My first digital vinyl system was Stanton’s Final Scratch. It was a combination of Stanton’s audio hardware along with Native Instruments Traktor software. I used it to score Metropolis as well as play all my live gigs around 2003-4. It wasn’t without fault though and in 2005 switched to Serato due to the Final Scratch’s firewire issues.

To be honest, Serato has been one heck of a product. Extremely solid and uber simple. Another major plus is that it has pretty much become the industry standard amongst most of my DJ peers. My only real complaint about it has been it’s lack of new features compared to all its competitors. I have only ever briefly taken a look at M-Audio’s Torq and never played with any of the other digital vinyl systems out there. But after checking out Richie Hawtin’s videos about Traktor, I was very intrigued.

This past week the latest version of Native Instruments Traktor Scratch Pro arrived on my doorstep. Eager to see what they’ve improved, I dove right in…

The hardware quality is impressive

The first thing I noticed was how high quality the Audio 8 DJ interface is. It’s a tad smaller than a Serato box, but has a lot more features. 4 RCA outs (that go to your mixer) just like the Serato box, but the cool thing is that they include high quality “Mulitcore” cables that split into phono and line outs so there is only 1 set of outputs on the Audio 8 box vs 1 phono out and 1 line out on the Serato box. The other difference is the turntables plug into these same “Multicore” cables. This was a tad confusing at first, but the cables are labeled so it wasn’t rocket science. My only concern would be if you lost those cables or they went bad. Obviously you could use any ol RCA cables, but I’m not sure if doing so would force you to ONLY have line out vs both line and phono (b/c there are only 1 set of outputs on the Audio 8 for each turntable vs a phono and a line out).

Software setup takes a little longer

For the most part Traktor installed with ease on my MacBook. It did take a bit longer than Serato, b/c they have a separate application (NI Service Center) for registering and updating the software. I also had to reboot my machine with the initial install as well as the 1.02 update. This seemed odd for a Leopard install, but not that big of a deal.

Solid performance

I wanted to see if this thing could play vinyl without being plugged into the computer (or any power source). Guess what! It absolutely can!! I can’t tell you how annoying that is in Serato. It happens nearly every time DJs are switching laptops. Kudos to NI for addressing that.

One bad thing that I noticed was a fairly loud ground hum using vinyl + default cables. I have my turntables properly grounded to my Rane mixer and they don’t hum when plugged in direct, so I am not sure why they would hum when plugged into the Audio 8 (might just be an issue with my setup).

Traktor can load up your iTunes playlist just like Serato. So getting started playing music was simple. They even include several audio files for you to beat juggle and scratch with if you don’t have any music.

One annoyance was that when the Audio 8 interface isn’t connected the software doesn’t automatically go to internal mode, you have to go into the config and manually set it this way. It’s a minor complaint, but since I do a lot of gig prepping with just my laptop, this could get annoying quick.

The performance of Traktor is quite impressive. My initial impression is that it seems to be much snappier than any other DJ program I have used. There isn’t any visual lag on the waveform when scratching or backcueing fast. The CPU load is very low, even when running effects.

The user interface is as good as it gets

One of the most important things to me is a product’s user interface (big surprise that a UI designer would say that huh). Traktor scores pretty high marks here. If you are even vaguely familiar with DJ hardware and other DJ software, you will easily understand most of the terminology and concepts in Traktor.

They allow you to customize the layout of Traktor too! So if you are blind, well, you can make the font size HUGE. You can tell it to show or hide nearly everything.

Stacked full of unique DJ-friendly features

One of the best things about Traktor is that it’s extremely feature rich. What else would you expect from the experts over at Native Instruments? For instance, you can have up to 4 decks vs only 2 like most other systems restrict you to. You could use this feature to load up scratch sounds that you only access here and there. Pretty slick.

Another neat feature is the auto gain and master output limiter. Sure you can turn the auto gain feature off, but it’s pretty cool when you don’t feel like riding the gain to get all your levels close to equal. The master output limiter is pure genius! No more having to worry about accidentally dropping a song that is SO loud it will blow speakers. Traktor’s master output limiter will force any track’s output to a safe level.

Finally you can easily record your set without having to do it analog. Traktor makes it easy, you just click this little tape icon above the right deck to see the record options. Boom you are good to go. The output is a single .wav file of your mix. Genuis!

Traktor has a sync function which is almost like cheating with regard to mixing. If you play a track in each deck and then press the “Sync” button in one of the decks: tempo and phase of this track matched to tempo and phase of the other track. The main thing this feature would be useful for is if you happen to drop a song a tad off, you click this and you are golden. It does have a threshold of about +/- 8 BPM. So you won’t be able to magically mix a 110BPM song into a 130BPM song. Using the sync function along with the crossfader in internal mode allows you to DJ without even needing turntables or a mixer!

Something I noticed that seems minimal at first is that Traktor’s looping always exits on beat. In Serato when I do a on the fly loop at say 1/2, you have to pay attention to make it exit on beat (on the following down beat that is). Not so with Traktor, even if you try to mess it up, it will exit on beat.

Effects, effects, we have effects

I always hate luggin around my Korg Kaos pad just to get basic delay and flange effects. One of the biggest things that attracted me to Traktor was that it has internal/built in effects. They have plenty too! By default they are set up to be insert effects b/c they can’t assume that you have a mixer that supports send/return (or that you have plugged up the cables).

But you absolutely can use their effects as sends! I have mine setup this way with my Rane TTM56. I can leave an effect on and simply flick my Fx switch up on my Rane mixer and booom the effect works. If you didn’t know, the reason to use send effects is that you can cut the song off while the effect is still running. This allows you to get the nice reverb and delay tails. You can’t get that with insert effects.

I did come across a bug (not sure exactly how to reproduce) where my effects were in BOTH insert and send at the same time. Yikes! The fix was to go to config and toggle the effects between insert and send or to restart Traktor. I *think* I caused this by unplugging my USB while Traktor was on, then replugged it in. I noticed doing this caused several other bugs/issues. So I don’t think I will be doing this anymore.

Sound quality is excellent

I was absolutely amazed at how awesome Traktor sounds. I tested it in my studio on KRK V8s as well as Mackie HR824s. The sounds is absolutely stellar. Especially when you are playing a song very slow, backcueing and scratching. It’s hard to say definitively, but I think Traktor Scratch may have the best sound quality of any digital vinyl system.

Key mapping and midi mapping is a pain

Obviously you can assign/map your midi controller to the software. They even let you change the key bindings. So if you don’t like how they have mapped loading a track to deck A, you can change it.

This is one of the areas that I spent a lot of my time initially, b/c I am used to the Serato mappings, so I went ahead and changed everything. Unfortunately, the process is arduous especially since a lot of the terminology isn’t obvious. After doing so, I noticed some bugs when my mappings weren’t working at times. I found myself often having to restart Traktor to get things working normal again.

One potentially cool thing is the ability to import/export key and midi mappings. Apparently there are lots of midi mappings available online for popular midi controllers. I haven’t really dabbled with this too much yet…would be cool if they had some standard mappings for the keyboard, so Serato converts or Torq converts could make the transition to Traktor easier.

Internal mode is friggin cool

One of the best things about Traktor is the fact that you don’t even NEED external hardware at all. It’s insane. They have a crossfader and everything! Clicking it automatically fades between 2 songs. Super cool and very useful when you are preparing for a gig.

Cue points and looping, damn near perfect

Auto looping is quite simple and like I said above it always exits on the down beat of the next beat, just like you would expect it to (unlike Serato). Activating “Loop Size Control” is quite simple with the mouse, you just click on the beat loop length and you are good to go.

My only issue with looping was in how to map it to my keyboard and midi controller. The terminology in the mapping configure screen wasn’t immediately obvious to me. It took a decent amount of trial and error to get it right.

Setting cue points in Traktor isn’t nearly as easy as it is Serato, but not too hard. I found myself bouncing around to various points in songs in no time at all. It would be very cool if Traktor allowed you to import the cue points you have set in Serato. I believe that Serato stores cue points in the metadata/ID3 tag of mp3s. It would be cool if all programs used a standard method for saving/reading cue points. This would make going between programs MUCH easier. As it stands right now, I have to remap all my cue points. Suck!

Summary

I am still only just beginning to dive into and understand all the possibilities of this software. After a week of intense scrutiny, I can say that I would easily recommend this to any type of DJ looking for a digital vinyl system. At the time of writing this review, both Traktor Scratch is quite competitively priced at around $599 USD. Do yourself a favor and try it out for yourself.

Advantages:

1. Great sound quality.
2. Snappy performance and CPU utilization.
3. Audio 8 interface allows for vinyl play thru when not connected.
4. Customizable UI.
5. Built in insert/send effects.
6. You can easily record your mixes.
7. Looping and beat grid functionality is rock solid.
8. You can even mix with internal mode using built in crossfader and sync.

Disadvantages:

1. Key/midi mapping can be painful.
2. Going between internal/external modes isn’t as clean as I want.
3. Some settings require you to restart Traktor for them to take effect.