Earlier this month, Native Instruments released their newest iteration of their DJ product, Traktor Pro. They have traded the name “DJ Studio” from the product for “Pro” and their reasoning behind the change is that this is a new product and Pro quality. To differentiate between their fully software based solution and their DVS (Digital Vinyl Solution), they still append the name Scratch to the DVS version of Traktor Pro. So now we have two new products from Native Instruments, Traktor Pro and Traktor Scratch Pro. The only difference between the two is one is controllable with Digital Vinyl. Both are midi controllable, and both allow you to mix either “inside the box” or “outside the box” to a separate mixer. Both also allow you to record your mixes, use internal effects, filters, and EQs, and send or receive midi clock data.
What's changed?
There have been numerous changes from Traktor DJ Studio / Traktor Scratch 3.4 to Traktor Pro / Traktor Scratch Pro. Here are a few that have stood out to me.
New Revised Interface
Traktor 3's interface had received a lot of criticism. Many complained about either the text being hard to read, the top panel becoming cluttered and hard to maneuver, or the collection being hard to navigate.
Native Instruments seems to have answered a lot of concerns and complaints with a new seemingly cleaner interface that has larger text on the decks and a much cleaner top panel. In order to achieve this, NI has moved the cue points, loops, and beat grids to the decks. This makes sense because you no longer have to have a separate top panel just to have panels for each deck available.
Native Instruments NI has also added a new browser mode for browsing through your collection. If you click on the new magnifying glass icon in the top right hand corner, it will maximize your browser panel to take up the whole window; you can then quickly browse through your collection, select your track, and then click the icon again and get right back to your original deck view.
New Effects & Effect Chains
Traktor has added many new effects and filters to their product. Some of the new effects added are Digital LoFi, Gater, Iceverb, Mulholland Drive, Reverse Grain, Ringmodulator, Transpose Stretch, and Turntable FX. This would seem to be in response to many requests to have the ability to ReWire or add VST effects to Traktor. NI's stance has always been to not add these features to Traktor because it could cause many bugs unrelated to Traktor into the product. When creating a Pro-quality product that needs to perform consistently night after night, you do not want to have it crash on a user randomly some night and not be able to determine if it's the new VST plugin they most recently downloaded or a bug in the newest patch that was released.
With Traktor 3, you could only chain your effects by routing your Deck effects into the Master effects. With Traktor Pro, NI has added the ability to chain 3 effects per FX channel. They also have added the ability to assign 2 FX channels per deck rather than having a separate FX channel each deck. This allows you to chain up to 6 effects per deck. Although this may be a welcome addition to some, others may prefer the single effect use as seen in previous versions of Traktor, this is also possible, NI now calls this “Advanced” Panels and is switchable in the options, they have not yet added the ability to swap via hotkey or midi control.
You may notice in the screenshots a camera icon in the effects panels. That is a new feature where you can set a default setting of your effects parameters and then take a snapshot. Once you set a snapshot, every time you switch to that effect, your settings come right back.
NI has also added a feature that has been needed for a while, in addition to the 2 FX decks, they have given us a Single Knob Filter. This is a Low/High Pass Filter that is controllable view a single knob, turning it left activates Low Pass and turning it right activates High Pass.
Midi Clock
With Traktor 3 you could only send clock data to another program, computer, or midi device. Traktor now has the ability to receive midi clock data, and with that you can sync Traktor's master clock to any other outside source that can send midi clock. This opens up new possibilities for innovative DJ setups.
Hotkey and Midi Controls
Native Instruments has really revamped their hotkey and midi settings to allow much more overall control without using a mouse. In addition to many new parameters that can be controlled and assigned, they have added a new feature called “modifiers”. In previous versions, you had separate midi pages, and if you wanted to create a “shift key” style of control, where a button did two different things based on whether you were holding down another button you would create separate midi pages. This could become kind of cumbersome and clumsy because when you switched to a different midi page, all your settings on all other pages were no longer active. NI has addressed this issue by creating modifiers.
Conclusion
Overall, it seems that NI has really created a new DJ product that will work well with a lot of the new Djs who enjoy more midi control and technical usage. And by keeping their DVS system and allowing the user the ability to hide some of the more technical details, Djs who are only interested in using MP3s but still controlling everything else from the turntables and mixer are able to. In addition to the features that I mentioned, NI has also added many other features such as AutoBeatgridding, and a few others. These are just the ones that stood out the most to me. In the end it seems that NI has developed a product that focuses on control, customization, and ease of use.