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TRAVELIN' LIGHT

Analog Tara on DJing with Traktor, April 2003.

Editor's note: This review was based on Traktor DJ Studio Version 2.0. Information & demos of newer versions, with enhanced features, are available on the Native Instruments site.

DJs are, in some ways, resistant to change. Having honed their craft on vinyl and 1200s, amassing gargantuan collections of 12-inches in the process, they are understandably reluctant to embrace some so-called "new technologies." When CD players with pitch-shifting capabilities came around, few DJs jumped on the bandwagon, preferring the old-fashioned tactility and "warm" sound of vinyl records to the comparable portability of a CD-based setup. But Traktor DJ Studio software from Native Instruments offers a particularly compelling alternative - or complement - to spinning with vinyl.

Traktor (available for Mac and PC) is a powerful tool for DJ mixing and mix recording. The interface is intuitive - if you're used to working with two turntables and a mixer, you'll have no trouble jumping on Traktor's virtual decks. Within minutes of installing the software, I was importing tracks and starting to mix.

With Traktor, you can work with tracks in MP3, WAV, AIFF, and audio CD format. If you've already stored tracks on your computer's hard drive, importing tracks to Traktor is quick and easy, and can even be done while your set is in progress. For those who are more organized, Traktor offers handy database tools for archiving, sorting, and searching for tracks.

When you load tracks from your hard drive, they appear in a playlist at the bottom of the screen; to cue up tracks from this list, you can simply drag and drop the track from the playlist to the graphic waveform display area. Traktor's interface consists of graphic waveform representations of the two tracks currently in play, with the virtual mixer in the middle (see screenshot). Having visual representation of the tracks, in addition to your audio cue, is helpful for mixing in a loud environment - the graphic display makes it easy to spot breaks and transitions in a track. You can also set cue points to mark these critical moments of the track - like the virtual equivalent of those little pieces of tape on a battle DJ's records.

Traktor offers a creative array of sound-tweaking and remixing tools - everything you've likely come to expect from your hardware setup, as well as some features unique to a software environment. I found the 3-band EQ on the mixer to be quite responsive, producing dynamic results in a club sound system; filter effects, which have their own graphic display, were also useful. The crossfader can be adjusted to soft or hard curve. You can also generate loops on the fly for live remixes, and store 10 loops per song if you're likely to work with them again. I even enjoyed doing some primitive scratching of one track over the beat of the other - yes, you can scratch audio files in Traktor, just rock that trackpad real hard!

The automated BPM detection and beat-matching tool, which synchronizes one track with another, seems a bit like cheating, but usually a bit of advance preparation or on-the-spot manual tempo adjustment is necessary to get proper results. For registered users, Traktor's website offers a tutorial on making the most of these BPM detection and synchronization functions.

For those of us used to the analog realm, where 40 minutes into recording your mixtape, you screw up and have to start the whole thing over, Traktor's automated mixing functions may seem like a dream. Traktor allows you to repeatedly edit and overdub your mixes until everything sounds right; final mixes can be exported to WAV or AIFF files, and burned to CD. I admit to sounding a little old skool when I say that one thing I like about the analog realm is that if you screw up 40 minutes into your recording, it forces you to practice those 40 minutes all over again in painful detail, thus drilling the skills into you that much further. One danger with the digital environment is that the editing can be a lot quicker, and it can be easier to gloss over those mistakes with one quick tweak, without learning from them. But in the end, it's a different set of skills you'll be honing - doing edits and punch-ins with Traktor transfers well to other software platforms you may be working in - i.e., whatever skills you lose on vinyl, you may gain in ProTools.

There are two clear advantages with working with Traktor. First, doing a gig with a laptop, Traktor, and as many tracks as you can fit on your hard drive is much more portable than lugging crates of records, especially if you're doing a lot of traveling by plane. Depending on what kind of audio outputs your computer has, and on what mixer the club has, you may still want to bring your own mixer for some additional EQ boosting at your gig. (It's worth mentioning here that Traktor allows you to bypass its virtual mixer and use your own DJ mixer if you'd like; many of Traktor's features can also be controlled via external hardware, such as a MIDI controller.)

The second big plus of working with Traktor is the ability to DJ entirely with digital files. This is useful especially if you and your friends produce a lot of tracks at home but don't have them released on vinyl. It's easy to work your own stuff into a set, whether it's entire tracks, loops you've created in another software platform, or samples you've downloaded from the Internet. I recently did a whole set of my own tracks using Traktor, which was great fun, and a great way to test out those tracks in a club environment before finalizing the mixes in the studio.

On the downside, if the bulk of your collection is on vinyl, you'll have to spend a good chunk of time recording these tracks into your computer for use with Traktor. I've been importing tracks from vinyl into ProTools Free, which requires Mac OS 9 but is free to download from www.digidesign.com, and has a 30-day free trial period for its MP3 export option. Audacity is a good freeware for recording into OS X; available through www.osxaudio.com. Those inclined to "clean up" clicks and pops when converting from vinyl to digital files might want to check out softwares like Steinberg's Clean (approximately $99/PC platform only). To take advantage of Traktor's archiving and search features, it's worth it to carefully enter as much info as you can to identify each track so that finding it under pressure will be a breeze.

I have to admit, searching for a track in a computer database will never replace the physicality of crate digging; and recognizing tracks for their album cover design or dog-eared sleeve may become a fond memory of the past if you work with Traktor. Using Traktor has made me aware how few tracks I know by name, versus those I know from the cover design or peculiarly crumpled sleeve.

I also found the virtual knob-twiddling via trackpad to be a bit fatiguing on the hands. Perhaps a mouse would work better than the trackpad over the long term. My only other suggestion for improvement would be the addition of further effects processing tools - delay effects, particularly with beat synchronization, would be a nice tool.

Native Instruments's support, from the Traktor manual to the online tutorials, seems noteworthy. The recent partnership between NI and Stanton Magnetics to further develop Final Scratch, which combines the best of both worlds - vinyl interface and digital files - points toward an exciting future for DJing in the software realm. You may not want to get rid of your turntables anytime soon (for sentimental as well as practical reasons), but Traktor makes DJing in the digital realm an easy-to-learn, enjoyable, and - with a laptop - extremely portable experience.