Mixed In Key has announced version 7.0 of their famous key detection software. This time they’ve added a powerful new feature for Traktor and Serato, automatic cue points. Placing cue points in tracks can be a time consuming process. DJ’s have to load all their tracks individually, find suitable spots, then mark each cue point. With the latest update from Mixed In Key, the software will analyze tracks, detect the BPM/Key as usual, and it will set 8 cue points inside of the tracks. The most impressive part is that it can set cue points for multiple tracks, which will save DJ’s tons of time in preparing tracks. The full details have been released and a video is available on Mixed In Key’s YouTube channel showing the feature in action. It seems to do a fine job of setting cue points at critical parts in the track: intro, breakdown/buildup, chorus.
Mixed In Key 7.0 – Ahead of the Curve
Mixed In Key has been around since 2006 and for a long time it was the only key detection solution available. Competition has caught up in the last couple years with more software such as Traktor and Rekordbox incorporating key detection as a standard feature and more free software options. DJTT has posted a couple articles comparing the key detection amongst different software, the most recent comparison was in 2014. Mixed In Key has stayed ahead of the competition with new features such as “Energy” detection and an improved key detection algorithm. With this latest release Mixed In Key continues to be ahead of the curve and provide tools that are valuable to DJ’s.
Mixed In Key 7.0 costs $58 for new users who have never purchased a copy before, $29.99 for everyone with a copy of 5.0 or earlier. 6.0 users get a free update to 7.0 – and is available to download now.
the hotcues are like 70% not working on my tracks, no only that they are sometimes like random in the whole song, but also they really don’t hit the transients, like more than a half beat away form the wanted one. this is really a pain, please fix this MIK, the hot cues, if they’re not hitting the right spot, should at least hit the transients.
robots can’t mix as good as humans, only a sync tapper would think that.
breaking news, DJ’s no longer required, software taking over, matrix, blah blah blah… red pill
I tested it. It works as I expected. Badly. Cue points are not even in most places where you would put them (beginning of phrase), they look almost random. You can see the logic behind it but algorithm is far from perfect. It needs a lot of work. At this point it;s just waste of time.
And I was just thinking how awesome it would be to have some auto cue point setting at a programmed interval based on say beat grids, time sig, etc…or even just in a program that can then be read by any DVS app…seems positive to me cause I’ve been setting a lot of cue points at 0, 16, 32, etc…for years;) Can I DJ without it, 100%, but it is kinda buttery still;)
I tested the feature and while it did set a decent number of useful (well phrased) cue points, it also set a really messed up beat grid (and on a simple four on the floor track). It also seemed to favor the front end of songs, giving me 8 cues, none of which were useful for mix OUT markers which are some of the most important markers I set… Bottom line, not impressed… yet. I’d be impressed if set (for Traktor) one good Load marker, two good Fade In Markers, three Hot Cue markers and two good Fade Out markers, with of course a solid beat grid set as well. Setting grids and cues is time consuming, but there’s real value in doing this work yourself. That said, sometimes time is short and having a solid tool in this area would be an asset… not quite there yet for me, though.
Tried it right away, it was a disappointment. Did a horrible job on pop, hip-hop and similar tracks. Maybe it’s better with house tracks? Whatever the case, I was excited about the hype and this was a big fail in my eyes, the cue points that were placed were totally ridiculous….all had to be re-done. If they can get this right, could be awesome…
Same here, as you can see in my comment below.
Updated my copy of Mixed in Key as soon as the update came out. Tested the auto cuepoint function in Serato on a whole bunch of tracks and most of the time it works properly but many times I see que points where I would never place one. For example 4 or 8 bars after the drop. It even fails in some songs by putting cue points off beat. So quite useless if you want to use this like showed in the video. If I can’t rely on it and it fails on more than 20% of my tracks, it’s quite useless and I rather keep on doing this by hand.
Not impressed at all with the automatic cue points at all, having now tested it in both Serato and Traktor with different kinds of songs. They seem pretty random, often not even on the ‘1’ beat, attempting to edit them afterwards is more hassle than doing it manually in the first place. Beyond that, the software is agonisingly slow at processing tracks, worse even than previous versions.
This needed to be tested a lot more before being released, feel that it’s a bit of a rip-off actually.
Ive got to admit that after several hours of sorting music aout. Ive come to the conclusion that i will be doin my hot-cues manally. I agree with you djbenetti. Very slow to prosses and misse beatgrid bar. Plus to edit after.. its worse that doing it on the fly. Hope they work on it.
This is a great upgrade. Especially og you are an all-round dj and have a large collection. Not every cue point is accurate. But its good enough. Keep up The good work, mixed in key.
Is anyone else having a problem with this feature? When I go to add my tracks to MIK, it analyses them as usual and sets the key/energy level, but the “cue points” block just reads “not analyzed” on every track… The cue points aren’t appearing in Serato regardless either.
My MIK settings are ticked to export cue points to Serato, as well as to overwrite existing ones. clicking the “Export Cue Points for Existing Files” button makes no difference either.
Am I missing something?
I agree that there should be another option to add cue points to existing ones. It would be great to be able to have a beatgrid already set plus personally set cue points and then just be able to add MIK cue points.
PS. MIK 7 definitely seems to run much slower than 6 but I love your software so keep up the good work!
Agree. Taking forever to analyse. plus very laggy.
I’m waiting for MIK 10.0 which is rumored to look for tracks for you on the internet, get gigs for you, read the crowd via crowd cheers on the laptop mic, and blend the tracks for you perfectly in key of course because why stop the progression of technology right? More is better right?
Bought it, and it doesn’t work with traktor. Also the cuepoints are not set accurate. In MIK you cannot edit the Cuepoint. Don’t buy it at this time!
it does work with traktor. Remember if you already have the songs in your traktor collection, to “check consistensy” to get them updated.
tried it with alredy imported songs, with new songs and like you said. It just doesn’t work.
A Little feedback on my experience with this..
I must admit, I had a play last night and wasn’t overly impressed with the cue
Point feature in MIK 7. It’s a nice idea, but I am not sure it is that well
executed.
I am using the latest Traktor Pro 2 on Mac. The MIK 7 Guide says you have to
load tracks into Trakor, Close Traktor, analyse the tracks in MIK7, then
re-open Traktor to view the auto-cue points.
There is also an option to not over-write existing cue Points (good idea, not
to destroy years of prep.) which I enabled (however be warned…).
By first “loading tracks into Traktor”, I interpreted this as
importing tracks into my Traktor Collection, which when you do this normally it
analyses the track, and sets a beat grid. When I performed the other steps, my
auto-Points were nowhere to be seen. I even used the “export cue
Points” feature from MIK, and this didn’t help. The only way I could get
it the MIK auto cue Points to work, was to analyse the tracks in Traktor using
“special” and then selecting none of the options, so it didn’t even
write a Traktor beat grid, and then it worked. This suggested to me that if MIK
sees a Traktor beatgrid on the file, this triggers the “not over-write existing
cue Points” rule. Maybe a bug? Maybe intentional . Maybe me? Who knows?
With that said, when I used the work-around (described above), the cue Points
weren’t necessarily where I would put them. I like using the Traktor beat
counter display, and to make this a useful display, I always have the beat
marker on the “1”, or down-beat. My cue-points are therefore pretty
much always on the “1” beat, or the first beat of the 4 in a bar. This may
often involve listening to the track, and manually adjusting the beat grid
location, such that the counting agrees with track itself. I would prefer to have
completed at least the gridding step first before letting MIK loose on the
cue-points (but the limitation described above prevents this).
So in summary, I personally believe cue-point setting/track prep is a thing
of personal preference. If the MIK code is updated to include customisable
settings regarding this feature, then maybe it could be of use. However, I
don’t see it as a particularly big deal to prep tracks now I have learned a
system, particularly if you have the right Tools. That said MIK is still in my
work-flow and a useful tool, just not yet for cue-points…
F**k this has become too long… Oh well..
This. All of it. Basically what happend to me with Serato. Please MiK, fix this.
Is there any update of the key detection algorithm compared to version 6?
Is it just me or is MixedInKey 7 significantly slower than version 6? There’s a big noticeable lag before analysis starts and the analysis itself seems to take longer.
Plus there’s now a big ugly Camelot Key pictogram and file browser on the analysis page, taking up precious screen real estate.
Significant step backwards in usability in my opinion, especially as a Pioneer CDJ user who doesn’t benefit from the Cue point creation.
The MiK guys just… aren’t very good programmers. I don’t want to speak ill because overall I like their software, but… you guys… try harder! FFS. I don’t know a nicer way to say it. Please try harder.
No. Its not just u. Its extreamly slower tha version 6. Takes forever.
I’ve always had trouble with MIK (Still on v5, I don’t have 30$) being a bit of a CPU hog. Platinum notes (v3) is really bad at it. Has this been addressed in future updates?
omg now i dont have to hear the music im gonna play… nice feature!
When I opened MIK 6 it hasn’t asked me to upgrade to 7. Also I don’t see a upgrade link on MIK website. I can only find full purchase. Does anyone have a link for the upgrade? I would of assumed I would of got a email from MIK by now?
Same for me 🙁
Hey guys, email is taking us a while since we’re dealing with a huge backlog. You can grab your copy here: http://mixedinkey.com/recovery
Upgraded and had a quick play with it.
To be honest I’m so fast at putting down cue points now that its not going to be any use to me. If i could ask the software to drop cue 1 on the first beat, cue 5 on the first drop, cue 7 on the breakdown etc… it would be useful. However moving the cue points around takes longer than actually setting them.
If you like to use the same cues on each of your tracks its not too great, however if you don’t normally set cue points before playing tracks i imagine it could help you get into it.
However massive props to Mixed in key for the free upgrade, amazing software.
Thank you. -Yakov @ MIK
I really like that idea. I do hope they incorporate it =)
Auto setting cue points is useful for navigating around the first couple listens.
I always have cuepoint 4 as the first drop and cue point 3 as 16 bars before that. I would sure be lucky if the program worked out that way.
I might be missingh something but there doesn’t seem to be any mention of a free upgrade from v6 on their website.
Hey, it’s taking us a while to go through the backlog, so you can save time by grabbing your copy here: http://mixedinkey.com/recovery
I knew this was going to degrade into “Djing is dying” *rant,rant, rant*. Listen, all this does is automate the process of cataloging thousands of songs. It means you have more time to do harder skills.
This is not a replacement for knowing your music – you may want to move or add a more relevant cue point.
This not an excuse to not listen to your songs.
This development is like analyzing bpm, software does it for us, but sometimes you have to correct it by editing the grid or manually tapping out for an older or non-standard song.
Stop criticizing and start being more creative.
This guy gets it.
Good points. And that would be fine and dandy if indeed it worked as described. Unfortunately, in its current state it simply does not.
what is he talking about? “all the trouble of listening every single one of your tracks”
OMG, its a kindda useful for DJs to know the music they play. FACEPALM
how can MiK promote their great product in this really lame way???
Agree, the Tool is useful in some ways but these guys have no idea of promotion and what the real advantages for djs are
The end of that sentence matters… it said “so you don’t have to punch in your cue points manually”. Obviously we want people to listen to their music 🙂
I know, and you know that I know, but let’s face it, the message in this video came across pretty badly 🙂
It happens, we aren’t perfect. Thanks for the heads up
What happens if I already have 1 or two cue points set in Traktor. Will Mixed in Key ADD additional cue points or can it only overwrite all of them (which is definitely not what one wants I guess)
one of the picture you can see that there’s an option for this, you can enable for overwrite the existing cue points or not!
Yup, the “overwrite” is disabled by default. It won’t touch tracks that already have cue points in them
God forbid you should have to “go through all the trouble of listening to your tracks and punching in your own cue points”. DJing is a fucking joke now. You lazy fuckers killed it. The ones who want all the skills without having to actually, y’know, LEARN THEM YOURSELF. Nah, better to have a computer just do it for you. Pathetic.
Somehow, I think the world of DJ’ing will carry on just fine. Can’t wait to see what the moaning will be about 10 years from now when today’s technology will be considered outdated.
If it’s dead, go find another brainless hobby and stop moaning on the internet. Only the losers are complaining instead of doing something harder than setting cue points manually or pitching a track to the same bpm as the other. Use your small brain to do something a robot can’t and be creative for once. Do you have a horse or a car ?
stupid calculators ruined math too, and lighters ruined campfires, and ever since they invented the stove the whole art off cooking is a fucking joke. or maybe people still do amazing things with new tools and technology.
i seem to think if u dont already know how to do something, a tool that does it for you, doesnt really mean you do it right. but for people that do know something, features like these save you time on prep and stuff… just sayin
Something like that happened in ancient Greece. People decried the written word because it would kill the great tradition of storytellers having to remember everything.
I own MiK. I’d like it to allow editing of the type of cue point (to set loops), and have some checkboxes for the auto cue points; 1) Only set an in cue point, 2) set a looping cue point 16 beats before the track begins to fade out, or 3) auto set cues for energy/key changes.
I also wish it was possible to right-click the file list to select/sort columns like you can in Explorer, and to be able to set track ratings. Basically I wish I could use MiK for track prep.
email them, most devs will run with an idea if its a good idea and in the realm of feasibility.
its called evolution. making small tasks like adding cue points easier will give us the time we take to enhance other parts of the dj skills. there is always something new to learn. also, you can always go back to setting your own cue points if its not right.
This is a pretty awesome feature, I hope it works as well as they say.
Will this also work for Rekordbox? Would love to have it work on CDJ’s too!
We’d love to add this feature to Mixed In Key, but we need Pioneer to add a “bridge” that allows this function. Rekordbox currently doesn’t support cue points that we create. Hopefully this will change -Yakov
Oof! Thats what I was afraid of! Is there any conversation going on between MIK and Pioneer? (I feel like Pioneer, especially the rekordbox department is slow to adopt anything)
We’re open to collaboration with everyone. If Ableton, Pioneer or VirtualDJ emails us and says “we’d like MIK to connect with our software”, we will do it. We’ve always been platform-agnostic and friendly with everyone -Yakov
Will this create a “Load” cue point in Traktor by any chance?