Jan 25, 2011 Put very simply, Ableton Live is the curveball, Serato Scratch Live (and its brother Itch) and Traktor are the major league players caught at loggerheads, and Virtual DJ is the everyman underdog. But, of course, nothing’s ever simple nowadays. Ableton makes Push and Live, hardware and software for music production, creation and performance. Ableton´s products are made to inspire creative music-making. The DJ software lets you repeat certain effects or parts of a song as much as you want. It started with CDJ players, where there was a “loop in” and “loop out” pair of buttons. You had to time precisely when you hit the buttons to get the perfect loop. Ableton Live 9. To combine Traktor with Live, we will be using an external mixer within Traktor and routing the audio to Live for post-processing. Live will in turn be responsible for cueing audio both from itself and Traktor. Tempo syncing Live and Traktor is optional and may or may not be needed, depending on your setup. Nov 24, 2010 Ableton Live vs. Traktor Pro for DJing On the other hand, I tried out Traktor a few days ago and I sat there all night beat matching tracks and messing around with effects thanks to this Traktor preset I bought for TouchOSC.
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When it comes to choosing which DJ software to use, there are a lot of solid options. In this Head To Head feature we take two popular platforms – Serato DJ Pro and Traktor Pro 3 – and see how they stack up against each other.
Ableton makes Push and Live, hardware and software for music production, creation and performance. Ableton´s products are made to inspire creative music-making.
I’m new to digital – what exactly are these apps?
Serato is a company that makes digital DJ software. Its first was called Serato Scratch Live and it was released in the mid-2000s. A lot has changed in digital DJing since then, and today Serato’s latest app is called Serato DJ Pro (and Serato DJ Lite for beginners). It can be used with turntables, DJ media players and controllers.
Traktor is Native Instruments’ laptop DJ software, and Traktor Pro 3 is the current version. It’s one of the first digital DJ apps, launching back in 2000. It’s gone through several iterations since then, most of which were in step with DJ controllers that Native Instruments put out including the Traktor Kontrol S4, the jogwheel-less Traktor Kontrol S8 and the new Traktor Kontrol S4 Mk3 with Haptic Drive kinetic jogwheels.
Its compression character is buttery soft and subtle.If you use Airwindows plugins regularly, join the conversation in the comments section and let us know which one should be featured on the page. ButterComp is a smooth, transparent compressor. Best free stereo imaging vst. A big thank you goes to our reader Michele for suggesting Airwindows in the first place. It features four totally independent compressors per channel, with a slow response.
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Digital DJ Tips reader Chris W aka Spec4 writes: “I have a problem. I am torn between using Traktor and Ableton Live. I have Ms Pinky for Ableton Live but it’s overly complicated. I love the loops and loop controls of Traktor and the easy effects usage, but I value the warp in Ableton and the ability to launch clips. Do you think the FT3 by Faderfox would be a good controller option here option?”
Digital DJ Tips says:
The Faderfox Micromodul FT3 is a great bit of kit that as you’ve identified can work with both Traktor and Ableton, but so could practically all gear – it’s all Midi, after all. The hardware is not really the issue here – it’s what software you’re comfortable with.
If you want to use Ableton and Traktor, Serato has The Bridge for Serato Scratch Live, but it involves a full digital vinyl set-up. It is also possible to use sync Traktor and Ableton – Dubspot has a good tutorial on this. Also, Serato ITCH has “elastic beatgridding” for material with drifting tempos (as indeed does MixVibes Cross software), so if Traktor’s rather limited beatgridding is the only thing stopping you choosing it over Ableton, there are other no-Traktor options out there. Otherwise, Traktor has sample decks for something similar to launching clips in Ableton.
Looking forward, Traktor 2.5 is bringing in some of the features of Ableton (and the new Kontrol F1 controller duplicates some of the hardware functions of Ableton clip controllers). Exactly how much Ableton-style functionality will be ported over to Traktor in this upgrade remains to be seen, but it’s worth considering.
Have you found yourself torn between Ableton Live and more traditional DJ software? Do you use them both, and if so, how and with which combination of hardware? Please share your thoughts in the comments.