Native Instruments • Traktor DJ Studio
With the release of Traktor DJ Studio 2.5, Native Instruments has unleashed the most professional DJ software on the market for DJ mixing, live remixing and mix recording using tracks in MP3, WAV, AIFF, and audio CD formats. It runs as a stand-alone software app supporting Core Audio, ASIO, DirectSound, and MIDI for Mac and PC platforms. Seasoned DJ's and those who've never even seen a record will love the features offered that make mixing a breeze: graphic waveform displays, tempo recognition and automatic synchronization, real-time time stretching, cue points, seamless looping, and a track database with an ultra fast search function.
The DJ Mixer provides a classic 3-band DJ equalizer (-24db/+12db) with kill switches (to -80db), punch-in and mute buttons, +/-12 db input gain and auto-gain, a crossfader and a cue mix section with separate headphone mix. The characteristics of the crossfader can be continuously adjusted from soft to hard. If you like to mix with an external hardware DJ mixer, just switch the Traktor mixer off, and it will disappear from your screen. Traktor is completely compatible with Final Scratch databases. Playlists and music archives on external storage devices can be seamlessly swapped to and from both platforms.
Traktor can alter a track's tempo and pitch independently of one another and maintain excellent fidelity. Traktor's automatic BPM detection uses complex algorithms for reliable beat alignment of two tracks on the fly. You can also pitch tracks +/- 100% or change their tempo in real-time using true-to-sound time stretching. Traktor lets you set up to 10 cue points and 10 loops per track - on the fly! - allowing you to play and remix an audio track in whole new ways (ie: stretch intros or breaks, restructure songs). Cue points can be beat-quantized and loops can be set accurately on the bar, resized and moved, all without losing the groove. You can further tweak out your tracks and mixes using Traktor's two 8-pole band pass/notch filters with independent control of cutoff, width, and resonance.
Traktor's Track Database provides easy to use navigation to manage audio files and search your drives, cd's, playlists, etc. You can even pre-listen to tracks in the browser, without having to load them into the database. Sort, name, and browse by artist, album, genre or label, or use the fast search engine to find a specific track. Tracks can be loaded from a playlist into the decks via drag & drop. The audio track, loops and cue-points, as well as beat-grids, are graphically displayed. The waveform can be scratched, moved around and stopped to set cue points by dragging with the mouse, just like a record.
Over 400 of Traktor's functions and actions can be operated by mouse, user programmed keyboard shortcuts, MIDI controllers or MIDI note events. In addition Traktor can be synced with other music programs via OSC or MIDI clock. While mixing, you can record all of your actions as a non-destructive automation file. It saves the references to all audio files used and you can further edit or re-mix at any time. The write function exports the final mix to hard disk as a WAV or AIFF file for the easy creation of mix compilations.
