“Traktor has already done an outstanding job of both detecting and maintaining a consistent tempo; flexible beatgrids just extend its intelligence and utility.”
It’s hard for me to contemplate, honestly, but I first started DJing nearly 20 years ago. In the spur of the moment (and for reasons I can’t recall), I somehow landed at that time on an entry-level version of a DJ software application that all these years later is still pretty much my default.
That software? Traktor from Germany’s Native Instruments (NI). What’s changed since then is that I’ve had a chance to use a lot of alternatives, and those alternatives have gotten better and better over time. In fact, these days, it feels like Serato DJ is inescapable, especially given its ubiquity (largely through prolific hardware-bundling deals).
As a result, I confess that I’ve gotten a bit melancholy about Traktor in recent years, primarily because there hasn’t been anything new from the brand in a while. Some — me included — even began to speculate that NI might either sell off, or simply discontinue, the Traktor line-up.
The last major update to Traktor was in 2019, on the heels of some private-equity investment in Native Instruments, initiated in 2017, that also triggered a lot of other product activity within the company. But further changes in ownership, which started in 2021, seemed to have the near-term effect of diminishing operational focus at the company. Today, owned by a different private-equity firm, and following other acquisitions and consolidations and structural changes, the company seemed to catch its stride again in 2023. I kept hoping that Traktor and its hardware siblings would get some much-needed attention, and they finally did, starting with the release of the Traktor X1 MK3 Controller, which I reviewed several months ago.
But now, we finally get a new version of Traktor itself in the form of the Traktor Pro 4 upgrade.
What’s New?
One of the main reasons I’ve continued to prefer Traktor is that I’ve accumulated two decade’s worth of metadata about my DJ-music collection that I depend on to choose material in a set. Those notes, ratings, categories, play history, and other details have enormous value as I work. Traktor’s user interface and user experience have also been a notch above the competition in my view. Thankfully, NI hasn’t tinkered with anything in the new release that diminishes these things — or indeed anything else that long-time Traktor uses have appreciated about the platform. In fact, the company’s work appears to have been focused in bringing Traktor back to a posture where it’s competitive with today’s DJ software landscape.
While NI has given the software a slight visual refresh that reflects the company’s recently updated branding, the banner feature among the new functionality is stem separation. But the featured additions also include flexible beatgrids, a pattern player, and the addition of Ozone Maximizer, technology borrowed from the acquisition of plug-in maker iZotope several years ago. Let’s dig-in…
Stem Separation
It’s a great concept: Take an off-the-shelf commercial music track and allow machine-learning to disassemble it into four basic pieces, usually vocals, percussion/drums, bass line, and everything else (i.e., melodic content), then enable you to reuse those components at will. The promise for performing DJs is clear: Take, for example, the driving bassline from one track, and maybe mix in the vocals from a completely different track, while layering-in some beats from someplace else entirely, and voila! A unique, never-before-heard version of a song that’s perfectly engineered (By you! On the fly! Live!) to get the entire club to take a beeline to the dancefloor.
I suspect that at this point I’m very much “on the record” as being ambivalent about stem separation, primarily because while I love the value proposition that I just described above, I have been repeatedly disappointed at how much the reality in practice simply doesn’t live up to the hype. So, while I understand why NI rolled out stem separation in Traktor Pro 4 — to remain competitive in the market — once again, I find myself doing a bit of a shoulder shrug in reaction to it.
NI says that the capability is powered by AI, plus RX technology borrowed from iZotope. To be clear, the stem separation works well enough, and is on par with how this sort of stem separation works with other software in terms of audio quality. That is to say that it does the job, but nearly always leaves a little bit to be desired. As I’ve written on many occasions, stem separation tends to leave audible “holes” in each stem corresponding to where other parts of the track were scooped out. How well it works is entirely dependent on the source material, how that material was mixed, and how effects were applied during production. Sometimes the results are amazing; other times they border on unusable. But this is no knock against NI, or Traktor Pro 4; it’s simply the nature of the technology, and the current state of the art.
Regardless, when you pair separated stems with the use of the new pattern player, I think the overall value proposition in Traktor is strong. On the downside, the speed at which stem separation takes place doesn’t really stand up to what its competitors have recently done. Nevertheless, it does the job, and it’s an area where I fully expect NI to continue to improve over time.
Pattern Player
Let’s face it: It can often be a challenge to make the transition from one track to another in a set, even when the tracks are harmonically compatible. Maybe you just don’t have enough material to work with (even if you loop a section), or maybe the producer just plain did something weird or “artistic” to makes things difficult. The ability to bring up some beats from another source can be just the ticket to bridge those gaps, and the new pattern player is the perfect way to do that — while providing myriad options for enhancing your performance in other ways, too.
The pattern player is a mini-sequencer which can replace an effects unit in-situ, enabling you to control the pattern player itself, then, with many existing Traktor-specific DJ controllers simply by using the controls that otherwise tweaks effects; it’s a pretty clever approach. The software comes with a generous library of percussion kits and patterns that you can customize and control in a variety of different ways. Depending on your DJ style and preferred material, you might agree with my bottom-line assessment: The pattern player is the most useful, most valuable new feature in Traktor Pro 4, and the one that, without question, I’ll be using more than any of the other new additions.
Flexible Beatgrids
According to NI’s Sylwia Kopyś, flexible beatgrids constitute the “most requested feature by the Traktor community.” I have no reason to doubt Ms. Kopyś, but reflective of the wide range of DJ styles and material that DJs play, I’m not quite certain that this feature rates high on my personal list.
As the name suggests, flexible beatgrids allow Traktor to deftly handle material where the BPM varies within a single track, such as a tempo slowdown in a break or drop section. I’m pretty sure that I can count the examples of such material in my own collection on one hand and have fingers left over, but for those whose material includes large numbers of (or in fact any) such tracks, it’s a godsend. When applied to such a track, everything in Traktor that’s dependent on tempo alignment just works, and not to sound too over the top here, it’s pretty magical. If a track with varying tempo is the master, the tempo changes occur and bring everything along for the ride; if not, then the tempo changes are essentially removed, with everything automatically kept at the master’s BPM.
In my experience, Traktor has already done an outstanding job of both detecting and maintaining a consistent tempo; flexible beatgrids just extend its intelligence and utility.
Ozone Maximizer
Ozone, for those unfamiliar, is the renowned mastering plug-in from iZotope, which became part of the Native Instruments family several years ago by way of acquisition. Maximizer is a specific component of Ozone, which NI has now extracted from Ozone and brought to Traktor.
The idea here is to maximize loudness, while still preserving the integrity and essence of the material. One mistake that many DJs make is just slamming output levels around without regard to clipping and distortion. Maintaining adequate headroom in your levels is critical for clean sound when crossfading tracks, adding effects, or playing clips or patterns. But then overall loudness can suffer (and your overall set can become a rollercoaster of levels) when only a single source is playing, since that headroom isn’t really being utilized.
Maximizer aims to address this. If you begin with the practice of leaving ample headroom in your individual track levels, when applied, Maximizer will help your set achieve and maintain a consistent loudness as effects, mixing, clips and the like come and go as you perform. The result will be a set that steers clear of distortion, while still delivering the consistent, club-centric sound you desire.
Working with Traktor Pro 4, I found the Ozone Maximizer to fully deliver on its promise. All I can say is to follow the directions for its proper use, and the audio quality of your sets will be better off for it.
Conclusions
To be sure, the Traktor Pro 4 upgrade makes clear that Native Instruments is still committed to the DJ market and can still turn out a great product. While there are still areas in the new features that could be improved, and no doubt other features the Traktor community wants but remain unaddressed, make no mistake that NI has added a solid amount of value to a DJ software application that is arguably the best the class. And with upgrades priced at just $74.50 (new purchases are $149, although the software is bundled with certain NI DJ hardware), there’s little reason not come along for the ride. I’m excited to see what NI has cooking for the future of the Traktor product line — and no doubt there are things to look forward to in the months and years ahead.