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Forum: Music discussion

Topic: For the love of God, does any beat matching software really work?!

This topic is old and might contain outdated or incorrect information.

My background: Old house music dj. Sold my turntables years ago... now want to create mp3 mix cd's on my laptop. I'm looking for the best beat matching software that is easy to use and will provide flawless mixing (just like on a professional mix cd).

I have tried Mixmeister, Ableton, and Sony Acid and none of them match beats with 100% accuracy. I found the whole process more complicated than it should be, and I'm too busy to spend hours and hours learning to warp and slice thousands of songs. I simply want the software to do the work.

So my questions are:

1. Why does every dj software claim to beat matching automatically, when none of them really do?

2. Isn't there a way to design software that actually beat matches two songs with 100% accuracy at the push of a button?

3. Which software does it best on the first try?

Thanks
 
Posted Sun 16 Aug 09 @ 5:29 pm
I use VDJ to mix old school house with absolutely no issues. Where did you get your MP3s from? What, if any, controller are you using? But, if you've been a DJ for years, you should know that a DJ can never give up on a blend. I always keep a finger on the pitch blend. VirtualDJ is not an "auto" Dj software. Mixing skills are still needed....
 
Thanks for the reply. No, I'm not using a controller. I have no equipment besides my laptop... most of my mp3's are downloaded from mp3skyline (great site for old school house and techno, tracks are 20 cents).

I'm trying to make high quality mix cds without a huge time investment. Software gets me 98% there - it's that last 2% that annoys me... my mixes are exactly how I want them, but the beats don't match flawlessly. If I was spinning on decks, it would be a different story, but I only have my computer for now.

I'm going to give VDJ a try. Good to hear that it works nicely for you.

I'm not a sound engineer, but do you know of any programs that fully automate the beat matching process? Do the dj's who release non-live mix cds warp all their tracks or is there software that will do that for them?
 
They produce it over Producing tools not with dj mixing programms :)
 
Click here: http://www.virtualdj.com/forums/9931/Mix_lessons/Club_Mixing.html?page=10

Read my last post, and follow the same procedure for constructing your entire mix. With multi-track recording software, you can remix the parts that you want to replace. Two ways this could be done is by adding a song at a time to you mix or recording your entire mix at once into two separate tracks (one virtual player per track) and using a third track to redo mistakes. There are other beat matching tricks that you can do like reducing the base in the song that’s playing once you start bringing the next song into the mix. Also, as TearEmUp advised you, use the pitch bend. Using an external controlling device that has pitch controls will help you match the beats better in my opinion. However, never rely 100% on software to beat match for you (that's why you have ears)!

OO
 
pacific3000 wrote :
I have no equipment besides my laptop...


You need an external mixer if you want to use the multi-track method that I mention in the above post. I posted in a thread several years ago how to do it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate the thread…. Anyway, the best mixer for beat matching is one that has split headphone monitoring (also called headphone split cueing). This allows you to hear one song in one ear and the other song in the other ear. This is very important because it allows you to more accurately match the beats. A good mixer will also allow you to adjust the volume in either side of the headphones.

Here’s one by Pioneer that has this feature:

http://www.pssl.com/Pioneer-DJM3000-19-Mixer-WEffects-And-BPM

Here’s a less expensive mixer by Denon with this feature:

http://www.pssl.com/Denon-DN-X120-10-Inch-2-Channel-DJ-Mixer

Another option is to use Midi if you are familiar with it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI


OO


 
Double O wrote :
pacific3000 wrote :
I have no equipment besides my laptop...


You need an external mixer if you want to use the multi-track method that I mention in the above post. I posted in a thread several years ago how to do it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate the thread….


I found the thread:

http://www.virtualdj.com/forums/10070/General_Discussion/CREATING_THE_PERPECT_CD.html?page=1

Unfortunately, I only explained one of two methods in the thread—the Internal Method. However, you might find the thread helpful. When I get time, I’ll explain the other method because more DJs would prefer to record a mix live and edit their mistakes later—the External Method.

Here's free multi-track recording and editing software that you can try:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/


OO
 
In my humble opinion, there is no such thing as fully automated beatmatching. NOTHING replaces the human ear. That's part of a DJ's job, manipulating the audio to make it do what the DJ says. For example (and I used this example in teaching my class yesterday), I can make the tempos on deck A and deck B say exactlt the same thing. Both tempos could say 90.00 BPM. But the track on deck A may not have accurate BPMs calculated. In actuality, it may be 91.5 BPM. Over the course of 1 minute, deck A will have drifted 1.5 beats AHEAD of deck B. You can imagine what this would sound like by then. As a DJ, you have to turn yourself into a musician and be able to hear that the beats are not properly lining up, DESPITE the software telling you the tempo is the same.
 


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