scrolling one. I had some problems with my MX Master 3, but this has been fixed. Also Quantize can be enabled/disabled via touching the [Q] icon on the player. Indeed, Star Rating would be cool to see.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I’d like to emphasize again that I’m talking about the desktop app. I haven’t been able to find the Quantize button there yet. Why is the play count only shown in the history lists? Have you ever tried renaming the genre for multiple tracks? You have to do that individually for each song. Out of desperation, I’m now doing that beforehand using the Mixxx software. Try figuring out which playlists a song is included in. The only way to do this is to use the search function, click on each playlist, and see if anything comes up. Yesterday, after a long time, I wanted to update my backup USB drive by running it through the Sync Manager. Guess what error message I got: Corrupted database. Congratulations. First I panicked, then I formatted the stick and restarted the sync. That took hours and didn’t work. I just don’t think I’m being too demanding here. The software is terrible.

Moin @Just_Tino ,

to avoid the described trouble I make a 1:1 Copy (Clone) of my USB Stick on the Windows surface. It only take 3 up to 5 Minutes to copy 256 GB (on my workstation :innocent: )

Good luck and brgds from HAM BeatMaster

How many files do you have? What is the brand and capacity of your USB drive?

What are your computer’s specifications (Processor, RAM, OS)?

Exporting 92GB of music (9177 tracks) takes less than 15 minutes on my M2 Pro Mac. However, I don’t use Sync Manager; I only import and export files using drag and drop, and I don’t encounter any problems.

I haven’t been able to find the Quantize button there yet.

You can set Cue/Loop Quantization under Preferences > Performance, works great.

Have you ever tried renaming the genre for multiple tracks? You have to do that individually for each song.

At least for this case I can give you some positive news: This works without issue, it probably just isn’t known to most people. You simply mark several tracks and then double-click into the genre column of one of the tracks, to edit/rename them all (a confirmation popup will appear).

This is how I edit the genre and sometimes also the comment of several tracks at once.

Hi DJMell26, I have about 6,000 tracks and am using an i5 11320H with 16 GB of RAM, Windows 11, and a USB 4 port. The flash drive is a 256 GB Scandisk.

Wow, I have to try that out right away. Thank you so much for this helpful tip.

Hello BeatMaster, does that mean you’re creating an image file of your USB drive? Thank you.

Moin @Just_Tino ,

We are talking about ENGINE DJ on a PC (Windows)

I’m making back ups from my USB stick following the rule “grandfather, father, son”.

Furthermore I have some USB sticks as test environment.

When I have to test tracks:

  • I create a special playlist on the production level

  • Then I move this playlist to the test environment,

  • disconnect the production level USB stick

  • make my tests on the test USB stick

After finishing the test

  • Connect the production USB stick again

  • Move the updated playlist from the test environment to the production level

  • After this procedure you should see the updated tracks as well in your collection on the production level

  • then you can delete the test playlist on the production level.

I hope, you will test this procedure first on a test environment after creating a backup from your production environment :innocent:

Good luck and brgds from HAM BeatMaster

It’s in the settings…

Yes, I tryed renaming genre or other column for multimple tracks. This is very easy. I used Keyshortcuts for to mark multiple tracks at once. Double-click the relevant row and column. I’ll type in the text I want and press Enter. Thats All…

if the issues are also related to porper sync management you are right, it is the worst right now because of bugs. it makes it impossible remove a track/s in Engine lists and export to 2 drives week to week for events, when you plug in the drives it puts the tracks BACK in to the local Engine library making the USB drives the masters. MIXO exports the one is should and it works great BUT it doesnt export the STEMS data/tracks so i have to do that after the fact

I know from my own experience that my database was backed up to a folder that also synced with onedrive, this did not work, the message corrupt database appeared.

Maybe this is what has happened?

The solution is to change in the onedrive settings that all files in the folder should stay on the driver

The lack of a usable play count is killing me for years…