Serato DJ Pro General Discussion

Talk about Serato DJ Pro, expansion packs and supported hardware

Serato DJ vs Mixed In Key?

David Wallin 10:01 AM - 30 October, 2015
After installing Serato DJ 1.8 yesterday and scanning all my files I noticed that a lot of them were tagged with a different key by Serato than what Mixed in key preciously tagged them with.
Is there anyone who has done any testing and found out what software is more correct?
David Wallin 10:01 AM - 30 October, 2015
...I mean "previously"!
Ls4life 11:48 AM - 30 October, 2015
I noticed the same issue with my library and actually songs that Mixed in Key failed to find a key for it, Serato DJ was able to assigned a key to it. To add to David Wallin question, does any body know how to only analyze portion of your library not the whole music collection.
Dj Wunder 11:49 AM - 30 October, 2015
Dj Wunder 11:51 AM - 30 October, 2015
Quote:
does any body know how to only analyze portion of your library not the whole music collection.


Highlight the songs you want and drag them to the button
#K 12:39 PM - 30 October, 2015
What happens with my tracks that have already a key tag in the "comment" and "key" section. Does 1.8 overwrite these informations? I use Keyfinder and it worked fine for me, I don't want two key programms tagging my tracks. I haven't decided what programme I want to use in the future and I don't have 1.8 yet, but will it automatically overwrite my key tags when analyzing?
skinnyguy 8:56 PM - 30 October, 2015
I believe it does overwrite.
Serato, Support
Matt P 12:12 AM - 31 October, 2015
Quote:
I believe it does overwrite.


It overwrites the information to "Classical Key" which is what you'll see if you open a Serato analyzed file in another application.

Serato DJ translates this Key information to whatever you have chose in the setup menu for the Displayed Key. Eg if you chose Camelot, Then it will translate and show Camelot Key in the Key Column.

(That being said, if you have Camelot (aka MIK) information in the Key column already you won't notice any difference and won't have to re analyse if your preference is Camelot)

Regards,

MP
Ls4life 4:26 PM - 31 October, 2015
So The question still have not being answer in regard how or which program provide a more accurate key detection. The reason being that I used "mixed in key" and have the comment field show the key value as found by the "Mixed in key software", on the key field I have the recalculated key value as detected by Serato. I notice many of the key falls with the same value but they some which do not. I'm not much of a musician and other that testing by playing each track and make judgement myself by what may sound good to me, I would like to know if there is a some idea about which program seem to be a closer match. I understand that at the end I still need to make a choice of what to play and how to mix my tracks but hey! it won't hurt to know if one program will be better than the other and not waste time so they say time is money.
deejdave 5:02 PM - 31 October, 2015
It will always very by situation, music type and preferences. Your best bet is to do a small test of your own. If it were as simple as which is better there would not be much of a point for the other would there?
PopRoXxX 6:39 PM - 31 October, 2015
I'm guessing that Ls4life didn't even read the content in this link that Wunder posted for him
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serato.com
Ls4life 6:47 PM - 31 October, 2015
DJ PopRoxx, I did read it and followed what he mention. It worked. I was just asking if by any change one program had a better % of accuracy than the other just in case I do not have to do things twice.
PopRoXxX 7:11 PM - 31 October, 2015
Ok gotcha. There was a lot of good info in there. I'm choosing the SDJ way over MIK. Haven't even touched MIK since 1.8
Dj Sidd 12:48 PM - 1 November, 2015
Quote:
Quote:
I believe it does overwrite.


It overwrites the information to "Classical Key" which is what you'll see if you open a Serato analyzed file in another application.

Serato DJ translates this Key information to whatever you have chose in the setup menu for the Displayed Key. Eg if you chose Camelot, Then it will translate and show Camelot Key in the Key Column.

(That being said, if you have Camelot (aka MIK) information in the Key column already you won't notice any difference and won't have to re analyse if your preference is Camelot)


It is not colour coding the existing keys I had. I had it analysed by KeyFinder. This is causing a problem when I sort on Keys. Serato considers it as two different groups : 1- colour coded, keys detected by Serato 2- keys detected by KeyFinder.
BBN 1:09 PM - 1 November, 2015
I had a lot of tracks that no version of Mixed In Key was able to analyze.
Serato DJ found a key to all of my tracks.
So I won't use MIK anymore.
deejdave 5:21 PM - 1 November, 2015
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I had a lot of tracks that no version of Mixed In Key was able to analyze.
Serato DJ found a key to all of my tracks.

Hate to point out the obvious but what would matter more is definitely the accuracy. I could code you an app that fills each and every tag field of every song you have ever had................ wouldn't you be concerned IF they were correct though? I say this because that character that SDJ left in those spaces left blank by MIK did not match up with what is officially listed as the key by Beatport etc. in my neck of the woods.

I have seen plenty saying the accuracy is better with MIK but non saying the other way. While remaining unconfirmed by me or any real credible source I have trouble believing Serato got it THAT right first try even as much as I love them.................
BBN 6:07 PM - 1 November, 2015
If anything still sounds wrong I've got musical trained ears. It's fun to have beatsync, keysync and stuff like that, but themost reliable tool for deejaying are my ears, so I don't care about what any software is telling me too much.
Detroit's DJ Skillz!!! 6:13 PM - 1 November, 2015
Different key detection programs will bring different key results.

Even if you have different musical experts detecting the key, they can come up with different results.

Choose a program and stick to it...
D Jay Cee 10:23 AM - 1 December, 2015
so far since messing with the beta....i gotta go with MIK for accuracy. my daughters are musicians (one plays flute, violin and Bass, the other piano, flute and Violin) and they agree with me at this time.
David Wallin 3:35 PM - 1 December, 2015
I'm thinking about using Serato to write the Key tag but also use MiK to write its key(s) to the beginning of the comment tag. In that way it's possible to choose from more tracks to TRY for each mix. After all, one of them could be right but the other one could give a better mix, this is no exact science...
PopRoXxX 3:54 PM - 1 December, 2015
Quote:
so far since messing with the beta....i gotta go with MIK for accuracy. my daughters are musicians (one plays flute, violin and Bass, the other piano, flute and Violin) and they agree with me at this time.

I play 7 instruments and found the opposite
Jmoney$ 5:01 PM - 1 December, 2015
i remember reading some interesting comments from a showdown back in the day
djtechtools.com
(comments section)

It seems like picking a method of keying your music and sticking with it (not mixing results from different programs) is the best option.
MIK has done the best in the showdowns i have seen in the last couple years.

Quote:
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Yakov from Mixed In Key here. Before we released Version 5, we wanted to understand music inside out, with nothing left to chance. We hired 12 absolute pitch musicians and had them analyze 12,000 audio samples with a piano. The musicians didn't know what the others said, and we randomized everything to eliminate bias. They had no benefit from lying to us -- their work was scientifically valid.

Here's the interesting thing: They couldn't agree with each other. We gave the same track to 3 perfect pitch musicians, and there was less than a 50% chance for them to agree on a result.

Music is subjective. I've talked with Mark about this before. I love him as a person and a great DJ inventor of our generation, but I want to be clear on this: comparing *any result* to a single person is a mistake. It doesn't matter if we compare Mark Davis to Louis Ng (one of our 12 perfect pitch musicians), or Mark Davis to Rapid Evolution, or Louis to Mixed In Key 5.

I suggest: Pick a person you love working with (and have them key your music), or pick a software that you enjoy using, and stick to that ONE source of your results. Mixing results from Rapid Evolution into Rapid Evolution sounds great. Mixing results from "Mixed In Key 5" > Mixed In Key 5 will be excellent.



Hendrik Schreiber beaTunes
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That said, as Yakov correctly pointed out, obtaining accurate reference data is very hard. In fact, there is no 100% correct ground truth, even if people who sell that kind of data would like to convince you otherwise.

deejdave 9:54 PM - 1 December, 2015
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MIK has done the best in the showdowns i have seen in the last couple years.

Including this year. Serato did relatively well but MIK did come out on top as usual.
D Jay Cee 7:04 AM - 24 February, 2017
Quote:
Quote:
so far since messing with the beta....i gotta go with MIK for accuracy. my daughters are musicians (one plays flute, violin and Bass, the other piano, flute and Violin) and they agree with me at this time.

I play 7 instruments and found the opposite

skin flute doesn't count
deejdave 2:22 PM - 24 February, 2017
Hah they are all good nowadays.
brian_kizz 7:45 AM - 20 April, 2017
so, is it still worth investing in MIK?
deejdave 8:28 PM - 20 April, 2017
For me? Absolutely. MIK has so many more library tools with more coming and NO I am not speaking of the auto cue feature.
938MyDJ 10:51 PM - 20 April, 2017
I only play 5 instruments and used MIK before SDJ had the key analysis.

MIK is a bit better than SDJ but still NOT 100% accurate.

For that slight difference, I decided to use SDJ's key analysis for easy library management.

Faster for me to process about 200 Xtendamix video files download per month.

And yes, I change incorrect keys manually (usually catch them on files I include on my playlists while prepping).
deejdave 11:41 PM - 20 April, 2017
If it was not so easy to automatically and relatively quickly batch analyze all files being moved over every month (around 700 - 1000) I wouldn't either but I need the mass tagging features anyways. Still a toss between MP3Tag (which I do to batch on the Windows laptop first. I then move to external and all files get the MIK treatment. I then move into SDJ from there for final organization with most tag work done already.