Last week, Pioneer DJ put out a new version of their library management and DJ software, Rekordbox 5. For many DJs, this software is the central hub that bridges the gap between music collection and DJ collection. How does the new version perform? Keep reading for our experience so far and to share your own thoughts.
The New Look: Clean and Clear
The most obvious change in the new version of Rekordbox 5.0 is an overhaul to the user interface. It’s darker, flatter, and feels like it uses space more efficiently. We love that Pioneer DJ is continuing to iterate and develop the front end of the program to be intuitive and natural.
A move to deeper blacks and darker blues across the entire software makes it feel less like a utility and more like a DJ software. We’ve seen several online commentaries draw comparisons to Serato DJ, which also has these same dark colors and some similar design choices. It doesn’t matter where the design is inspired by – it’s clearly better than it was in 4.5, and continuing to improve.
By default, the text sizes in the new version are very small – open up preferences and increase them under View > Browse > FontSize/Line Space to fix it quickly. This only adjusts the Browse display – we can’t find a way to change the size of the fonts in the decks, which have all been slightly shrunken.
Preferences Still A Madhouse
For some reason, one of the few things that has never evolved about Rekordbox is the unclear, confusing preferences screen. Despite a visual refresh to every other part of the software, tapping the gear icon still opens a preferences screen that’s a UX designer’s nightmare. One might be able to argue that it’s not broken, and many users might be used to it – but despite being a nearly daily Rekordbox user, I still find myself clicking through every tab in confusion with regularity.
A New Engine
With Rekordbox 5, Pioneer DJ has a mystical-sounding new KORETECH engine powering the software, which is being boasted as their “most stable and responsive software to date”. The new version does feel really snappy – loading tracks into decks, shifting and syncing keys, browsing the library – all are quick and smooth.
It’s been a number of versions (excluding Betas) since I’ve experienced a complete crash major issue with Rekordbox, so in terms of stability, it doesn’t feel like much has changed. There have been some reports of the new version being a CPU hog on the performance side of the software, but we haven’t experienced that in our testing yet. Anytime any new software comes out, it might take a few versions to iron out any memory leaks and bugs. If you’re relying on the Performance mode, we recommend extensive testing on your own computer/gear setup before relying on it for a major gig.
The Export (Library Management) Side
Track Analysis
When analyzing tracks, the part that seems to take the longest is the waveform creation. Tracks would get to 99% finished analyzing and then stick – only completing their analysis 15-20 seconds later with a completed waveform. This was also the case in older versions of Rekordbox, so it’s not a huge change.
In the new version of Rekordbox, the way that tracks are analyzed by default has changed. Users might notice a slight slowdown in how long analysis takes. We reached out to Pioneer DJ to find out more, and it sounds like track analysis has even more lumped into it by default:
The analysis time is slightly longer in rekordbox V5.0. [This is] because in the new analysis engine, it not only analyses music beat, but also the music structure. Implementation of music structure analysis improves accuracy of false detection of off beat / down beat. Although rekordbox V5.0 music analysis time is slightly long, we can provide our customers with overall improvement.
“Music structure analysis” would indicate that Rekordbox is trying to do a better job at detecting the phrasing of songs. In practice, this might mean better placement of beatgrid downbeats, and less accidental grid drops over drum-free track intros (In the past, I’ve often had to adjust beatgrids on tracks without a drum track in the start of a song).
Almost every house and techno song I analyzed was spot on in terms of beatgrid and downbeat analysis. I still noticed occasional songs that had issues – particularly when I switched into faster genres like my liquid drum and bass playlists. Note the above screenshot of a 175 BPM where the downbeat (“the one”) is completely off. This is very common with DJ software, but I was hoping that this new analysis would have less issues with obvious mistakes.
Don’t Tell The Record Labels: Playlist Import
Pioneer DJ added new functionality designed to restore lost DJ collections using Rekordbox formatted USB drives. It’s pretty amazing – and I have at least one DJ friend who is ecstatic to finally have a way to get all his music and playlists back onto his new computer.
You can import entire folders – including every single playlist and track – from USB drives. If you already have tracks in your library present in the import, Rekordbox presents a useful warning action screen:
We can see two potential “moral” issues that some DJs might have with this new feature:
- it allows very quick sharing of music files – something that traditionally music labels fought to discourage in the heyday of music piracy
- it makes it very easy to “borrow” another DJ’s USB drive and instantly duplicate their entire collection onto your computer – including their entire sets and playlists.
The Performance (Rekordbox DJ) Side
The whole other half of Rekordbox is the Performance side. If you’ve been living under a rock, this is Pioneer DJ’s entry into the DJ software game. With this new 5.0 update, a few features were introduced to improve the experience for DJs.
Keyboard Mode
There’s a new performance pad mode in the dropdown for each deck called “Keyboard”. This allows DJs to play cuepoints across an entire octave in either direction – which is ideal for those users who love a good toneplay routine. Here’s one enthusiastic user review of the feature from Reddit’s /r/DJs.
“[…] the keyboard feature is SO FUN! I mapped “shift + hot cue” on my DDJ-SX2 to be keyboard mode and then mapped the pads […] I’m definitely getting the XP1 so I don’t have to deal with remapping everything. I really like the creative potential! I just need to find ways to use it that will enhance my sets and not just turn into a button masturbation session” – /r/DJs user sequethin
How often DJs will take advantage of this function really depends on how routine-focused they are. If your tracks are covered with cue points and you love trying to make tone play mixes, it will be invaluable. If you never juggle cue points, Keyboard mode will likely never be used.
Key Shifting
We wrote about this new feature when the beta was first announced – being able to adjust the key of a track without adjusting the BPM. Rekordbox joins Serato DJ and Virtual DJ in being able to detect the key of the master track and sync the incoming track’s pitch to that same key. This means that even if two songs are not harmonically compatible, DJs are able to hit Key Sync and get a pretty acceptable result.
In my experience, Key Sync seemed to work very well. It would be fantastic to see the same functionality added to XDJs and CDJs if they have a powerful enough audio engine onboard to accomplish it without destroying the sound quality.
“Can I Plug In My USB?”
Easily one of the best improvements in this new Rekordbox DJ update is allowing anyone with a Rekordbox USB or SD card to walk up to your computer, plug in their drive, and instantly access their entire collection just like they would on a CDJ. This was a no-brainer addition. It’s a great way to convince CDJ users to give Rekordbox DJ a shot when they’re near a controller setup. It works without any issues in our testing.
Against The Other DJ Softwares
Pioneer DJ’s software continues to flatten the playing field and stoke the fires of competition in the DJ software arena. While Serato DJ has had many of these features already, Traktor users might continue to be looking over at these new Rekordbox updates with envy. If Native Instruments wants to continue to compete and have a modern-feeling solutions for DJs, they’ll need to act fast or be left in the dust.
[…] muy poca información hasta ahora de Pioneer DJ sobre su software. A pesar de una nueva actualización de la marca (versión 5.0) dos semanas atrás , no hay ninguna indicación de que High Sierra juega limpio con él. El comentario oficial en los […]
I REALLY want them to spend more time fixing the CPU hogging and less time turning it into an entire DJ software.
I just want to analyse tunes (without sending my CPU and subsequently, the temperature of my computer) through the roof so I can play them on CDJs. I don’t want all the other bells and whistles, yet Pioneer seemed determined to shove those at us regardless of want or need.
Pioneer is pushing nothing on you, stop being a drama queen.
Change the analysis algo from ‘Performance’ to ‘Normal’ in the preferences if you don’t like the turbo-charged analysis mode.
Jeez, some people will just moan about anything.
For operating systems like the Mac OS and Windows it really doesn’t matter if a file path contains upper or lower case characters. The path will point to exactly the same file (or track in our instance) regardless of the path’s casing.
so a track with the path
/SSD/top40/Track.mp3’ points to the same track as
/ssd/top40/Track.mp3’ points to the same track as
/ssd/Top40/track.mp3’ etc.
Most apps like iTunes and NATIVE INSTRUMENTS TRAKTOR are rather sloppy and sometimes make uppercases out of every subfolder in a path and sometimes leave the notation of a file path identical to how the Operating System reports it. To capitalize folder names in a file path is regarded as “clean coding” and is part of the same discussion as the use of tabs vs spaces.
Rekordbox identifies a track internally by it’s absolute file path.
Because Rekordbox 5 is all of a sudden case sensitive, it will not recognize tracks whose file paths only differ by casing as the same track but rather as different unique tracks. All tracks in the example above are treated as uniquely different entries to the collection. This causes duplicate entries in the Rekordbox collection which still point to the same track. And it can cause cues and loops not to appear where you expect them to be, because the file paths have different upper/lower cased character(s).
I’ve made a video to demonstrate this phenomena https://youtu.be/PY1aQjzXxco. And some hints how to prevent it. In this video I use the DJ Conversion Utility to highlight the problems but the same problems would arise if I were to drag and drop tracks from their storage folder into Rekordbox. This is not truly a bug in Rekordbox 5, more of an un convenient departure from how things worked prior to version 5. And a brand new source of confusion.
It crashes. Like, a LOT. It’s really a shame, because RB gets track management right. I also really like how it attempts to mark the down beat. If it had 4 decks and was less crashy, I would drop Traktor tomorrow. The track management is that well thought out.
With Traktor, I always feel like there’s a wall of garbage between me and my music.
The first of many. Got it fully mapped and working with my Mixars Duo.
https://youtu.be/eDr-Lc3efyU
Same here.
“Anytime any new software comes out, it might take a few versions to iron out any memory leaks and bugs.”I’d just like to point out that this is the 80/20 rule in action. They fix 80% of the bugs, and release. Microsoft has followed the 80/20 dictum for years. And we all know what a powerhouse MS has made of public opinion. …Oh… wait… fuck.
waitaminute… I made that comment on another thread, ages ago. wtf? I’m starting to think this is a new form of bot that someone is testing.
Yea, I’ve seen multiples of the same comment being reposted by different user on here too… very odd.
As for 2) Yeah, I’ve enjoyed the direct interface correlation with the S2 and Traktor, and that’s the main reason I’m more interested in the RR. I just thought that if the SR2 integrates as well (once you buy Rekordbox), maybe it’s limiting to buy a controller (the RR) that can’t work with Serato or anything but RBDJ. I look at the layout of the SR2 and it looks a lot like the RR, so I’d be surprised if it doesn’t work with RBDJ fairly seamlessly. I feel like maybe Pioneer made the RR to inspire people to use RBDJ, and they want that, so if they didn’t make the SR2 to be capable of the same seamless integration, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot. Their whole plan these days seems so tight, I doubt they’d make that mistake. I think it’s more likely that the SR2, even though it’s “for” Serato, works as well or better with RBDJ.Just guessing, though.As for 1) That’s good info. Thank you!
Don’t forget Pioneer will allow you to use any of their Serato licensed controllers or older CDJ units as plug and play with Rekordbox. That increases the number of plug and play controllers and media players that are compatible with Rekordbox.
Serato DDJ’s are only allowed to be used through a back door with RB which Pioneer left open on purpose for now. And IMO they will close this again as soon as it suits them…. so good luck with your DDJ-S* controller & purchasing RB based on that…
I’m still rocking version 2.2! If it aint broke don’t fix it!
Yeah thats my concern at the moment. I’m pretty invested in traktor, I’ve spent hundreds of hours building maps and I know almost every feature inside out. I don’t mind learning something new, but it has to be powerful enough!
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Do yourself a favor and lookup Serato.
Has anyone found a way to write star ratings back to .mp3 files?I still do my star rating in Winamp, because while Traktor and RB can read stars written by Winamp, they can’t write the stars back to the file in a conformant way, or at all. This is supposed to work in RB 5.0, so I’m disappointed that it doesn’t.
But having DJ software users sells DJ hardware, which could be something worth doing for NI.
[…] little information so far from Pioneer DJ about their software. Despite a brand new update (version 5.0) just a little over two weeks ago, there’s no indication that High Sierra plays nice with it. The official comment on Pioneer […]
[…] little information so far from Pioneer DJ about their software. Despite a brand new update (version 5.0) just a little over two weeks ago, there’s no indication that High Sierra plays nice with it. The official comment on Pioneer […]
Don’t forget Pioneer will allow you to use any of their Serato licensed controllers or older CDJ units as plug and play with Rekordbox. That increases the number of plug and play controllers and media players that are compatible with Rekordbox.
“Anytime any new software comes out, it might take a few versions to iron out any memory leaks and bugs.”I’d just like to point out that this is the 80/20 rule in action. They fix 80% of the bugs, and release. Microsoft has followed the 80/20 dictum for years. And we all know what a powerhouse MS has made of public opinion. …Oh… wait… fuck.
Has anyone found a way to write star ratings back to .mp3 files?
I still do my star rating in Winamp, because while Traktor and RB can read stars written by Winamp, they can’t write the stars back to the file in a conformant way, or at all. This is supposed to work in RB 5.0, so I’m disappointed that it doesn’t.
mad how?
Yeah thats my concern at the moment. I’m pretty invested in traktor, I’ve spent hundreds of hours building maps and I know almost every feature inside out. I don’t mind learning something new, but it has to be powerful enough!
Yeah but that’s a no no for my 2011 macbook pro. I searched why Pioneer made rekordbox dj that heavy and they said “Because we want that to be super performant. Everything works as soon as you need it” I used serato in the past. It worked freaking perfectly and the cpu was around 20% with two decks playing, effects and loops on; with rekordbox my pc got to 90% and 95 °C with two deck playing, no effects, no nothingSorry but I’l pass lol
I’ve sold my ddj rx couse it was too heavy for my old macbook pro and I’m waiting for something new by NI…I know traktor better and I love making my own mapping for the controllers I use so…I’ll keep waiting
mad how?
Yeah but that’s a no no for my 2011 macbook pro. I searched why Pioneer made rekordbox dj that heavy and they said “Because we want that to be super performant. Everything works as soon as you need it” I used serato in the past. It worked freaking perfectly and the cpu was around 20% with two decks playing, effects and loops on; with rekordbox my pc got to 90% and 95 °C with two deck playing, no effects, no nothingSorry but I’l pass lol
Mine gets that hot just analysing tracks. No performance anything.
I REALLY want them to fix this.
I prefer the 4.5 UI, it’s much easier to read. Also plenty of users over on the Pioneer forums that are not impressed with the lack of contrasting colours and the shrinking of controls and fonts.
Don’t forget Pioneer will allow you to use any of their Serato licensed controllers or older CDJ units as plug and play with Rekordbox. That increases the number of plug and play controllers and media players that are compatible with Rekordbox.
Being able to use DDJs for Serato (SB/SR/SX/SZ etc) with Rekordbox is not official though but a convenient backdoor for now, which IMO is dangerous to rely on as, Pioneer left this open on purpose for now in order to get people to purchase RB, and they will close it as soon as it fits their needs again, essentially leaving you with an SR/SX/SZ etc and a purchased RB license with a software that you can not use anymore – i.e. as soon as the hardware locked RB version will come around the corner, which could take years, could be never, but could as well be in a few weeks/months….
Hi !Rekordbox 5 is completely changed. It’s a good thing but the only thing I noticed in the sound is a problemMy setup is : MacBook Pro (Retina 13inch, early 2015) (macOS Sierra vers 10.12.6) — Rekordbox 5 — 2 CDJ 2000 Nexus + DJM 900 NexusFrom my laptop i use 2 USB directly in CDJ 2000 nexus (in this setting they use OUTPUT the audio soundcard CDJ 2000 nexus)I noticed a slight compression to the soundWhen I connect directly to players via USB link, HEADROOM is there ! (I try to put in NONE but is the same) (+3 and +6)No one noticed this compression to sound ?
It might be a bug in Disqus rather than a bot.
It looks like it is a bug of some kind that is also moving comments out of their proper threads…
@spacecamp:disqus If you go to these profiles and check their other disqus comments – they are all copy/pasted from other users and frequently upvoted by similar accounts. This one likes to frequent right-wing websites. This is not a bug but a large scale spam bot network. They probably have non-political sites in their reach to gather some credibility.
Wait some more – Pioneer is supplying RBDJ licences with every new RB hardware (like XP1) so you should see some users selling them in a while.
@spacecamp:disqus
Another spam bot account
Account has “disqus_FmdqRJezyq” handle, thats as bot as they can get.
Drop it like it’s bot.
(Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)
I gave RB 5 a try for my club set on Saturday but after ten minutes rolled the software back to RB 4.5. The deck display fonts are to small to be of use and the lack of tempo slider display is also a fairly critical point too. There also seemed to be BPM drift and some functions like sync didn’t function properly. Rather than continue the set and find out what else wasn’t going to work / be useable I went back to RB 4.5.
Interestingly some of the new RB 5 features still worked whilst using the older version. An example would be double / half BPM syncing.
Now if they just were to add powerful metadata management as well… i.e. custom tag fields (instrumental, instruments, mood, keyword, situation, etc… or Ratings in Serato… hah….) and multi-value metadata (eg so the genre tag field can hold more than a single string/value when being read).
Both have been done successfully and for years by many media handling software packages, yet none of the big DVS/digital-DJ packages have managed to open this field up to us users and are stuck in their ways from the early 2000s as to how metadata is handled… this boggles my mind.
Too true. MP3Tag in Windows will let you add your own tags, but industry support is lax.
Yea, having access to custom & multi value tags in DVS/digital DJ software would allow us to supply what computers are actually good at… to tag, file and sort things (and with a bit of machine learning identify attributes automatically as well for us, once we’ve given it some hand tagged examples…)… in turn making it easier for us and less time intensive finding the things in our ever growing libraries we are after at a given time.
There’s nothing more annoying not being able to find what you are after when DJ-ing… and not having access to the tags I maintain is one major downside as is (i.e. I have instrumentals/riddims, as well as instruments and time signatures tagged… if I want to find all tracks with a Clarinet ? = 1 click, or all songs in 3/4…? = 1 click…)
This is all easily achievable in a software that is handling custom & multi value tags, like Foobar, MusicBee, Mp3tag, RekordBuddy etc, (and you maintaining the tags that are important to you…) yet the ‘professional’ DJ software we pay for all fail at supporting any of this…
It’s incredible that Rekordbox dj which have been out for maybe two years (I don’t remember) has something like 5 complete controllers (with mixer and decks) up to date that are compatible and proposed for the software (RB, RR, RX, RZ, RZX), Serato has a humongous number and Traktor has…4 (s2/s4 mk2, s5, s8)
I know they decided to move towards a “new concept” dj (with stems and stuff) but man…
Native Instruments really needs to get back on track and make something new
P.S. We “normal” djs still love jog wheels
Don’t forget Pioneer will allow you to use any of their Serato licensed controllers or older CDJ units as plug and play with Rekordbox. That increases the number of plug and play controllers and media players that are compatible with Rekordbox.
You’d have to buy Rekordbox DJ though, yeah? I mean, as a DJ who has used Traktor with an S2 since it came out (first a mk1 and now a mk2), I’m thinking of moving to Pioneer. More interested in Rekordbox than Serato… and considering the DDJ-RR or the DDJ-SR2. The RR comes with Rekordbox and the SR2 comes with Serato. But the RR won’t work with Serato and the SR2 will work with Rekordbox, as long as you buy it separately. Opinion?
I’ve sold my ddj rx couse it was too heavy for my old macbook pro and I’m waiting for something new by NI…
I know traktor better and I love making my own mapping for the controllers I use so…I’ll keep waiting
Aside from jog wheels (and modifiers….. for now), everything is mappable in RBDJ
Yeah but that’s a no no for my 2011 macbook pro. I searched why Pioneer made rekordbox dj that heavy and they said “Because we want that to be super performant. Everything works as soon as you need it”
I used serato in the past. It worked freaking perfectly and the cpu was around 20% with two decks playing, effects and loops on; with rekordbox my pc got to 90% and 95 °C with two deck playing, no effects, no nothing
Sorry but I’l pass lol
Damn. I thought the MacBooks had better performance than that.
I’ve run Rekordbox 5 on an old elitebook 8530 with an Intel core duo without any issues at 14ms latency. I was trying to see how it performed on older laptops. I’ve never been a Mac user, and you’ve given me another reason not to be.
NVM. I just checked the specs of the 2011 Macbook Pro and it exceeds the spec requirements for RBDJ. There’s no reason you should be running into any CPU load issues. What interface are you using?
1. Considering Pioneer is bundling RBDJ licences with every RBDJ hardware lately (see XP1) it seems you could get one for cheap in the future (same as TP2 licences became plentiful after NI started chucking them in with every interface and controller)
2. Some RBDJ controlers have aditional controls for RB, make sure it’s not something you will miss later
As for 2) Yeah, I’ve enjoyed the direct interface correlation with the S2 and Traktor, and that’s the main reason I’m more interested in the RR. I just thought that if the SR2 integrates as well (once you buy Rekordbox), maybe it’s limiting to buy a controller (the RR) that can’t work with Serato or anything but RBDJ. I look at the layout of the SR2 and it looks a lot like the RR, so I’d be surprised if it doesn’t work with RBDJ fairly seamlessly. I feel like maybe Pioneer made the RR to inspire people to use RBDJ, and they want that, so if they didn’t make the SR2 to be capable of the same seamless integration, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot. Their whole plan these days seems so tight, I doubt they’d make that mistake. I think it’s more likely that the SR2, even though it’s “for” Serato, works as well or better with RBDJ.
Just guessing, though.
As for 1) That’s good info. Thank you!
As far as I know, the SR2 won’t work with Rekordbox, it’s a Serato only controller.
Yeah you’re right, I was just thinking about the controllers made specifically for by the company for their software, non mentioning the other ones
This is not official though but a convenient backdoor for now, which we should NOT rely on as, imo, Pioneer left this open on purpose for now in order to get people to purchase RB, and they will close it as soon as it fits their needs again, essentially leaving you with an SR/SX/SZ etc and a purchased RB license with a software that you can not use anymore – i.e. as soon as the hardware locked RB version will come around the corner, which could take years, could be never, but could as well be in a few weeks/months….
I still use Traktor with my DDJRX, but only because I prefer the segregated deck layouts over any other software, which generally does a direct side-by-side or overlaid waveform. I’ve been using the Traktor for so long that I simply know that interface inside out. There are still some smaller settings that, as a wedding DJ, I prefer in Traktor as well (mic recording, cruise mode).
The beta for version 5 didn’t wow me, but now that it’s officially launched I might get it another chance.
Did you have issues with the PFL in the mapping for traktor? I have the smaller ddj-rr and cannot get the incoming track to be loud enough to hear when cueing…
Any improvement to how quickly it exports to USB? RekordBox has always taken an insanely long time to export to a USB stick especially the first time.
I’m a traktor user looking enviously at RB – lots of the stuff I try to custom map, already exists over there. But I LOVE my x1mk2s, and would need a perfect mapping for them (including the touchstrips for nudging) to make me think about moving over
I love mapping in traktor, but it doesn’t work that flexible in RB… try it out first!
Yeah thats my concern at the moment. I’m pretty invested in traktor, I’ve spent hundreds of hours building maps and I know almost every feature inside out. I don’t mind learning something new, but it has to be powerful enough!
Do you not use cue points? I was disappointed they went from 8 with the X1 to 4 with the X1mk2.
What up with these fake spam accounts copy-pasting other users comments?
Someone from DJTT should keep an eye on that.
@spacecamp:disqus is it possible to remove Disqus comments manually?
Interestingly it looks like not a fake account, but a real user… very confusing. Will keep an eye on it.
Account has “disqus_FmdqRJezyq” handle, thats as bot as they can get.
It might be a bug in Disqus rather than a bot.
I haven’t seen it on other sites using Disqus, though.
I flag some days ago but I supose Disqus isn’t warning you.
It was happenning from the last month or so.
That “not a fake” account just posted another copy/paste comment from another user here.
Man, what they really need to do is allow mixed in key to add automatic cue points for Rekordbox!!!
Making money… There’s no real lucrative cash in DJ software. For NI, Maschine and their VSTs are the profit drivers. DJ software is like F1. It’s an expensive loss leader, that you do for cred.
I can agree, to an extent. IN NI’s case, they’re major source of income comes from production. There simply are not many studios that dont have part or all of the Komplete bundle plus more.
For Pioneer, DJ hardware has been the main driver. Focusing on Rekordbox DJ kills their need to rely on Serato for any DVS or Controller based DJ Hardware.
Serato has a strong hold in the DJ market and always will. No matter how amazing Rekordbox DVS is (I am a Rekordbox DVS user), Serato and Rane have done an amazing job tailoring to and marketing specifically to the DVS crowd. It will be a long time before anyone can take over their market share.
The smaller companies have kept moving forward but seem to focus only on their niche markets. NI’s DJ division seems to have been following the same route.
Traktor, on the other hand, STILL has the best mapping capabilities compared to ANY Dj software on the market period.
But having DJ software users sells DJ hardware, which could be something worth doing for NI.
what About DVS…we can compare with Serato?
“Anytime any new software comes out, it might take a few versions to iron out any memory leaks and bugs.”
I’d just like to point out that this is the 80/20 rule in action. They fix 80% of the bugs, and release. Microsoft has followed the 80/20 dictum for years. And we all know what a powerhouse MS has made of public opinion. …Oh… wait… fuck.
Hey there yall! I should probably be posting in another thread but…I have the DDJ SZ and I’m trying to get my hands on Rekordbox DJ. Can we only get a download and license if we purchased one of the new rigs? Thank y’all in advance!
Wait some more – Pioneer is supplying RBDJ licences with every new RB hardware (like XP1) so you should see some users selling them in a while.
rekordbox 5 sound went mad after 3 hours at last friday’s gig.. thank god it was my 2 last songs.. Now back to 4.5
mad how?
real mad.. skips and broken
playing with CDJ’s or console ?
CDJ HID mode
Me too CDJ HID Mode. Can you send me your settings in HEADROOM ?
Controller – Mixer – Headroom (NONE or -3db)
I try to put NONE (in HEADROOM) but the output CDJ soundcard is strange.
Ooh. SO I plugged the launchpad back in and re-imported the mapping I used for the beta (keyboard mode, pad fx, etc.). The full release is super snappy. Well impressed thus far. My only gripe is that the font size on the player head is tiny.
I upgraded on Saturday morning and was going to try it at the wedding I did on Saturday night. I still had 4.5 on my laptop, just in case things went sideways. Good thing, because after about six minutes of cocktail hour jams, I couldn’t deal with the size-nothing font inside the deck circles, so I closed 5.0 and used 4.5 for the duration of the event. I reeeeeeally hope they listen to the feedback in the Pioneer forums and change that ASAP.
[…] post Rekordbox 5: Is It Faster? Better? Stronger? appeared first on DJ […]
I’ve logged about 15-16 hours with 5.0 on the DDJ-RX since updating. So far, so good.
The only thing I’ve noticed that’s odd is that the Pad FX now cut off any of the Main FX applied. For example, if you have an echo running in the main FX and then trigger the vinyl brake in the pad FX, the brake effect cuts off the echo effect entirely.
It didn’t do that previously and despite digging around in the preferences (which I agree could do with an overhaul) I haven’t been able to figure out how to restore the prior FX behavior.
Releases like this makes me wonder: What the heck are they doing there at Native Instruments?
Making money…
But having DJ software users sells DJ hardware, which could be something worth doing for NI.
You forget that NI has a considerable DJ hardware line up, of which its success stands or falls with the software.
Compared to their other product lines, not so much. Just look at their website. They’re putting a lot of resources in Maschine expansions, VSTs, Reaktor, and cinematic scoring. Traktor OTOH tried several things; stems, etc., that have completely failed to move units.
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Do yourself a favor and lookup Serato.
Checking porn.
I feel like they killed the entire DJ division.
Same here.
From what I know, almost the entire traktor software division got the boot.
lmao!!!
I prefer the 4.5 UI, it’s much easier to read. Also plenty of users over on the Pioneer forums that are not impressed with the lack of contrasting colours and the shrinking of controls and fonts.
One improvement I noticed and loved, involved DVS. The response is beyond expectation and can now be placed on par with seratoDJ. Pioneer is really stepping up and I am excited for what the future has in store.
One other thing that I didn’t include in the article: certain screens still seem to hover over ALL windows. On multiple-screen setups this is fine, but for laptop users, it’s can be annoying to have this happen regularly: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/073d23148b3ab6ec545636fbbc6ad844d71a8b46412c1fa265397ec4d2d21189.png
This has been the case since rekordbox 4
You can just press the ‘Close’ button, and it’ll continue updating your stick without hovering over everything on your desktop…
Hi !
Rekordbox 5 is completely changed. It’s a good thing but the only thing I noticed in the sound is a problem
My setup is : MacBook Pro (Retina 13inch, early 2015) (macOS Sierra vers 10.12.6) — Rekordbox 5 — 2 CDJ 2000 Nexus + DJM 900 Nexus
From my laptop i use 2 USB directly in CDJ 2000 nexus (in this setting they use OUTPUT the audio soundcard CDJ 2000 nexus)
I noticed a slight compression to the sound
When I connect directly to players via USB link, HEADROOM is there ! (I try to put in NONE but is the same) (+3 and +6)
No one noticed this compression to sound ?