Serato Scratch vs. Traktor Scratch

[Sneaky]

I do a weekly radio show and a monthly bar night and have had zero issues with Traktor Scratch... so yeah i'm pretty pleased with it... way better than my old piece o crap final scratch system.

[PsyTox]

I have a simple thingie for it: a "extension cable" of about 20 cm, which is just a male socket on one end and a female on the other, but with the ground not connected. And if there's no ground, there's no ground loop Costs about 3 euro to make at your local DIY

No way, was better without the "extension cable" with the ground not connected ...

That's really weird. You did put the extension cable between the power supply of your laptop and your socket, did you?

you sure the ground on your mixer/ tt are connected (and connected good)?

It's weird, because I swear, I've connected my gear to a lot of systems and in a lot of places and everytime this was no problem.

I'm not taking a piss at you with the next question, but: you do know that you can hear the vinyl code playing even with the volume down or mixer off, do you? Because I know a lot of people called Native Instruments (and Rane) already because of a "noise" that they heared, and it was simply the code from the vinyls that they heared through the needle.

[PsyTox]

I'm puzzled mate, but hey, pop over to belgium and we can have a look at it

[Todd Konix]

Well, NI just released Traktor 3.3, which brings full DVS support with 4 deck timecode support, among other things. Of course you need to already have Traktor Scratch installed, and in typical NI fashion as I previously mentioned and predicted, you have to pay for the upgrade to Traktor 3.3, which is €99 / $119 . Ouch.

On the other hand, Serato just also released the first (free) public beta version of their new 1.8 version.

Scratch LIVE 1.8.0 Public Beta 1 (18031)

Welcome to the first 1.8.0 public beta. Please read the release notes carefully before downloading.


New Features:


MIDI Input
Scratch LIVE now supports MIDI input, so that you can control the software with a 3rd party MIDI device.

Off-line player
You can now play tracks without hardware connected. Set up crates, cue points, make loops etc from the comfort of your lounge chair.

Auto-looping
Create loops of preset length on the fly.

New Relative mode options
New needle dropping in Relative mode and needle drop to cue points options.

AAC support
AAC files are now supported in Scratch LIVE.

New TTM 57SL effects
HP Echo and HP Hold Echo (Bass cut versions of the existing effects), phaser, flanger and a bit crusher.

Relocate lost files
Move stuff around on your drive, without stuffing up your library.

Autobackup
Once a week your Scratch LIVE folder is automatically backed up.

Tabbed setup screen
A redesign of the setup screen with options under separate tabs.


New features in detail:


MIDI
MIDI is set up using the MIDI button at the top of the screen. Turning this on puts you in MIDI learn mode. When in MIDI learn mode, hovering over any UI control button, knob, or other parameter will display a pop-up box showing the MIDI assignment for that control. Clicking on the UI control will display a pop-up box showing MIDI assignment options. Touching a MIDI control will assign the midi control to the UI control.

Off-Line player
The off line player allows you to do more preparation without any hardware connected.

The keyboard shortcuts are the same as for the left deck - remember you can click on the ? button for a full list of shortcuts.

(non-DRM) AAC support
AAC files are now supported exactly like MP3, AIFF and WAV files.

New Relative mode options
There are two new options in the vinyl control tab on the setup screen which affect relative mode:

- drop to absolute position:
Means that you can needle drop to the absolute position in relative mode. When the needle is lifted off the record for more that 0.5 seconds and moved to a different groove, The playhead will jump to the absolute position. This means you can now skip around the track with the needle but still use cues and loops.

- drop to cue points
Means that you can needle drop to cue points in relative mode. Repositioning the needle to within any of the first 5 minutes on the control vinyl will jump to those corresponding cue points. In other words, moving the needle to within the first minute will perform a needle drop to the first cue point. Moving it to within the second minute will needle drop to the second cue point and so on. If no cue points exist for a track, the first minute will also restart the track.

- restart track on vinyl lead-in
Bringing the needle to the lead in before the first minute will restart the track. This option is always on. Note that if drop to absolute position is on, the vinyl offset setting is considered to be the start of the track.

Autolooping
5 auto-loop buttons are available on screen at any one time. They range from 1/8 to 32 bars. The user can select the autoloop range with the <and> buttons.

Pressing auto-loop for n bars will create a loop start point from the nearest beat to the playhead (within reason), and set a loop endpoint n bars in the future. Pressing auto-loop 1 while auto-loop 1 is active will deactivate the loop. Pressing a different auto-loop button while looping is active will extend the endpoint of the current loop to the appropriate new auto-loop length.

As the auto-loop buttons require the track bpm to be set to work, if no track bpm is set, the auto-loop buttons are greyed out.

You can also save an auto-loop to the next available slot. When using an auto-loop, a save button is visible where the lock loop button normally is.

New TTM 57SL effects
The new effects come with the new v3 firmware. To update your mixer to get the new effects, with your TTM 57SL connected, go to the hardware tab on the setup screen, and click update.

The v3 firmware should be fully compatible with 1.7.4 (The new effects just aren't selectable in 1.7.4).

What's new in v3:

- A new Phaser effect.
- A new Flanger effect.
- The Desecrator effect (bit crusher and downsampler).
- HP Echo
- HP Hold Echo

Phaser:
* Is a pre-fader effect
* P1 Controls the design frequency
* P1 second function taps the bpm as per the filter effects
* P2 Controls the feedback
* P2 second function controls the phaser depth

Flanger:
* Is a pre-fader effect
* P1 controls the base delay. This is in ms.
* P1 second function taps the bpm. The bpm affects the LFO sweep rate
* P2 controls feedback which provides fullness to the flanger effect
* P2 second function controls the depth which represents the peak delay change.

Desecrator:
* Is a pre-fader effect
* P1 controls the drive.
* P2 controls the down sampler.
* P2 second function controls the bit depth

HP Echo:
* The standard Echo, with a high pass filter added to remove the bass

HP Hold Echo:
* The standard Hold Echo, with a high pass filter added to remove the bass

LFO syncing - A single tap of the bpm button resyncs the LFO.

Relocate lost files
There is a new button in the library tab of the setup screen, called "relocate lost files".
If you drag a folder onto this button, it will go through that folder (and all the folders within that folder) looking for files that match with tracks Scratch LIVE has marked as missing. This means you can move stuff all over your harddrive, and then drag your music folder(s) onto this button and all the missing files will be automatically fixed.

Auto-Backup
For every drive containing the ScratchLIVE folder, Auto-Backup will backup this folder every week, on ScratchLIVE startup.
The ScratchLIVE folder is backed up to a folder called ScratchLIVEBackup, found in the same place as the ScratchLIVE folder.
Auto-Backup will only keep ONE backup at a time, i.e. it will always back up to the same folder.


Miscellaneous changes:

- Fixed when stopping recording, not revealing the recording in the recorded crate

- Added support for the deck level meters when recording channels A or B with the TTM 57SL


Known issues / things we are still working on:

- Improving the Offline-Player latency on Windows platforms

- Whitelabel playback in the Offline Player is currently disabled. This will be enabled shortly.

- Improving the snapping to beats when using looping and auto-looping

The new absolute Relative mode is fucking KILLER! The mythical hybrid mode we've all been dreaming about. I already can't live without it. Take that Traktor Scratch and Torq. Add that with my MPD16 MIDI controller, sh!t's dope. The new tabbed setup menu is nice also.


And here's my web page review. Well, not really a review, more like a visual what's new, in case any of you don't own Serato and what to see what's new.

http://www.skratchworx.com/news3/comments.php?id=794


Serato users, you can download the 1.8 beta from SSL's forums. Yo must sign up first to download. See this thread... http://scratchlive.net/forum/discussion ... =57699#new

[Delano]

Serato users, you can download the 1.8 beta from SSL's forums. Yo must sign up first to download. See this thread... http://scratchlive.net/forum/discussion ... =57699#new

Looks promising! Building new overviews right now!
Great review btw.

[Measax]

honestly I have seen a lot of these units fail in general. When you're not sponsered by the company, its hard to go out and spend 4-500 bucks on one of these units because a pre amp goes out. I know the technology will get better but for now I would go with the unit with the least problems and best support - serato. I have seen it fail live before and have heard of hardware units going dead... so I still use records and cds. werd up.

[Donnchú]

honestly I have seen a lot of these units fail in general. When you're not sponsered by the company, its hard to go out and spend 4-500 bucks on one of these units because a pre amp goes out. I know the technology will get better but for now I would go with the unit with the least problems and best support - serato. I have seen it fail live before and have heard of hardware units going dead... so I still use records and cds. werd up.

Sure you could have the same problem with CDs, the more digital you go the more likely it is that something will go wrong.

The only trouble I've ever had with serato was dust on the needle messing up the tracking. And at least with serato you can throw it into internal mode if something goes wrong, you can't do that with dusty needles on regular vinyl!

[jessejames]

Konix, nice review. The new absolute relative mode and dropping to cue points is a really nice touch. Is MIDI thru USB then I take it?