Believe it or not, having coloured cue points is one of the things that made SSL stand out over the competition and I know of a fair few DJs who chose or stayed with Serato because of it.

Take me for example. I use a colour-code system that instantly lets me know how to play a track or what I can do with it, even if I'm unfamiliar with it or never played it live before.

Red = Start or first downbeat of first phrase cycle. This is very useful for tracks that don't start on the downbeat and lets me throw it into a mix in an instant with confidence it'll be in the right place everytime.

Yellow = Denotes a section that contains vocals or melodies, strings etc--something that could potentially cause a key or sound clash. Also used to denote a breakdown (though the waveforms provide a more obvious clue).

Green = Drum and Bass--a loopable section of music that is clean, free from vocals or overpowering sounds and can be mixed with any other green section or even a yellow.

Light Blue = 1 bar/4 beats out from the next phrase cycle.

Dark Blue = 2 bars/8 beats out from the next phrase cycle.

(Some phrase cycles start 1 or 2 bars before the next '1' so these last two are crucial for looping sections of audio that would sound weird if you just brought them in from the '1'.

Purple = Lets me know that this section is off-beat or in a random place, like 1 or 2 beats before the next phrase cycle.

This colour code system has been invaluable to me and I've used it ever since I first starting using SSL many years ago. Every single one of my tracks is coded in this way and it has taken many, many hours to set up my tracks like this. I have been one of those who have been wishing, hoping and praying for colour-coordinated cue point pads so I don't have to look at the screen to know which type of cue I'm dealing with which is why I'm so happy this is finally being implemented, at least for certain controllers.


I never used any of the other colour variations because they're so similar that I found it impractical to try and assign any kind of meaning to them (with the possible exception of orange).

This, by the way, is where numbered cue points could come in handy (a la Traktor), but I can see where cue point naming is even handier, though I haven't used this feature myself yet, possibly because the colour code is so effective for my needs.

So...whats my beef?

In SSL, the cue point sequence would always match up with the on-screen colour grid. 1st would always be red, 2nd would always be yellow, 3rd green and so on, moving down and across the colour grid in the same order every time. But for some reason, when releasing SDJ, you kept the colour grid the same, but the colour sequence changed. So now, the 2nd cue point is set to orange even though it's still yellow in the grid and despite orange still being way over in the 3rd column.

Worse still, in this latest update, you've changed it again so that now, instead of being green, the third cue point is set to dark blue, the 4th is now yellow, and so on with light blue moving from 4th in the grid list to 7th in the assignment sequence.

This is effed up and is seriously hindering my workflow for what seems like no good reason whatsoever. Please, please put it back to how it was. Make the sequence match the grid. Simples.

Please don't underestimate how powerful cue point colours are or how important they are to some of us and, with more colour-coordinated pads on the horizon, I feel it's better to resolve this now than later.

Thank you.