We’ve been working with Native Instruments on a new piece about the current state of Traktor, but today some exciting news dropped: Traktor Pro 2.11.3 has gone into a rare public beta. The new update improves the integration with Pioneer DJ’s players and mixers – from waveforms, to beatjump, to scratch certification. Keep reading for more details and to get involved in the beta.
Traktor 2.11.3’s Public Beta
It’s alive! Traktor 2.11.2 just launched in January, and now Native Instruments is soliciting public feedback in a beta for 2.11.3. On NI’s Traktor forums, forum admin Friedemann shares an excited annoucement:
Welcome to a new round of Traktor Pro testing and feedback
For this round of beta testing we decided to use an open forum, because we believe that hurdle-less communication is key for a productive beta test.TRAKTOR 2.11.3 is a performance update that mainly serves to improve the experience on CDJs and to support a range of additional Pioneer players and mixers.
This seems to be one of the biggest updates that the software has seen in a while – keep reading for details, or go here in the NI forums to download the current version.
CDJ Improved Integration + DJM Scratch Certification
If you’ve used HID mode with the CDJ NXS2 series and Traktor, you’ve probably noticed that the waveform and integration simply hasn’t ben that tight. In fact, the NXS2 compatibility was completely absent from Traktor for 8 months following the lines release in 2016 – until 2.11 was launched.
With this 2.11.3 update, Native Instruments has taken on some big ticket items for CDJ users:
- ADDED Colored waveforms on CDJ-2000nxs2
The CDJ-2000nxs2 now show local moving waveforms. The waveforms can be displayed in 4 different color schemes following the settings of the waveforms on the computer screen. - ADDED Colored stripes on CDJ-2000nxs2
The CDJ-2000nxs2 now also show colored overview stripes. Like the local waveforms, the stripes can be displayed in 4 different color schemes following the settings of the waveforms on the computer screen. - ADDED CDJ Display BeatJump Buttons
The on-screen touch buttons for triggering 2, 4, 8 beat jumps are now supported. - ADDED CDJ Display Phase Meter
The on-screen phase meters (both the continuous and the beat-wise representation) are now supported and allow for visual beat matching. - ADDED Scratch certification for DJM mixers
The following DJM mixers can now be used for DVS and automaticallyconfigures the input and output channels:- DJM-TOUR1
- DJM-750
- DJM-750 MK2
- DJM-450
- DJM-250 MK2
- ADDED CDJ-TOUR1 HID integration
The Pioneer CDJ-TOUR1 Player is now fully supported as HID control interface in the same manner as the CDJ-2000nxs2.
iTunes Song Info Sync
DJs have asked for Traktor to improve their iTunes integration for years. It has never great, but with this new beta there is a promising new feature called Song Sync Info. This means that you can manually sync Artist, Title, Album, and Rating information from iTunes into your Traktor collection. It can be done manually – just use the contextual (right-click) menu for the iTunes item in the library browser.
New FX?
As NI forum user Kevin Becher points out in a post (below), there seems to also be an unannounced feature that slipped in – a new effect to choose called Filtered Noise:
For now, it seems to be a “bug” – as Friedemann acknowledges, “Oops – this one slipped through. We are working on some new effects, but this is still work in progress and was not meant to be released.”
Download + Feedback
It feels like NI is finally reopening the customer window into their development process for Traktor. In addition to releasing this Public Beta to anyone on their forums (you can download it here), they’re soliciting feedback.
There are two new sections of their Public Beta forum for Bug Reports and Feature Requests, which the company is using to gauge interest. If you want something in Traktor, now might be the time to make some noise.
For instance, there’s already a thread with a ton of excited users asking for the same HID features for the XDJ-1000MK2 – clearly it would be a big win for NI to make that happen.
Beta Version Obligatory Warning! Don’t start playing gigs with this version of Traktor as it is a beta version – not all the bugs will be worked out yet. If you need to roll back to a previous version of Traktor, here’s our article on that.
