Getting The Best Sound Out of Your Traktor

[Jester]

mainly cpu issues for me @ jon (esp now i've commited to TP2) .. also most of the time i use a 3% diff between tracks max. this means with trance i can use a bpm range of 133 - 138 and run at 136 with no keylock and still sounding minty fresh.

[D-Kem]

As an owner of an Audiofire I can testify to better audio output (purely subjective). No DVS though means I sacrifice this for a more pleasurable performance experience through the Audio 8.

[sarasin]

Because of CPU demand, or the affect on harmonics? Did a sound-check before a gig this weekend with keylock ON (S4 into club mixer via RCA routed through 4 Wharfies ) - it sounded GOOD. Played with keylock on - lots of compliments from the CDJers on the sound quality

My tests found that if you start straining the computer and are using tracks with large differences in BPM (and trying to match them) keylock will degrade the sound of the track. The actual sound coming from the speakers might be fine, but the track will lose its polish.

This is what I found anyways.

[rgtb]

6% is pretty much the max you can change tempo without changing the key too much. plus that gives me 5bpm either way when playing progressive trance

so, progressive trance is ~90bpm?

[sarasin]

Is a funktion one system really that great even? I feel like it has a lot more to do with the room and I have heard some good systems and some really overrated systems. I think there is a funktion one at the vegabond in miami I'm going to have to check out.

Funktion One is damn good...no doubt!

But I prefer TurboSound and Opus.

[JonathanBlake]

@ Sarasin & Jes - thanks guys - I'm realising more & more how having a dedicated machine with massive specs (500G HD, 8G RAM, i5 variable speed processor, stripped W7, iTunes & Traktor ONLY) spoils me. CPU usage is never a consideration for me - maybe it should be. Going to revisit all my settings. I was astounded as to how 'crisp' my sound was with keylock.

[martinlird]

I only ever use Funktion One. This is because the company I rig for uses Funktion One and we get 50% off hire.
I was using it on saturday night and play 320 mp3's and it sounded perfectly fine. We were using 2 x 118's and 2 x res4's, and it sounded sweet.

We set up a nightclub in our town (The Vue) and used 4 x 218's and 6 x Res 4's on each side, and some smart arse decided to play some 128 Mp3's. He thought the speakers we to quiet and had the mixer bouncing off the red.

As you can imagine, he was kicked off within 10minutes and the next lad went on and played an extra 90minutes with no complaints.

But as for the difference between .WAV and .Mp3, on a Funktion One set up like we use for standard 18th's 21st's etc, 320 Mp3s are perfectly fine. But as soon as you get on the big set ups (i.e. 4 218's etc) you start to notice a slight difference.

I still use 320's though

(Btw using a Audio-2...I don't believe the hype over the Audiofire)

[mostapha]

According to him Funktion1 is the only system audible in the vacuum of space

It's amazing how much bullshit you get out of people who are really good at audio. It's like they don't know they've been being sold snake oil all their lives and actually believe what they say.

There's a very, very highly respected Mastering Engineer out there who had a word clock custom built based off Cesium decay because vibrating crystals weren't precise enough and he thought he could still hear jitter. Since most people don't know what that is…click here. Yeah.

He also prefers for people to mail him the original hard drive things were recorded onto because different brands of CDs sound different and copying digital files degrades their quality the same way copying analog tape does.

The guy from Function One–if he really said that about space–takes the cake.

They're speakers. They use magnets to move something that's vaguely like a drum head. They're not magic.

Is a funktion one system really that great even? I feel like it has a lot more to do with the room and I have heard some good systems and some really overrated systems. I think there is a funktion one at the vegabond in miami I'm going to have to check out.

There's also one at Set, and I think Mansion. They're all over the place. They did sound really good, but nothing to write home about. Frankly, I think clubs aren't the place for an impecable sound system…people are talking and drinking and running into each other and dancing and making shit-tons of noise and moving around and climbing on things………you can't tune to that. And they're all so damn loud that pristine audio quality really doesn't matter.

I'd rather clubs spend that money on other things…but that's just me.

As an owner of an Audiofire I can testify to better audio output (purely subjective).

It's subjective all-right. Not criticizing that. I'm just wondering what you've compared it to. I've used some pretty nice sound cards and monitors at least in passing…and I think the differences are tiny.

Oh yeah…and about the actual topic….

Key Lock doesn't really bother me, but I might be lucky…it doesn't seem to smear over transients in my stuff as much as other people's…though IHNFC why that would be the case. Maybe it's just a (Wav + Key Lock) > (mp3 + Key Lock) situation. I can hear it if i look for it…it never jumps out at me on the systems I normally play on…at least, not as much as the transients being faster/slower anyway and the track sounding screwed up.

I use the Xone EQ model because the only EQ I really want is the xone hi-mid, which I've said before. I'd prefer for them to not add noise for no reason (subtly color the sound even when the EQs are all at unity, I believe it says in the manual) and I don't actually like what xone mixers sound like any better than anything else that doesn't suck…I just like that one EQ frequency + bandwidth. I do think that the Classic EQ sounds audibly better on my systems. Not just different…I think it sounds better. But it's not enough better to sacrifice that hi-mid EQ knob.

Traktor's limiter sounds like you took a cheese grater to everything in your signal path. I don't know what they did to make it sound so bad.

And I play really quiet coming out of Traktor. I can't figure out exactly how Traktor's gain structure works…but it seems to sound the same set to just barely not clip my sound card outputs as it does outputting at like -10dB (assuming you have a gain stage right after the SC output). I think it works better that way.

And I can't really hear a difference between my Audio 2 and my FS Open, which was supposed to be a re-branded focusrite or something. I also can't hear a difference between those and my MBP's internal sound card on any system/headphones I've used the internal output with…which pretty much means KRKs, headphones, and personal HiFi systems that I think are really overrated. Nor the SL1. Or really anything else I've used until you get into the $5,000+ recording interfaces.

Other than not doing the same stupid things that people have been telling DJs not to do since DJing was invented (like using a Mixer's master as a volume control) and using things that aren't broken…I think a lot of the argument is just selling snake oil.

Also…I only buy wav files now. Mostly, that's because I realized they weren't functionally more expensive than mp3s and sometimes I like editing tracks. I don't do that with mp3s because it's dumb to re-compress it when you're done or have a huge wav-sized file sitting around with mp3-quality data in it.

[D-Kem]

Tested Audio 8 and Echofire in a converted and dead garage, both sides of room covered by two long shelves of vinyl (approx 10000).
Cards plugged straight into power amp and directly to monitors.
Subjectively the sound from the Echofire was better to my ears.

Will post some vinyl rip comparisons when i get time in a different thread. Slightly off track, sorry guys.

[Dj.You.S.Bee]

Tested Audio 8 and Echofire in a converted and dead garage, both sides of room covered by two long shelves of vinyl (approx 10000).
Cards plugged straight into power amp and directly to monitors.
Subjectively the sound from the Echofire was better to my ears.

Will post some vinyl rip comparisons when i get time in a different thread. Slightly off track, sorry guys.

this is what i love to hear, loving all the awesome responses in this thread keep it up guys!