By: Monika.mhz
April has marked a big month for Serato. With the announcement of the SL-3 kicking it all off, Serato followed up with the official release of 1.9.0 on Monday. The dedicated fanboys and fangirls have been waiting since January and now Serato has finally served up the goods. Scratch Live 1.9 has some major changes that definitely warrant the version rollover from 1.8 to 1.9. We’ve already discussed Scratch Live 1.9 briefly during Winter NAMM 2009. I have been using 1.9 extensively throughout the beta process and am happy to report why you need to upgrade.
- SP-6 Sample Player:
A sample player with choice as to which deck to drop it in. There is no pitch adjust on this sample player, but DJs everywhere rejoiced when Scratch Live announced the ominous sounding SP-6. May dance floors everywhere enjoy the air horn once again.
- Improved MIDI:
Serato doesn’t discuss this in the release notes but 1.9 has drastically improved MIDI performance. A relatively new player in MIDI control, only supporting MIDI officially for less than a year, they have done very well listening to users and adding user requests (with exception of audio scrubbing). When MIDI was first introduced into Scratch Live many users complained about latency and Jitter, some even reporting shocking numbers in comparison to competitors. These reports caused a lot of performers to shy away from Scratch Live as a serious solution for MIDI.
Version 1.9 wipes the slate clean, tosses away the dragging feeling from previous versions, and gives MIDI a competitive precision. Cue points feel snappy, pitch adjust feels dead on, loops are precise, and effects are other words for ‘good’ as well! If you have no other reason to upgrade to 1.9, this is it! With such a drastic change in performance any DJ will be happy with the snappy difference!
- Live Feed:
Probably the most innovative part of Scratch Live is it’s ability to use time code to control live audio. Plugging in an audio signal into the microphone port on the SL-1 allows the DJ to load a “live feed” track onto any deck, and control it with vinyl. Live vinyl control of ANY “Live” (hint hint) feed into Scratch Live. Stay tuned for more from DJ Tech Tools on this feature. We see many great things from this in the future.
1.9 also features:
- improved history
- a loop roll effect for those who feel like glitching their music or rolling over a vocal,
- key tag support,
- album art,
- bigger BPM and pitch presentations on the screen,
- and tons of bug fixes and features we didnt even touch!
SSL 1.9.0 is available as a free download at serato.com
