The beatgrids are mostly out of whack!

Engine DJ Software Engine DJ (Mac & PC)
21

This may have something to do with the amount of white space at the beginning of the track, I have this because of the time it takes to press play on the deck & then press record. I found using audacity to chop the blank space out then re-analyzin it fixed most discrepancies.

Edit: sorry I noticed you said streaming tracks, forget what I said above. Maybe the issue is the opposite in the fact that streaming tracks are to quick to start as in not enough white space therfore the analysis misses the first beat, I don’t know I’m just guessing with this one but it almost like you need the perfect amount of white space to detect the first beat maybe, not to much but not to little.

22

Moin @AndyC,

thanks for your endorsement for Engine DJ

Unfortunately all other functions are blocked till to the last anchor

Glad to find another expert, and phps all together we can push DENON a little bit in this matter

Brgds BeatMaster

23

That’s what I thought but it does work even though it shouldn’t, I tested it when I was told & was surprised that even though the place anchor was greyed out your still about to place an anchor using the hot key.

Sorry I think I misinterpreted what you meant, yes all other actions are not possible so you would have to come out of beat grid mode & manually align where you want the new anchor (because you don’t want to touch the platter in grid mode) then once aligned enter back into grid mode & press hot key M to enter a new anchor which will drag the grid into the new position, you might need a couple of tries to get it spot on but once you get the hang of it it becomes easy.

Come to think of it you shouldn’t need to worry about touching the platter in desktop because you can use the mouse to scan along the track so all you have to do is click the mouse button to place the needle on point then press hot key M to place an anchor.

Sorry I keep forgetting we’re doing this on desktop & not standalone.

24

I think Lexicon does now. Havent tested yet though.

If the track has been properly analysed in Serato, you can import that grid into engine dj.

you have to remove the track from engine collection first, then use the serato library import feature.

i have many tracks like these that i have painstakingly beatgridded in Serato and locked. When i import my serato library to engine, all the grids are intact even with flunctuating grids.

26

Well that would have to have been the worst experience in my whole career of deejaying! Most if not all of the tracks I analysed in engine were off during my set. I’m mostly doing weddings so I play an open format set with transition tracks, segues, slam ins & other stuff. Most of the music I’ve collected is DJ friendly from Patreon or record pools. However, tracks tempo were slipping, bpms were off, the grids were off, I couldn’t easily fix the grids. Like, Rekordbox makes it so easy! And not to mention, the whole reason I bough the SC live 4 was to run the lights from Engine! And they’re not syncing, because the grids are all fucked! What do I do! I mean I’ve got a lot of tracks that I need to be welll analysed. Never had this issue as bad with Serato or Rekordbox! I’ve tried using the best grid editor, I move the 1 to the first beat, and budge it across, it still doesn’t fix the song.

27

Unfortunately I just had to get my Prime Go+ and edit the beatgrid and set cue points for my most played tracks and those in specific playlists. I too use SoundSwitch direct on the Prime Go+ It’s mind numbing and I’ve never had any issues in all the years I have used VDJ apart from *2/2 on the BPM.

As I said before I can’t see that anyone at Denon developing this platform is actually a working DJ using the products on a regular basis.

Engine is just so cumbersome.

28

Can you provide some examples of this so we can help you out? Specifically tracks you’ve had problems with.

29

Could it have something to do with the fact that these tracks have been run through Lexicon, Serato and Rekordbox and are just rinsed with meta data that is making them all cooked in Denon?

30

It’s already been explained to you that tracks such as Respect don’t have a steady tempo, so the beatgrid in Engine won’t be able to follow the variations - unless you manually go in and add extra anchors etc.

You’ve not given any other examples.

31

This track ‘RESPECT’ was downloaded from a record pool. I’ll try to give some examples, however, playing at a wedding, recording examples of the issue isn’t really top of the pops on the to do list. I’ve done some research and am going to try and strip as much embedded data from my tracks as possible. I also use Serato & rekordbox in other settings where I’m performing.

32

So does respect beat grid properly when you analyze with Serato or Rekordbox?

33

You did say ‘most, if not all of the tracks’ were wrong.

You can plug your drive into the laptop and download the history from your set, that way you can find the tracks you were playing and see their beat grids.

You have to remember though that any track played by a live band is highly unlikely to have an accurate grid, due to variances in speed when the band performs the track.

If you have electronic music that is out of line, that’s a different matter, so if there are any electronic tracks you played that don’t line up, provide them and we will try and analyse them at our end to see what happens.

34

Right, ive done a bit of a deeper dive. I don’t own Respect but I do have ‘Until you come back to me’ which has a similar none beat start up. I found the following:

  • Serato was out of sync with the beat
  • Engine was out of sync with the beat
  • Rekordbox was out of sync with the beat
  • Djay Pro was in sync with the beat (due to the fluid beat grids tech)

Conclusion = Live music will often be out of sync, so you’re going to have to spend time lining it all up manually if you need that to be in line. Alternatively you can switch off quantise and do your loops manually, this doesnt solve lighting issues however.

35

If anybody has recorded a wonky vinyl & uploaded it, just because you’ve downloaded that dance track doesn’t mean it’ll have a constant beat throughout.

Also I can name a few old jungle/d&b tracks that don’t follow the 4/8 beat rule that throw the beat off.

6 million ways Zinc remix has a 1/2 beat around the 3ish minute mark throwing the 2nd half of the track out.

Kloakin devices by krust has a weird beat change around 2/3rds of the track that throws the main beat out by 2.

The dream teams warrior & stamina don’t drop on point compared to the intros throwing the rest of the tracks off, if I recall they’re a beat off although the intro is 4/8/16 etc.

And then there’s the worst one, Ray Keith chopper remix, after the perfect 4/8 beat intro the main drop is in such a random place it doesn’t even land on anything.

I’ve tried serato, rb (dynamic & static) & engine & none will get it right, it’s just how it is with old tracks.

I’ve already said above rb dynamic analysis was terrible for no beat intros on jungle/d&b & their static didn’t fair that much difference to engine os, after analyzing over 1000 jungle/dnb recorded off my vinyl over 50% were spot on around 30% needed minor adjustments & around 20% needed a complete overhaul, which could be caused by old styles like I mentioned above, warped records, centre hole not drilled perfectly or jumps in records due to smoking puff & dropping hot rocks while mixing back in the day.

Either way I found engine os (especially on standalone) the quickest way to sort out any issues & I’m only doing this so I can mess around with loops & new stuff because I’ve only just purchased this equipment so I might as well play around with the features other than that I was quite happy beat matching like I used to do on my 1210s years ago.

Quick edit:

I wish denon/engine os did analyze like dj pro or have the ability to warp like ableton, I’d take that over stems, bluetooth in/out & apple music any day as I don’t use any of it, there’s a lot of features people are still waiting/requesting for, there’s a lot of features that still need that last little tweak to make them 100% that a lot of people have mentioned but at the end of the day we can’t all be happy & I’m sure/hope that denon will eventually get round to addressing these shortcomings.

36

There are multiple feature requests to correct this.

This has 43 votes. https://community.enginedj.com/t/automatic-dynamic-beat-grid-analyzation/36900

This has 5 votes. https://community.enginedj.com/t/proper-bpm-and-beatgrid-analysis-on-the-first-analysis/63120

There’s another on more flexibility with anchors.

Meanwhile, as @PKtheDJ mentioned, I am +1 on warping uneven tempos with Ableton Live. Once you’ve done it, you’re good to go with any DJ software.

Of course, if you use streaming you’re stuck.

37

For those DJs who are still prepared to buy their music, Mastermix has a series called DJ Re-Grids where many old tracks have had their tempo straightened courtesy of Paul Dakeyne of DMC fame.

38

There’s need to be a movie DJ version of Jurassic Park for that endangered species to be seen in any great numbers. Lol

And I think that’s where some of the anxiety and short-fused tempers over all tracks not instantly being perfectly gridded, BPM’d, phrased, cue pointed, tagged, labelled etc comes from … it’s not tricky to get Duplo or Lego to stick together perfectly … but get a few thousand tunes off of a mate or an online auction for a copy of a copy of a harddrive full of tunes and you’ve suddenly inherited a zillion tracks which you’ve never heard and have no idea where the mix points and other audible surprises are.

39

i also tested DJ Studio briefly. It seems like a handy tool that uses AI to straigthen those old disco tracks or wobbly vinyl rips.

Downside is the cost but cheaper than Ableton

@PKtheDJ I havent used Ablton in a while. Does it straighten / quantize automatically. When i did use Ableton, it was still a tedious process of massaging the warp markers.

40

Installed the demo with 7 day trial to try the AI beatgridding and signed up only to find that export is disabled so you can’t listen to the tracks. I hate sneaky programs that only tell you the limitations afterwards so that’s another one off the list.

41

It always has, but they improved it a while ago because the standalone Push 3 can do it, so the process needed to be more hands off (no mouse, smaller screen).