Feeling more comfortable on the new gear I’m starting to play around now with more of the features and decided to give the sync engine a bit of a test drive this weekend. I set both players to tempo (just wanted speeds to be recognized) and started my set.
A couple of things I noticed that should be looked at by the dev team in a future update:
Half speed tracks attempt to double, so if I’m at 140 and drop in a 70 track it gets cranked up 100%. This is hard to correct in a hurry. I’d consider this a high priority item to fix.
When stopping the “master track”, the button on the other player lights up immediately, but there seems to be a bit of a delay before the pitch fader on that deck reactivates. Not a huge delay - just a few seconds. But I’d start sliding the fader around and then notice that it hadn’t grabbed. This isn’t necessarily a priority to fix, but it might be worth either getting rid of the delay, or adding the same delay to the master button just so it’s clear when we can start playing around.
Overall it all continues to work impressively. I’ve been recording all my sets out with them to review for any other issues (audio pops and such things) and it’s all flawless.
The sitch you describe is the player doing exactly what its supposed to be doing. Meaning that you’ve got a track thats 140, you’ve got a track thats 70 and you tell the SC5000 to make the incoming track the same BPM as the playing track - which it’s doing it’s just maths. How can I make a 70 BPM track match a 140 BPM track ? oh yeah… play it twice as fast. Maths and music have a relationship. Yeah’d be nice for the players to know that 70 and 140 would mix, but that could lead to errors, if the players always jumped to that conclusion. So, it’s a good thing that you’re there to DJ.
If you just load the slow track on it’s own, does it show 70 or 140 ?
You prob already know that you can tell Engine Prime to analyse in distinct BPM ranges so that a track that you don’t want to be known as a 70 BPM would be analysed as 140?
If you were playing two tracks that were analysed as 140 BPM and it double-speeded one of those, I’d be concerned, but that doesn’t seem the thing here.
Don’t be silly - most of the major software packages can do this without issue so there is no reason to expect less from these top-tier players. It’s a bug. Maybe not a critical one, but it is still there. It needs to be identified and fixed. End of story.
I’d rather you didn’t take that tone with me. I’m Male, so maybe you won’t.
If you’re using Sync, and the two BPMs are different, then the players are doing what you’re telling them to do :. changing their speed to bring BPM 2 up or down to BPM 1 by tiny pitch adjustments or, in this case blitzing tempo.
Doing what they’re being told to do, isn’t a bug. Nicely put, you’d like extremes of tempo change to be looked at by the players to see if halving/doubling the analysed BPM would result in a smaller tempo change requirement: What I mean is if you’ve got a track at 140 BPM and a track at 71 BPM, the suggestion would be for the player to consider 140 and 70 to be “the same” then just adjust its pitch a tiny bit, to account for the remaining 1 BPM left over.
As long as its controllable in the preference menu then its an ok feature to suggest.
Now, now, don’t go making this sexist. Defending an obvious flaw is silly and doesn’t help better the product. These are awesome units, but any new product will have a glitch or two. It isn’t some sort of attack or smear, and there are a few people on this site now acting as if any such report is. At this level, not recognizing half beats is a glitch. Having no system to correct for that is a glitch. It may be minor to some. It may be major to others. But if most of the major software packages can handle this without issue, there is no reason it can’t be here.
So let me lay out an example of how one such software deals: In Virtual, the tempo sync has a range (I think it’s 10%) and above that, it won’t automatically kick in unless requested. However, if that range is actually above 95% or so, it recognizes the half beat factor and adjusts the track accordingly. You’re then free to play around as needed.
Back to the Primes - the starting point should be at what is more likely the intended outcome. If you have a track at 70 and a track at 140, it is far more likely that people are looking to mix on the half beats than it is they want one of the tracks cranked by 100%. If adjustments are needed on the fly, they should be needed for what is the more rare scenario, not the more common one.
Absolutely agree. I’ll add this to the Feature Request list for the development team to look into. The players are faithfully doing what they’re being asked to do e.g.: Match the BPMs of these two tracks please… and they do - so any change to that functionality is merely a Feature request - and the workaround in the meantime would be to change the BPM of the track that has the wrong BPM for what you’re hoping to achieve e.g.: A Ballard over a dance track for example.
Now, just trying to get my head around the trigger.
If BPM of Non-Master Deck would result in a Pitch change greater than 50% (75%?) then multiply BPM value by 2 and re-calculate required pitch adjustment).
Hows that sound ?
The same command should also be able to look the other way …to cope with negative pitch changes similarly.
or…
If Pitch change required to perform Sync is a greater percentage than the user has set their own pitch slider range, then look at halving/doubling the incoming BPM value to effect sync using a pitch change % within the users Pitch setting tolerance.
I’m happy for discussion on either of the above suggestions, but I’ll put the whole query over to the Dev team Feature Request list today.
If it is going to be a fixed value, it should be pretty high - like 85% to avoid false positives. If going this route I would agree with the others that it needs to be a selectable feature.
I think the comparison to the pitch fader setting makes more sense for implementation. Someone looking to actually double the speed of their track would likely have their fader set to 100% already, so the system should do nothing. If they have their fader set to 20% and halving or doubling the incoming track would put it into that range, then assume that is the intended result.
Or if you want a really simple solution, just make the little on screen sync logo tappable. Tap it to half/double the speed of the track, tap it again and it goes back to being matched with the other deck. That way you don’t have to make any assumptions about what someone wants to do. They just select it if it’s what they want.
The more I think about this (and it has been nagging at me all afternoon) the more I think the solution is actually quite simple.
If sync is on and the tempo adjustment it is in the current range, it matches up.
If sync is on and the tempo adjustment is out of the current range setting of the pitch fader, nothing happens. No tempo sync at all. This covers hard drops when changing formats (ie house set ends, hip-hop set begins).
If it is not in the current range, but a half or double beat adjustment would be compatible with the current range, then it matches up based on that.
Then just have a simple toggle in the config page to turn this entire behaviour on or off (off leaving the system as it currently is for this who like it that way). Minimal user input required. It works one way for people who are used to that from how their previous software behaved, or the current system for those who like it as is.
I agree with you. Rekordbox allows you to do this in sync. Clearly people here don’t mix drum and bass for instance. All the tracks are around 86-87bpm or 174-175bpm ish. Rekordbox allows you to seemlessly mix them together, without switching off sync. The bpm will match which ever track is in master mode. If the 2nd track is 87bpm and the master playing in 175bpm, then the 2nd track with beatmatch at 87.5bpm.
I’ve just bought a mixsteam pro. I can import my rekordbox sets via SD ard into it and Engine DJ recognises my preset hot cues but it doesn’t allow me to do the fast mixes I do with dnb beause I have to fart around turning sync on and off. Not the point of having technology doing it for you.
I thought there may be something in settings to match half beats, like Rekordbox. Sadly not. A bit annoying, when you love mixing with 175 and 87 tracks.
Clearly some posters here dont have information about what genres each forum member or Prime users actually mix.
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Not the point of having technology doing it for you
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D&B is one of the tightest/narrowest BPM ranges in terms of lack of BPM variation from track to track. So developing manual/DJ skills to perform a mix when the autoDJ / autosync can’t work alone, is far easier than other genres, especially with so little lyric content getting in the way too.
Also, be aware of, and start getting involved with the following features:
• In Engine DJ and on decks, there’s a double bpm and halve bpm/Beatgrid option onscreen
• before analysing tracks into Engine set the BPM range option. This helps reduce the number fast tracks being given a half speed bpm and vice-versa
