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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Virtual Dj vs Traktor, sound quality
The other day, my DJ friend complained to me that his program (Traktor) does not support XDJ-XZ. I advised him to try Virtual Dj. A few days later, he calls me and enthusiastically tells me how cool Virtual Dj sounds compared to Traktor. To be honest, I did not pay attention to all this talk about difference in sound quality before and thought that it was all nonsense. But then I really got interested. My wife and I (she is also a DJ) came to his house, he has good audio equipment and a sound card. And the three of us once again compared the sound of the two programs in the same conditions. And indeed, Virtual Dj sounds much more punchy and assertive, the drums sound like they are alive. Traktor has a more boring, cardboard sound. Moreover, the difference is very noticeable, even in a blind test it is easy to distinguish between both programs. And when a friend heard how stems 2.0 sounds, he immediately subscribed)
Thanks to the Virtual Dj team for quality software!
 
Posted Wed 26 Mar 25 @ 3:41 pm
That's refreshing to hear as there literally a million other threads about how bad VDJ sounds compared to others.
 
kradcliffe wrote :
That's refreshing to hear as there literally a million other threads about how bad VDJ sounds compared to others.


Actually, just a few months ago another Dj asked me why am I using Vdj, it's just soft for novices (lol) and it doesn't sound good). By the way, he also uses traktor, and, obviously, never bothered to compare sounds or something else. He just "heard something like that once". I prefer to check everything myself
 
It's so much comfortable to keeps one's opinion, based on hear-says, rather than forge one based on facts/experience.

Saying that, I've never compared VDJ to other software 😅
 
 
The sad part about these "quality" posts is that virtually none of them are objective/quantitative - they are all based on sound as perceived by a human (which, beyond a certain obvious point, is the least reliable method of determining quality of sound output), and years of experience of being a DJ (which has nothing to do with objective analysis of sound quality). The actua| people who have done proper experiments (there is at least one forum post on this here) have proven that VirtualDJ is true to the original sound output as described by the media - this is what actually matters, not how loud or punchy you think it sounds compared to another player. Mind you, these same claims are cropping up on forums of other offerings too but somehow participants seem to be more forgiving there.

At the end of the day, know that the sound reproduction is accurate and you can do things to make the sound as colorful as you want it to be if necessary (there are posts on that here too), you have the choice, and that is a powerful thing in itself.
 
I am a beginner with limited experience. Still, I’ve heard weird sounds from Rekordbox, but never from VDJ. Even when the interface bugs down, the songs carry on! That’s counts as good sound quality…
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
The sad part about these "quality" posts is that virtually none of them are objective/quantitative - they are all based on sound as perceived by a human (which, beyond a certain obvious point, is the least reliable method of determining quality of sound output), and years of experience of being a DJ (which has nothing to do with objective analysis of sound quality). The actua| people who have done proper experiments (there is at least one forum post on this here) have proven that VirtualDJ is true to the original sound output as described by the media - this is what actually matters, not how loud or punchy you think it sounds compared to another player. Mind you, these same claims are cropping up on forums of other offerings too but somehow participants seem to be more forgiving there.

At the end of the day, know that the sound reproduction is accurate and you can do things to make the sound as colorful as you want it to be if necessary (there are posts on that here too), you have the choice, and that is a powerful thing in itself.



Fair comments; sound is extremely subjective, its also relative to your equipment; especially speakers and room acoustics.
I use a traktor 6 box which i think sounds great.....
What may sounds good for one mix engineer is total crap for another.

This makes this topic highly debatable....interestingly enough i bet the audience wont know the difference anyways....who wants to debate ofc wires...lol.

Of course some form of waveform analysis would tell the tale; but it is good to know if more users of the other products are taking notice of things like sound quality.

Kevin
 
I always find when Pro sound engineers are involved in anything it's all as flat as a pancake. They treat EQ like the devil.
 
kradcliffe wrote :
I always find when Pro sound engineers are involved in anything it's all as flat as a pancake. They treat EQ like the devil.


damn straight...lol
 
kradcliffe wrote :
I always find when modern Pro sound engineers are involved in anything it's all as flat as a pancake. They treat EQ like the devil.

Here. I fixed it for you..
:P
It's all flat, because that's what modern acoustic treatment software does. Which (to be fair) in a lot of cases is important for live gigs.
But that's another rabbit hole..

Anyway: People that really know what's going on with sound and it's properties, don't actually like the term "sound quality"
There's no "quality" on sound that can be measured.
Instead there's "fidelity" and that's something you can measure.
"Hi-Fi" used to stand for "High Fidelity" meaning a sound system that was capable to reproduce the original playback media content with as much Fidelity as possible.
In the analog world, measuring "fidelity" was not easy and some times it left some room for interpretation
In the digital world though, it's far more easier.
All you have to do is to look at the uncompressed RAW source data, their state right before the DAC, and then right after. You can even take it one step further and reconvert the analog signal back to digital with an ADC and therefore compare binary data.
If the data after being converted back to digital are the same as the source then you definitely have a "bit perfect" system, and that's the maximum fidelity you can get.
From that point on, it doesn't really matter what you're playing on this system.
Even if it sounds "crap" the "sound quality" of the system will be great. It's the source material that's "crap", not the signal chain that makes it sound "crap"
 
I recently saw a YouTube video of someone giving a tour of his hi-fi system, saying that his friends would be coming for a "meet" to spend time appreciating the sound.

Sitting atop his system was a graphic equaliser, which was very visibly set in a "wobbly line" configuration because he had "EQed the room" with it....

He had a laptop sat on one side providing video to his big screen and audio to the system - running VDJ.
 
"EQ-ing" a room (or to be precise a listening position inside the given room) is not a bad thing, if you know what you're doing.

Modern AV processors can do it automatically for you, as soon as you follow the necessary wizard and actually bother to read and follow the instructions on screen.
The same thing can be achieved "manually" as well:
Play a bunch of frequencies through the system, and measure them at the listening position.
Then weight all frequencies to a reference point, and finally tweak the equalizer so that all frequencies sound the correct level SPL.

The problem starts when you don't use measurement equipment and instead you "tweak" the sound "by ear"

PS: There's nothing wrong to use an EQ to emphasize/color the sound to your liking.
Just don't pretend that this is a "high fidelity" environment :)
 
Dont forget to add time alignment into the equation; then the room really comes alive...