Traktor Pro 4 Software Review

Video Review

First Impressions / Setting up

The software doesn’t appear too different at first – they still haven’t upgraded the video to work nicely with Retina and other things that could have signalled a big number change from 3 to 4. But that does at least mean it is familiar, and once you start looking for the new features, you can see where the changes have been made, mainly of course in the preferences and menus.

That said, if you’re coming to Traktor Pro 4 having never seen Traktor Pro Plus, the ill-fated subscription version of the software, you’ll have the “new” Ozone Maximizer and Pattern Player to, er, play with, so let’s dive in and cover both the big new stems and flexible beatgrid features first, and then those items too.

In Use

Stems

Traktor was the first software to incorporate stems many years ago, but the caveat was you needed to use a special stems file format for them to work. These special stems files proved to be something that no producers, artists, or labels wanted to get involved with, so the format failed. Of course, what happened next was that software caught up with the desire to do this, allowing DJs to use stems with any normal music file of their choosing. Now Traktor has its version of this.

The way it works is slightly different to other platforms, but having played with it, I can tell you that it is none the worse for it. With the Traktor take on modern stems, when you analyse a song for stems, it creates a new “stems version” of that song, which is a self-contained file. This file is linked by Traktor to the original music file, so any changes in cues, loops, grids and so on are reflected between the two. But it is still separate, and indeed you could store the stems files in a separate place, like an external hard drive, should you have no room on your computer to store these larger stems files.

Read this next: 5 Best Traktor DJ Controllers

Here’s where it gets nice. When loading a track that also has a stems version available (there is a symbol in the library to tell you), clicking once on the load button will load the original version, and clicking twice will load the stems version. You can have the four stems waveforms display in the software, of course. And in a nice touch, this behaviour can be reversed (one click for stems, two for original). It also works with instant doubles. So you can choose whether to instant double the stems or the normal version of the track.

It’s possible to analyse stems while actually DJing without any performance hit, although it does take quite a long time – sometimes nearly as long as the song itself if your computer isn’t very fast, and even on my good Silicon Mac, about a minute for a three minute song. This definitely means you’re better off analysing your tracks ahead of time.

Furthermore, this can only be done one track at a time at the moment: Native Instruments tells us that even though batch analysis of tracks is available, they’ve disabled it because they want to write some extra track management features for stems into the software before turning DJs loose on potentially messing up their libraries by doing something they didn’t intend to do.

Audio-wise, we’re pleased to report that the sound quality is comparable to the best of the others out there – so think VirtualDJ, Serato and Djay Pro, which is unsurprising because Native Instruments also owns iZotope, whose audio processing smarts are among the best in the business, and whose RX technology is under the hood powering this.

Flexible beatgrids

It’s true, flexible beatgrids have finally arrived in Traktor. This means that you can manually change the grid markers on any track to tell the software where its BPM varies, meaning sync can finally work across non-electronic, locked tempo tracks.

It works in the same way you would expect it to if you’ve used flexible/elastic beatgridding on any other platform until recently, where you manually move the markers to align with the beats as you work through a track, with Traktor then respecting those markers when it plays the track back while synced to another track.

Because of the way Traktor handles the master deck, this is all very transparent. If the flexible beatgridded track is the master deck, other tracks will be time-stretched to fit it. And if vice versa (ie if another track is the master deck), the track with the flexible beatgrid will be time-stretched to fit the master tempo.

The audio quality is exceptional here, which pleased us because it’s something that we’ve noticed can suffer on other platforms. We also spotted that you can happily set an auto loop across a BPM change and it will loop perfectly. Again, this is good to see because tight looping has always been a standout point of the Traktor software.

Learn to use Traktor like a pro: Traktor Made Easy

One UI issue we spotted was that when you’re adjusting a beat marker, Traktor will always adjust the one to the left of the current play head, even if the current play head is really close to another marker just to the right, and the one to the left is way away – even off screen! This is obviously bad. The Traktor team is aware of this and we believe it’s something they’re planning to change in the near future.

But apart from this, it all works how you would imagine and it’s such a breath of fresh air to see this finally arriving in a platform that desperately needed it.

The next two features are not new. But with the Traktor Pro Plus subscription being discontinued, they will be new to anyone who didn’t take out that subscription.

Pattern Player

This is a simple sequencer designed to be used with drum samples, that lives alongside the effects and can be selected with the same controls. It lets you control a 16-beat pattern, synced to whatever music you’re playing. There are lots to choose from, with kits provided by Native Instruments and also by various electronic producers, complete with their own custom patterns to use as defaults.

There are eight sounds per pattern, and the really nice thing is that there are eight of what Native Instruments calls “densities”. By turning the effects knobs, you can adjust the fullness of the sound of each sample and also alter their pitch and decay. Doing so gives you very immediate control over what the pattern player outputs and is lots of fun, especially if you use a pattern player on one of the effects engines and feed that into the second one to add further effects.

If all this sounds complicated, it actually isn’t, and that’s one of the benefits here. I suspect when Native Instruments designed this, they wanted it to be far easier to use than the powerful but widely neglected Remix Decks that they introduced several years prior, which just overwhelmed most DJs. This is much more “immediate”.

Ozone Maximizer

Think of this as an intelligent limiter and compressor that knows what you’re playing and stops you distorting your output when you play too hot, but that also applies a variable amount of compression so that you’ve got control over the dynamic range of your whole set. Basically it can make everything louder, but also help you to glue together disparate inputs. It’s this latter superpower I like the most.

Imagine you’ve got a Pattern Player loop running, an acapella running using the new stems, and an old track on another deck (that you’ve “tamed” with the new flexible beatgrids), all playing at once. Each individual element might sound a little bit separate in the mix from all the others, because they’re so different. However, add the Ozone Maximizer, and you’ve just added some audio “glue” that will help hold everything together. It is a trick used by music producers, and it’s right there now in Traktor.

I can’t think of any other DJ software that offers anything like this, and the only place I’ve seen anything similar in DJ equipment is in a discontinued Roland controller (the excellent DJ-707M) that had a compressor and limiter over the master output. But this is a bit more than that, it’s fun to use, and you can dial it in and hear the difference in your sound immediately.

There are lots of minor fixes and changes, but the big one for me is that the infamous browser flicker is no more, which does indicate that they’re doing work under the hood to fix some of the long-suffered bugbears in the platform.

Conclusion

I’ve already mentioned it, but this feels like a breath of fresh air. One price. One version. No subscription. And new features which make the software once again fit for purpose for DJs who prioritise performance and sound quality over everything else, but who want some of the things they’ve jealously watched other platforms implement.

Ahead of time is the way forward

The feeling you get with Traktor now is that it’s fun to use again. Yes, it does reward preparation beforehand: Certainly, the stems analysis is extremely slow, and although you won’t get a performance hit by analysing when DJing, it’s not a good idea. But then again, I think most people would happily analyse their tracks ahead of time and know what they’re going to get in a performance, so this isn’t a big deal for me – it’s certainly my preferred way of working.

Read this next: How To Get High Quality Acapellas Of Anything

Likewise, the new flexible beatgrids need work ahead of time. They have arrived ironically after such a long time period that the best-in-class software has moved on from this kind of beatgridding, offering AI-powered beat grids that just do the job for you perfectly every time without you having to do anything to prep manually, and that can handle really big, obvious BPM changes in tracks in a way that Traktor’s can’t. However, just having flexible beatgrids of any type in Traktor is such a leap forward, and I think (for now at least) most users will forgive this.

Good hardware integration

Playing with the new X1 controller is really nice using these features and you can see thought has gone into how it works with stems and the Pattern Player. But because they’re building on existing stems technology with regards to controls, if you own the existing S2, S3 or S4 controllers or the D2, S5 and S8 (which are discontinued), you’ll find that all the controls on those devices work absolutely fine with these new stems features. This will be great news, as I know these controllers – particularly the D2 – are still popular among certain types of DJ.

Get the course: Traktor Made Easy

Ultimately, Traktor is now a viable alternative once again for a far wider range of DJs than just the hardcore who were left using it. What’s more, this is great timing from Native Instruments, with the rumblings of discontent around Rekordbox software and AlphaTheta’s impending purchase of Serato seemingly leading many DJs who use these two dominant platforms to seriously consider other platforms for their software.

More to come?

Hopefully this also means there’s more to come. There are still much-needed improvements necessary in Traktor’s library. They’ll definitely need to speed up those stems and add some extra tools to make managing them quicker. And – just throwing it out there – wouldn’t it be nice to have a new Z1 to go alongside the X1 that’s already been relaunched?

Time will tell but ultimately, the good news is that all of this now appears far more likely with today’s announcement.