Incorporating different worlds: Engine DJ x Soundswitch x Mixed In Key

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Dear friends of the forum,

I’m using the Denon Prime 4 with a DMX cable running SoundSwitch to a venue in the Netherlands called Pakhuis. It’s a nice, small club, featuring 10 LED spots in all colours and 4 Moving heads. Nothing much but super enjoyable to have dedicated light programs with my songs.

Now, it seems that I ran into a lot of trouble. First and foremost; getting the beatgrids right in SoundSwitch is unnecessarily hard. The software does not seem to read the metadata from Engine DJ (where I did analyze all of my songs) in 80% of the cases for unknown reasons. Therefore, SoundSwitch can’t assign auto-scripts to the songs, which is a bummer. And even if it does, the lighting shows aren’t as intricate as I could program them myself, as if the detection system is not fully developed yet.

This is why I sent both SoundSwitch and Mixed In Key the invitation to maybe get into contact with eachother about this sometime. MIK has amazing recognition of beatgrids and assigns 8 cues to all your tracks. Sadly, at this point, the export function of MIK to Engine DJ does not entail these cues. I asked them to incorporate a dedicated export feature for Engine DJ to fully optimize my library with ease. When I did so, I also asked to reach out to SoundSwitch, so that the analysing features of MIK could maybe be implemented in the SoundSwitch software, offering users synced lightshows to even their audio-cues and switching up things nicely without having to program anything. I have not heard back from them, but I am assuming this is not going to happen anytime soon, though I would really like to see this implemented. What do you think?

Lastly, I vouched for a soft-take over MIDI mapping possibility, meaning that I can assign the controls of effects (for instance, the percentage of the reverb effect which has its own rotary knob on the Prime 4) also to the SoundSwitch rotary control over the Strobe Rate. This would enable me to use the reverb effect increasingly in a buildup into a drop while simultaneously building the strobe rate, the maximum being completely on white (no strobe as 100% is not blickering). Of course, the reverb effect ‘on/off’ should be mappable too to the strobe effect being on and off at the same time, to cut out the reverb on the drop and cut out the heavy flashing too. I would like this to work using soft midi-takeover, so that assigning a different controller with the same function will just pick up from the point I left it on, meaning the strobe rate on 80% is same as reverb 80%, but using a different controller for the strobe rate will need a soft takeover by dialing up to 80% strobe rate and back (without of course changing the reverb percentage).

Again, what do you guys think?

Let me know,

Cheers from the Netherlands,

Dennis

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Hey, I am using soundswitch a lot and I can say I never had any issues with the beatgrids at all. A 80 percent failure rate seems very odd to me and can’t confirm that. I also use soundswitch since the beginning of 2.xx and never had that problem. If the beatgrids are right in Engine they are right in SS.

For my part, I am very happy with what soundswitch can do right know. I now own a Controle One and it’s a great addon if you are a heavy user. No more screen pushing on the sc6000.

Therefore I would want that they are just continue with their focus on engine. A third party product means a lot of Ressources will taken away from the main product to development, integrate and test of mixed in key. I also don’t know how many would really use that feature.

For the midi part. You can use your laptop to run SS and it should be possible to map certain knobs to effects. I did it with different midi controllers, but don’t know if it is possible with the prime 4. however you mean the mapping not only to the knob, you also want the variable that different software settings (reverb effect) have different effects on the midi knob. So that you map the effect knob to the strobe effect but it should only activate if the reverb effect is used?

If I am right this would be heavier task to integrate this, with enormous testing scenarios with every software Chang of the Engine OS side and SS. Don’t think this will happen.

Maybe try first to rebuild the beatgrid analyzation function? If this is working it would be a major step forward. SS has a super nice support, describe them your problem via mail and they probably will help you.

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80% not detected is a lot, just curious, are you using WAV files or MP3?

  1. Have you tried reanalysing your entire Engine DJ library?

  2. I would suggest doing it twice as the first pass is usually grids based on the bpm info contained in the file, 2nd reanalysis will do a full analysis disregarding any info.

  3. Engine DJ analysis algorithm is pretty good since it was tweaked.

Have you tried using Serato (free desktop version) as an alternative - Both Engine and SS can read Serato grids. I have my Serato library enabled in Soundswitch.

  1. This sounds like it would be a great enhancement, where some Engine player FX will also trigger some Engine Lighting effects. eg filter knob also changing HUE.

  2. It may be possible to do this already with Soundswitch desktop version, but i’m guessing you want this for Engine Lighting (the obe built into the prime players).

  3. I would suggest starting feature request for this.

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Definitely this.

If you’re going grids not aligned then definitely reanalyse your files. This will allow them to be more accurate.

There is some new auto scripts for the auto loops in SoundSwitch 2.7’ so would suggest you make some of these. They are excellent and will really make a difference and will allow some fantastic chases accroas your lights.

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Thank you all for responding. As it turns out, having SoundSwitch analyzing all tracks when they’re already on the SSD or USB stick does not have this problem of 80% not finding beatgrids. To answer some of your questions:

  1. I use Mp3’s
  2. I took the time to reanalyze a specific playlist with plenty of songs to check whether this does the trick, and it seems only when you analyze and what from where matters.
  3. The Engine DJ analysis does work quite well, but not as great as Mixed In Key, I’d argue.
  4. I have used Serato! I actually use a tool from ATGR Productions, a nice dutchman who makes conversion tools for DJ’s. As you can export Mixed in Key to Rekordbox, using the ATGR tool you can convert your metadata to serato and there’s Engine DJ/Serato working together so this is my way of bypassing it. If Engine DJ decides to add the possibility to auto-assign the 8 cue pads based on its analysis, this might actually be less of a problem than integrating MIK.
  5. I took the liberty to ask SoundSwitch for the midi from Prime 4 as a way of controlling SoundSwitch too and I also asked for soft takeovers, so that using a secondary controller with a knob for the same function/effect works nicely too and they think this is a great idea and are looking to incorporate it. They couldn’t tell me when they have implemented the ideas though.
  6. Yes, indeed, I’m looking to not needing my laptop when I can plug in my Prime 4 (and maybe the engine lighting controller later on)
  7. Reanalyzing my files did not change the outcome, but exporting everything in Engine DJ and afterwards going to the exported library on the SSD in the Prime 4 changed everything, now 95% I’d say is fully functional.
  8. The new auto scripts seem nice! I’m going to dive into the autoscripts for auto loops! Thank you for your replies all!
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my thoughts are, that tool from ATGR is the problem , let me show you this

+Screen Shot 2023-04-04 at 15.11.59
+Screen Shot 2023-04-04 at 15.11.591440×900 166 KB

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same song in those three different softwares…ATGR soft makes a correction in the tag and engine dj reads that info and then this happen(thats my thoughts , im going to contact ATGR soon)

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If you contact him, point him to this article which Denon DJ have put together regarding external tools that write to the database:

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