On most of my tracks, the beat grids are completely off—and fixing them myself hasn’t been easy. I’ve tried looking up tutorials to learn how to sort it properly, but honestly, most of them aren’t very helpful.
What I’m really worried about is using Engine Lighting and having everything out of sync because of these dodgy beat grids I can’t even fix. The methods I’ve found just aren’t working for me.
Hi
what type of music do you play? what BPM range is it? have you set a matching BPM range before analysing the tracks?
Do you have any specific examples of music that isnt being analysed correctly?
Indeed that’s essential info. Also are these tracks from a streaming service or ones that you own? Are they imported from another program?
If they’re tracks that have a variable tempo (i.e. human drummer) then one possible workaround is to analyse them in the latest Rekordbox, which has a “high precision analysis” option now, then import from there.
It’s not “a given” that it’s supposed to be easy.
However, at least, from your sentence it seems that you have indeed been able to fix them, which is obviously a good thing.
Some music genres lend themselves to good grid and bpm analysis. One glaring exception being drum n bass which is often difficult for music programs to get an accurate calculation from, which is surprising given how similar all the tracks sound. Lol
You’ve got some options.
You could analyse your tracks with a different program, other than Engine, get your grids, your BPM etc on your entire collection and then use the Lexicon DJ program to convert all that gridding etc to Engine DJ
Can’t say I trust recordbox dynamic analysis, from all the jungle/D&B I’ve tested with it, if you have any tune with a no beat intro it just starts off analysing the song so slow then gradually builds up grid speed until it gets to the first beat. I’d much rather use static analysis & slightly adjust it.
I think engine is better at the general analysis & easier/quicker to adjust especially on the standalones which I find better than the desktop.
Once you get in a rhythm it’s easy.
What I do is…
Align the whole grid using the platter onto the first beat, adjust the beat marker so the first beat is number 1, while close to the beat marker with the needle marker hit cue so it jumps into location (make sure quantize is on for this), then place an anchor on your first beat, following on from this get to the next beat where it starts to go out & adjust the grid using the expand/compress grid buttons until it matches, hit the temp cue button again so the needle jumps into the exact place of your beat line (I find doing this easier than manually lining it up + it keeps track of my beat counts), then add another anchor.
What I’ve learned is once you’ve adjusted your whole grid using the platter at the beginning just to get a baseline & before adding any anchor points is never touch that platter again, because if you do it’ll knock out everything you’ve done, scan through the track using the touch display or come out of beat grid mode, where a t-shirt or roll your sleeves up because any slight static touch will adjust the grid without you realising.
Depends on how good/bad the track is you may only need to do this at a drop point (2 or 3 times), some tracks may require an anchor after every 8th beat (ie 1,9,17,25,33 etc), your just going to have to scan through and check.
Once you finished adjusting the track return to the first beat/beginning of track (shift + cue) put the cue point back to the first beat, add a hot cue if you want & lock the track so it can’t be adjusted even if you accidentally try to re-analyze it in the desktop software.
So a quick rundown of what I would do if I had a reasonably dodgy track.
Always zoom in on the grid as much as possible because it’s more accurate while doing this.
As I already said above apart from the initial set main grid base line at the beginning do not touch that platter again while in beat grid mode.
The demo is an example, you may need to do this randomly depending on type of track, example beat 1 then 17 then 33 but then 40 then 81 etc, you may have a track that don’t work in beats of 8 or random out of place drops on a 4 or 12 so you’ll have to adjust accordingly.
If you’re still struggling I can upload a video but you’ll have to wait as I’m working evenings atm.
On another note completely off topic, while searching ebay for stuff I came across this…
Old prototype of a sc live 2 I presume
Hey, are you familiar with this bug, er excuse me, Denon classifies it as a “feature”:
If you bring any track into Engine DJ Desktop that contains a TBPM or BPM tag, Engine DJ Desktop will skip scanning the tracks BPM. In order to work around this, you must “Re-Analyze” all tracks after the first analysis.
I was constantly having tracks that were very ‘slippery’ until I realized this was happening. My BPMs and Beatgrids are much more consistent now that I waste my time every import by Re-Analyzing all tracks.
When you get a track on Beatport, they may tag it as 123 BPM, but it may actually be 123.023 BPM, or Beatport might have gotten it totally wrong, and it’s actually closer to 124 BPM. Either way, see if Re-Analyze helps you with your beatgrids and please let me know if that works for you.
That add-on was programmed into Engine at the request of users. Some users felt that their own choice of BPM detection software, such as Platinum Notes, Traktor, Serato, Rekordpox etc were more accurate than Engine used to be originally. So the feature of “leave my tracks BPM alone if there’s a BPM stored in the usual BPM tag fields” was born.
Yup, and I’m glad it exists for people who use it, it just doesn’t make sense to me that it wasn’t created as on option. It’s my opinion and experience that MOST people don’t want/need this feature, or even know it exists. Most people don’t understand this ‘feature’, it bites them in the ass, and reveals itself to them as a ‘bug’, not a feature or anything helpful.
But I don’t want to get into the details. I just wanted to see if I could help the OP and see if “Re-Analyze” fixes their issues. If it does, that’s great, and is just another person tripping over this ‘feature’. If not, then we can help by focusing on other potential issues.
Its my experience that most people with Beatgrid issues actually have BPM issues introduced by this feature and once they understand what’s going on and realize they are forced to Re-Analyze all their tracks, they aren’t too happy about it, but at least they understand what’s going on.
I sometimes use Djay on my phone to analyse things that are out of whack as that normally gives a more accurate bpm and then manually enter that and line it up.
Have to say it confused the hell out of me for a start too.
All my tunes were recorded from my vinyl collection so no bpm meta data, however I still analyze twice just to be sure, I also only batch analyze 25 tunes at a time so not to put to much load on my crap laptop, anything over 50 at a time & it sounds like it’s about to take off then it just shuts down.
See example above. Have Re Anaylsed. Still way off. Have tried to drag the first beat and it keeps not allowing it to match the 1st beat to the number 1. I play a mixed genre style, weddings & corporate mainly.
They’re not from a streaming service. I’ve moved them across from Lexicon, but deleted all the grids and bpms, plus key’s from the tracks before sending them across to Engine. The one in the attachement for example doesn’t have a variable tempo.
Apologies for the confusing grammar. It actually hasn’t been easy to manually fix the grids. So if I analyse the tracks in say, Rekordbox, will the grids, bpm & key transfer over to Engine. I’ve analysed these tracks everywhere. Serato, Rekord box already, as I use all three programs for different scenarios.
That looks like you need to shift the whole grid about a cm to the right a bit so it lines up.
Have you downloaded the latest version of the manual? If you Google ‘Engine OS downloads’ it’ll take you to the right page, there it has all versions of the software and firmware and all the manuals.
There is a full section on beat grid adjustments.
I wouldn’t expect an Aretha Franklin record to have consistent beats due to it being live drums.
Indeed. DJ software in general can only correctly beat grid tracks that have a steady tempo.
Old tracks that have humans playing the instruments drift around in tempo.
Respect looks like this:
You can see it varies between around 113 to almost 117. Tracks with steady tempo would show a straight line.
Algoriddim’s djay Pro can beat grid tracks like this quite easily - but I’m not sure if any of the third party translation software can import from djay Pro.
Rekordbox is the other option. Analyse your old tracks using the high accuracy dynamic option and bring it into Engine from there.
Alternatively, rather than trying to match the grids to the tracks, you can do the opposite. Ableton Live (other DAWs are available) can “warp” tracks to straighten them out, so they play at a constant tempo.
I have a warped version of Respect that’s exactly 115 all the way through.
Moin, dear all,
this item is the never ending story and of the essence to use DENON’s technical auxiliary for beatmatching.
Many thanks to @AndyC for his detailed workflow in this matter regarding a standalone gear Engine OS. The workflow is a little different when handling Engine DJ
Since this feature request (still actual)
https://community.enginedj.com/t/flexible-beatgrid-ability-to-set-a-manual-downbeat/36984
some amendments had been implemented, but unfortunately it is not perfect yet.
Imo the most two disadvantages (on the gear) are:
1. If you have to correct your anchors in the beginning of a track and you nearly have finished dropping anchors, you can reset and begin again where you have started from or have to delete the anchors commencing from the end to beginning anchor by anchor.
2. As @AndyC pointed out
never ever touch the platter, when amending the beatgrid. It is possible to slide with the platter, but mostly you change the part you just had amended (believe me).
But for this item I have a workaround as follows:
Let run the track and stop on request or use “beat jump” back- and forward.
To adjust the needle to drop anchor exactly where needed, reduce the beatjump to minimum (1/32) when using “Shift” and “Beat Jump”. When you adjust the range of the beatjump the size will be shown on the platter’S display for a short moment
Adjusting the beatgrid demands a lot of experience and feeling for the rhythm, as no beat is equal to each other even in the same cadence (e.g sometimes on the peak of the bass —blue— or somewhere in the mixture of bass, middles and highs —depends on the composer—
Happy beatmatching BeatMaster
I’ll add a bit more to this.
Luckily there was quite a few tunes that got analysed spot on so I picked the most basic 2 step beat out of the bunch & use that as a template for anything that needs adjusting, I know you can use the beep tone thing on desktop but I found it easier & more precise running the the first 8 or 16 beats of my test track against a track I’m adjusting.
Also I don’t align my grids with the peaks as with jungle/d&b these can vary in size so I find it better to be in line with the front of the beat at a couple of points for reference, as someone who’s gone through over a 1000 tracks I’ve become quite efficient at doing this pretty quickly now.
Also as someone pointed out to me on this forum (as a workaround for now) if you mess up an anchor in the middle of the track & need to replace it instead of having to delete everything to rectify it just delete the bad anchor point & press the M hot key to place a new anchor that you wouldn’t normally be allowed to place (desktop only) you need to be precise doing it this way but it can get you out of trouble.
I reported beatgrid errors several months ago, specifically where EDM tracks for example with a perfect beat were getting anchored at the second beat instead of the first both on desktop analysis and on the player itself with streaming tracks. It was acknowledged as something that needed looked in to but no fix as yet.
The fixing of bugs is embarrasingly slow and it hacks me off that things like that are left out but a new release only contains another streaming service.
