Its the one I learnt and the one I prefer.
They both carry the same concept, so its really just a matter of preference and what you learned on as you started DJing. The key players in this arena… Serato and Native Instruments new competition, Traktor. Making DJing possible without headphones. We can now literally see the music’s wave form in terms of shape, colour and beat. The new age has brought us a new visual way of mixing. Though their still are some that prefer to do it that way. Theirs CD’s as well, but thats slowly become increasingly rare and dead technology. Theirs playing off of a USB flash drive, which is an item we mostly all have lying around somewhere in this day and age. You can go old school and spin vinyl, which is typically the most difficult and can come with a large price tag as you amass records. But I am back on the Serato train, and back enjoying DJing again.Airwaves Music Wedding And Event DJs – When it comes to DJing, theirs a handful off alleys you can go down in terms of playing your library.
In all honesty, the right thing to do is try your best to have a proper go on both, ideally with someone who knows their way round the programme (not much point playing around on something if you have no idea how to get it to do anything!).
But I just found it a horribly unfriendly piece of software to use, the workflow is a nightmare, and it is missing a load of simple key shortcuts that I use all the time in Serato. Traktor is much more powerful, it has the sync function, better FX imho, much better MIDI implementation etc etc. Of course, if you are new to both then the same may not apply and I am a confirmed technophobe. Indeed, at the weekend one of my guest DJs at an event I put on was using Traktor, and his audio dropouts were so bad that we had to take him off. Traktor gave me numerous niggling problems, almost always in a live setting, which made the choice for me obvious. I come from a background of mixing on vinyl, and Serato "feels" the most like spinning with records because the program itself is more simple. The reasons are thus - I crave simplicity in my DJing experience. I have owned Serato for many years, but my S元 box was stolen earlier this year, and in the several months it took for my insurance to come through I was actually given a sponsorship by NI and therefore had TSP2 for several months of serious use, and also tested Pioneer's DDJ-T1 for a month or so as well. If Traktor were error free, I would go with Traktor.
I love Traktor Scratch, and I plan on upgrading to Traktor Pro 2 in the future, however, if you are going to be using it for just a digital control system, I would probably shell out the extra cash for Serato simply because of the reliability. Luckily, this has never negatively impacted a live performance for me.
I had to roll back the driver just to DJ with it again. I also upgraded the audio driver, which made it impossible to calibrate it to eliminate dropouts. I had calibrated everything well, and had not had any issues for a month, and then I would get dropouts all over the place. Sometimes they would appear out of nowhere. I have had tons of issues getting rid of audio drop outs in the past. However, I have found that it is way less reliable, and much more unstable. Traktor has a lot more functionality, and you can customize it to your needs much more than you can with Serato. When I do a gig, I always have to bring my Traktor box and hook it into their system in advance.
It is also the standard in the clubs in my city. It is very efficient and does an awesome job with very low latency. I have never had it crash on me, and I have never had any audio dropouts or system crashes. It just does what it does, which is provide a great vinyl control interface. My take on it, after having used Traktor for a couple years, here is my take. I decided to buy Traktor Scratch Duo a couple years ago because I didn't want to shell out the extra cash for Serato, but I needed to switch to vinyl control.