Serato DJ Pro General Discussion

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 Serato DJ Pro General Discussion
Serato DJ: Beatgrids HELP!!
Talk about Serato DJ Pro, expansion packs and supported hardware

Serato DJ: Beatgrids HELP!!

Newuser21 1:56 PM - 30 October, 2013
Okay first off, I own the ddj sx and full version of serato, there are quite a few tracks that I cannot get beatgrided properly to save my life! I know the basic concept of beatgridding, so what I do for every track is first set the red marker on the first big beat of the song, then almost always DJ doesn't get the rest of the grids right, so I manually pullthem forward or back until all of the lines are on a beat. I wish I could somehow import a snapshot to prove how PERFECT the grid looks,but I can't. But even with the grids looking perfect I test out the song with another song that I KNOW is beatgrided properly and I even press sync for the sake of time to test it, and it doesn't work, in fact it is very far off.. I have no idea what the problem is
Newuser21 2:11 PM - 30 October, 2013
Some of them I'm able to fix for the most part, by SERIOUSLY alterting the grids AFTER the one I've set, on the first beat. It appears as though I know what I'm doing for the most part, as I'm able to fix some songs. But some are just unfixable as the grids look perfect but still they don't mix correctly..
Newuser21 2:45 PM - 30 October, 2013
This is ridiculous to be honest.. serato can't get any of my beatgrids right and I've tried everything to fix them
Davideon 6:02 PM - 30 October, 2013
i feel the same. Does my head in how quickly tracks fall out of perfect sync, even after sorting the grids
Newuser21 8:24 PM - 30 October, 2013
Quote:
i feel the same. Does my head in how quickly tracks fall out of perfect sync, even after sorting the grids

Thank you for that, glad to hear I'm not going insane, NOT glad to get confirmation that a $1000 purchase is being so.. not working
Newuser21 7:20 AM - 2 November, 2013
Well, after much practice I'm able to get most tracks beatgridded well enough. But guys, seriously l!!?? Not only is dj's algorithms so off when it automatically tries to set the grid on a high quality track might I add, but even when I manually set the first red marker on the right spot like I'm supposed to the rest of the grid is so fu**** up that it literally takes me at least 2 minutes to fix the rest of it for almost every song! That's a lot of time to invest. Also, it's seemingly damn near impossible, even after all this work, to get the entire song beatgridded well.
Rhadesh 2:18 PM - 7 November, 2013
I fill the same..... i have to edit all my song 1 by 1.........
Serato must fix this, no other software behaves like this.
I could not use the Sync, but if i use, gives me more time to do other things like using samples, loops, etc .... instead of always correcting the beats.
Newuser21 2:25 PM - 7 November, 2013
Quote:
I fill the same..... i have to edit all my song 1 by 1.........
Serato must fix this, no other software behaves like this.
I could not use the Sync, but if i use, gives me more time to do other things like using samples, loops, etc .... instead of always correcting the beats.

Yea it's not all about sync either you can't beatmatch in MANUALLY either when the beatgrids are messed up, it's like mixing 80's music with BPM's constantly changing. It's honestly one of the worst beatgrids I've seen..
PorkyG 2:32 PM - 7 November, 2013
Ummm, yes you can beat match manually. You need to train your ears, it's not hard but if you keep relying on hardware to do it for you you're going to find out the hard way when something goes wrong and you can't fix it and everything spirals downhill fast.

I can understand wanting to use sync, I'm not against it but you would only do yourself a world of good to train your ears instead of relying on sync then your eyes.

If you're going to use sync the order of operations should go:

1. Knowledge of the music you're playing (music theory also helps tons).
2. Ears.
3. Eyes.
4. Hardware/Software tools (such as the beat grids, sync soft effects).
Newuser21 2:43 PM - 7 November, 2013
Quote:
Ummm, yes you can beat match manually. You need to train your ears, it's not hard but if you keep relying on hardware to do it for you you're going to find out the hard way when something goes wrong and you can't fix it and everything spirals downhill fast.

I can understand wanting to use sync, I'm not against it but you would only do yourself a world of good to train your ears instead of relying on sync then your eyes.

If you're going to use sync the order of operations should go:

1. Knowledge of the music you're playing (music theory also helps tons).
2. Ears.
3. Eyes.
4. Hardware/Software tools (such as the beat grids, sync soft effects).

How do you match manually when the grids are messed up ? Do you have to turn the grids off is there a way to do that? Because I CAN beat match manually using just the pitch without knowing the bpm I've done it before but when the grids are messed up it will go off no matter what
Davideon 3:37 PM - 7 November, 2013
Quote:

How do you match manually when the grids are messed up ? Do you have to turn the grids off is there a way to do that? Because I CAN beat match manually using just the pitch without knowing the bpm I've done it before but when the grids are messed up it will go off no matter what


If u match manually, the beat grids are irrelevant - unless you press sync, which could the move the tracks out of time though still in tempo. They become no more than a visual irrelevance which do nothing. I literally just had a mix with smart sync on (to get the tracks pretty much matched) and was bemused as I mixed with my ears and tweaking the platters, whilst the visual beat grids were indicating the tracks weren't perfectly matched- when they were.

So I'm not sure what u mean. Though I do wish the algorithms were far more efficient
Newuser21 4:07 PM - 7 November, 2013
Quote:
Quote:
How do you match manually when the grids are messed up ? Do you have to turn the grids off is there a way to do that? Because I CAN beat match manually using just the pitch without knowing the bpm I've done it before but when the grids are messed up it will go off no matter what


If u match manually, the beat grids are irrelevant - unless you press sync, which could the move the tracks out of time though still in tempo. They become no more than a visual irrelevance which do nothing. I literally just had a mix with smart sync on (to get the tracks pretty much matched) and was bemused as I mixed with my ears and tweaking the platters, whilst the visual beat grids were indicating the tracks weren't perfectly matched- when they were.

So I'm not sure what u mean. Though I do wish the algorithms were far more efficient

I think the reason I haven't discovered that is because I'm not sure how to disable the beatgrids, how do you do that ?
Davideon 5:16 PM - 7 November, 2013
I didn't disable the beat grids. They're still there. I just ignore them
Rhadesh 7:45 PM - 7 November, 2013
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
How do you match manually when the grids are messed up ? Do you have to turn the grids off is there a way to do that? Because I CAN beat match manually using just the pitch without knowing the bpm I've done it before but when the grids are messed up it will go off no matter what


If u match manually, the beat grids are irrelevant - unless you press sync, which could the move the tracks out of time though still in tempo. They become no more than a visual irrelevance which do nothing. I literally just had a mix with smart sync on (to get the tracks pretty much matched) and was bemused as I mixed with my ears and tweaking the platters, whilst the visual beat grids were indicating the tracks weren't perfectly matched- when they were.

So I'm not sure what u mean. Though I do wish the algorithms were far more efficient

I think the reason I haven't discovered that is because I'm not sure how to disable the beatgrids, how do you do that ?


Go to Setup - DJ Preferences - Sync Preferences and choose Simple Sync. :)
Rhadesh 7:48 PM - 7 November, 2013
.... and i think you have to analyze your songs without turning on Set Beat Grid option....
just try it...
Rhadesh 2:05 PM - 2 January, 2014
I'm here to talk about my last experience with the Pioneer DDJ-SX!!!!!

Pioneer released a file for ddj-sx to work in Traktor (and works perfectly well as in Serato DJ) but I personally prefer Serato, it seems more stable.
The question is:
Why Traktor analyzed all my tracks 100% perfectly well (BPM + BeatGrids) and Serato analyzed 20% of the same tracks poorly?

Were exactly the same tracks!!!!
You really have to improve your analysis!!!!!!!

while you not improve your analysis i will use Traktor. It's a shame because I prefer everything in serato, layout, effects, library managment, etc. ........... but i have a lot of work getting well all the tracks that serato misses is analysis.

With perfect beatgrids I am much more confident in my sets .....
clearblu 4:18 PM - 2 January, 2014
Easist option when using sync is to
Hit sync and pitch nudge it in.
Beatgrids not needed at all
Tried and tested since the dawn of software sync ability.
Dokumentary 5:29 PM - 2 January, 2014
Seems like it could be much better. Although I'm sure we can expect this to improve in the future. This seems like one of those features that will always be improving throughout the life of the software. I doubt the devs will ever say "it's good enough for now". I do hope to see an improvement in the next iteration tho. (1.7)
DJ Marv the Maverick 9:05 PM - 2 January, 2014
I use Serato DJ with the 62. I Only use the Simple Sync when i know i'm playin the same tempo range for a while.
All i need Serato to do is match the tempo, i do the dropping myself and i nudge as i deem necessary.
Gloop 3:07 PM - 3 January, 2014
I thought it was just me. I've around 10,000 tracks in my library and serato has not provided beat grids and bpm for most of them. I thought this was strange so i dragged individual files into a new crate. the analysis failed on Even standard house 4/4 recently purchased from beatport with the kick drum being the first beat. This is my first experience with Serato and I have to say the file management and analysis does not compare well.
Detroitbootybass 4:15 PM - 3 January, 2014
Quote:
...I'm sure we can expect this to improve in the future. I doubt the devs will ever say "it's good enough for now".


We were all duped by this thinking in regards to SSL's 'key lock'. That was six or seven years ago...
Dokumentary 8:58 PM - 3 January, 2014
Quote:
Quote:
...I'm sure we can expect this to improve in the future. I doubt the devs will ever say "it's good enough for now".


We were all duped by this thinking in regards to SSL's 'key lock'. That was six or seven years ago...


Good point. Forgive my optimism...
I can think of a few other features where the Devs may have said "good enough" as well.