Alright, I had to get this thing out of my mind on what version to choose as the only version. Traktor Pro comes with a lot of enhancements as well as solid stability. But people have been complaining about the audio quality which is my main concern. So I sat down today and decided to make a set of 2 songs recorded through Traktor Scratch Pro and Traktor DJ Studio 3.4. The two songs I chose where “Going Wrong(DJ Shah’s Magic Island mix)” and PVD’s “Let Go(Club mix). The reason I chose these two songs is because they have an even balance of highs mids and lows. The following are the Audio settings in both the versions
Audio Interface: Creative EMU 0404USB
Sample Rate: 94KHz
All master limiters off
Auto deck gains off.
Keylock is set to minimum on both the players.
I recorded the mixes with exactly the same breaks, EQs and gain levels. And my conclusion is “Not much difference”. Traktor Pro does eat up a little life out of the track when it comes to the highs, but makes up for it in generating more lows. Remove the keylock completely and you get amazing quality.
The advantages I gained with Pro are:-
- Instant searching while typing(I just cant seem to find my CDs in my CD bag)
- Impressive keylock on pitch bending.
- Rock solid stability
- Superb effects, especially the dedicated filter knob which is my favourite.
- Convenient keylock knobs.
- Great analysis of track and the ability to manipulate the entire ID3 of the track.
- +/- 10% pitch control(Very handy in hip hop)
- Pitch bend sensitivity control
- CDJ like cueing (The cue point no longer gets set on the pause)
- Cue to load is bloody effective
- Looping is accessible in a faster fashion
- Faster analysis.
- Cruise control is very handy
- Low latency is impressive
Some of the drawbacks though are :-
- Distortion when playing a track and analysing other at high sample rate.
- Switching of output pauses the track for quite some time.
- Beat gridding still needs to be worked on. 3.4 does wayyyyy better on this part.
- Strutter like cueing is still missing using the mouse.(I need this for accurate load cues).
Overall Traktor Scratch Pro has turned out to be quite impressive.
Drop in comments if you need to add something to these conclusions.
