Traktor Waveform Heights (or size)

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Handinon

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Oct 1, 2014
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Done with NY, Cruising, and Veterans Reunion. My next gig is not until June 8th, so with some free time, I'm taking a serious run at Traktor (V2.11.317 - the last before V3).
So far so good, but I have one question for experienced Traktor users (like Bobcat).

The vertical height of the displayed waveform is often too small. Traktor's actual settings of Autogain, Limiter, and Headroom don't effect it. It seems like only very "Hot" songs (that actually have some clipping in them when opened in Audacity) are really displayed properly.

This is not a game stopper, I can live with it, but I'd sure like to know if anyone has a solution for this. The logical place to ask is the Traktor Forum, but they are up to their eyeballs there with V3*.

*Asked this on their Forum - lots of views, not a single answer -
"Windows Traktor Pro 2.11

The gain of a Track effects the size of the waveform. Songs that (when analyzed) that need a high "total gain" value, play OK with Autogain enabled, but the waveform display is very small.

While you can look at this value in the line editor, is there any way (either within Traktor, or with an external Tag editor) to look at this value in large groups of files, and scan for ones that need a lot of additional gain, so you can fix it (i.e. Normalize in Audacity) ahead of time?"

 
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Done with NY, Cruising, and Veterans Reunion. My next gig is not until June 8th, so with some free time, I'm taking a serious run at Traktor (V2.11.317 - the last before V3).
So far so good, but I have one question for experienced Traktor users (like Bobcat).

The vertical height of the displayed waveform is often too small. Traktor's actual settings of Autogain, Limiter, and Headroom don't effect it. It seems like only very "Hot" songs (that actually have some clipping in them when opened in Audacity) are really displayed properly.

This is not a game stopper, I can live with it, but I'd sure like to know if anyone has a solution for this. The logical place to ask is the Traktor Forum, but they are up to their eyeballs there with V3*.

*Asked this on their Forum - lots of views, not a single answer -

OK... I took a look at this today, and if I understand the issue correctly, you want to be able to adjust the height of a waveform in a Traktor deck. As far as I know, there’s no way to do it. If you go to the Preferences and Decks Layout, you can select the Deck Size and Essential makes the waveform slightly larger by eliminating a couple of lines of text, but it still doesn’t make the waveform significantly taller.

I was wondering why this was an issue, and now I get it. Normally I use screens larger than 22 inches. However, with my test setup I’m using 15” monitors, which would be close to the size of a typical laptop screen. With that size screen, the waveforms are pretty small. You can spread the beat grid, but that does nothing for the height of the waveform. I guess the only good news is; the size from Traktor 2 to Traktor 3 is pretty much identical, which is why I had not noticed any difference. Below is a pic I took using my test NUC computers with the same track (from the NAS) loaded in Deck B in Traktor 2 (left) and in Deck A in Traktor 3 (right)...a900e6af66060d460eab76c0260e00fc.jpg
 
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If you double click the area (inside the blue circle) between the track title on Deck A or Deck B and the track time, the layout will change. Keep doing it to cycle through the options .. 1 has a larger waveform view.

37091
 
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If you double click the area (inside the blue circle) between the track title on Deck A or Deck B and the track time, the layout will change. Keep doing it to cycle through the options .. 1 has a larger waveform view.

View attachment 37091

Yes, that works, but all it does is cycle through the Deck Layout, Size options...
7f8d9178cb46a979300bb50de547b101.jpg
... so like I said, Essential gives you a little more height, but it’s really very little.
 
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I don't have Traktor but if this is not an actual low gain track, it's likely a design choice for the software skin. Many times there is a CFG file in the program folder that can be tweaked. Cross check your files in Audacity (or similar) to see if it is just a low track that needs amplifying.

*All of the images I see of Traktor show the wave form filling up the display box.
Screenshot_2.jpg
 
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I don't have Traktor but if this is not an actual low gain track, it's likely a design choice for the software skin. Many times there is a CFG file in the program folder that can be tweaked. Cross check your files in Audacity (or similar) to see if it is just a low track that needs amplifying.

*All of the images I see of Traktor show the wave form filling up the display box.
View attachment 37092

Nope... No skins in Traktor. I think you can change the waveform color and that’s about it.

If you notice, the waveform that appear larger have only one line of text above them. This indicate the Deck Size is set to Essential, which does increase the size slightly. I have mine set to Full. All the tracks in my library have been volume leveled to 89db, so they all have very similar heights when displayed in Traktor.

In Traktor 3, you can click Parallel Waveforms on, which also shows a larger view of the waveform. For me; I think the Parallel Waveforms consume too much real estate.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Cross check your files in Audacity (or similar) to see if it is just a low track that needs amplifying.
I believe you are 100% correct, which is why I made the original Post - but how can you do that (in Traktor) with large groups of files?
 
All the tracks in my library have been volume leveled to 89db, so they all have very similar heights when displayed in Traktor.
IMHO, Tracks normalized to 89db display a waveform that is too small - especially the "stripe" or overview waveform.. While it is a "safe" number, remember that Traktor does have a "Headroom" setting in the mixer config.
 
IMHO, Tracks normalized to 89db display a waveform that is too small - especially the "stripe" or overview waveform.. While it is a "safe" number, remember that Traktor does have a "Headroom" setting in the mixer config.

Yes... I have the Headroom setting on -6db I think, and I agree that the waveforms are thin at 89db. However, I digitized my music and started leveling them that way LONG before I even knew what Traktor was, and before I even thought about using my music to DJ.[emoji4]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
A low gain track in Traktor -

37096

The exact same track in Cross DJ -

37097

Which one do you think is easier to work with?
 
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Also note the column for "Gain" (in the library Browser) in Cross DJ. No such thing in Traktor - you can only look at the gain of individual tracks.

This is the newest version of Cross DJ, Version 4.0, which was officially released two days ago, but the older V3.4.3 behaves similarly.
 
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I believe you are 100% correct, which is why I made the original Post - but how can you do that (in Traktor) with large groups of files?

I found this:

*Make sure to purchase/rip your audio files from good sources. Autogain is not a fix for a bad file. It's basically just boosting the volume.
 
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The Gain/Autogain settings in Traktor have no effect on waveform size.

Most of my files are ripped from CD's (using either EAC or AudioGrabber) as wav's, and then converted to mp3's using a batch utility in Audacity that includes Normalizing to 0db (100%). This produces a usable, medium sized waveform in Traktor, but still not as good as other DJ software displays it. It seems like Traktors waveforms display best with tracks that have clipping, as per the typical overly compressed Amazon/Beatport mp3 download that suffers from "loudness wars", and when opened in Audacity looks like a sea of red.
 
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This is what I'm talking about -

This is a mp3 download I did this week from Amazon, displayed in Traktor -

37098

Looks good, right? Unfortunately, here's that file in Audacity. The red is clipping -

37099

Again, this is a legitimate mp3 download from Amazon. If you think this looks bad, you should see what "modern" music looks like...and you wonder why your ears hurt by the end of the evening!!!
 
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Here's the Mixer setup screen in Traktor 3...
37100

... I don't recall setting many of these settings (except Enable Limiter), so the rest were likely set by default. However, I have so many computers running Traktor, I usually just go through and copy all the settings one-by-one from an existing (working) setup from another PC when setting up a new one, so I can't say I didn't change any of the other settings.:djsmug:
 
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