Thanks to everyone for the info, I'll try & use your advice

I tend to be able to get them beatmatched to the right tempo but the transitions sound like crap, like the tracks are drifting even though they arent which tricks me into making unnecessary adjustments which completely buggers up the mix

It's worse with some tracks than others, it got so bad I actually thought my decks were playing up & phoned Pio service centre about it last week lol

Many sites when talking about harmonic mixing specifically suggest using master tempo, how do say the Denons compare to the Pio's in respect of master tempo? Are they all as bad?

I've started cueing up with master tempo on then off to see which sounds best.

Thanks again.

People have been mixing harmonically long before CDJs were the norm. If you don't like the way master tempo effects the sound of your music then just learn to pick your music so that you don't need to use it.

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i have always used it on my cdj-200's and never noticed anything detrimental. then again I never use my cdj's with it off so I have nothing to compare it to.

How long have you been mixing?

I've used master tempo many times, and never had a problem with tracks drifting. Could it be that you just aren't used to NOT hearing the pitch go up and down when you are beatmatching and making corrections?

Master tempo doesn't sound bad at all as long as you don't pitch up or down more than a few BPM.

I don't usually turn it on though...

And yes, DJ's have been harmonically mixing with vinyl since the dawn of DJ'ing, without the aid of master tempo. As long as you are playing tracks near their native speed, the keys don't shift enough to really matter.

quote:

Originally posted by Trance Android Thanks to everyone for the info, I'll try & use your advice I tend to be able to get them beatmatched to the right tempo but the transitions sound like crap, like the tracks are drifting even though they arent which tricks me into making unnecessary adjustments which completely buggers up the mix It's worse with some tracks than others, it got so bad I actually thought my decks were playing up & phoned Pio service centre about it last week lol Many sites when talking about harmonic mixing specifically suggest using master tempo, how do say the Denons compare to the Pio's in respect of master tempo? Are they all as bad? I've started cueing up with master tempo on then off to see which sounds best. Thanks again.

quote:

Originally posted by idoru Never, ever, ever use master tempo.

+1, unless you absolutely have to (i.e. it's the only way a mix will work harmonically)

that's why i don't use master tempo/pitch lock in the first place- the mix is never "right." it may sound fine for a while, but for long transitions you'll end up correcting it more often than had you left it off. i suppose if you keep the pitch slider within 1-3% of the original tempo it's not as noticeable though.

quote:

Originally posted by Ryan0751 Here's an article that describes the algorithms used to accomplish changing the tempo without altering the pitch. It's much more complex than just "cutting bits" out of the original sound: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_...ch_modification Programs like Ableton let you select a few different algorithms.

That comment was a simplification - I know all about what's involved FFTs galore lol (I thought I'd spare the intricate mathematical details of advance signal processing from this particular thread )

But in order to speed up processing (and thus make it feasible in real time) certain shortcuts have to be made which have various side effects - one of which is this appearance of bits being chopped out.

quote:

basilisk Maybe it is the type of music I am usually working with (psychedelic trance, a notoriously "overproduced" i.e. heavily compressed genre), but master tempo usually sounds terrible. The sound canvas is usually so full to begin with that the little slices are very noticeable, at least to my ears. I avoid it like the plague, and just try to mix within 2 BPM if I'm going harmonic.

That I can believe, but as previously mentioned the difference should be barely noticable (even with heavily compressed psy with those blippy little kicks) within 2% of the 0 mark.


I do agree that the best solution is just to try and avoid using it though, I was merely pointing out that it can have its uses in certain cases so you shouldn't dismiss it totally - the same goes for just about every other feature on any of your equipment... if you really want to get the most out of all of your kit you'll learn when and when not to use this that and the other, rather than saying "I will use this" or "I won't use that".

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN That becuase it's incredible difficult to do in real time without distotion or devation from the original sound, especially with zero latency. Ryan075 is right, various methods are used, but you often loose the beat and/or tightness of the groove esoecially when it is a full sounding track (as per basilisk's psytrance). The harmonics just get so badly messed up. It does work on minimal tracks, but the benefits to be had are less because there is not a lot going in the track.

Hence using a custom-designed FFT circuit running at a few GHz a MAC block for each simultaneous MAC operation should do the trick, pipeline it all...

Hey presto


If Ableton running on my laptop (1.6 GHz processor), which can probably only perform one MAC at a time can timestretch pretty reasonably with very little delay, then a dedicated 2 GHz FFT board capable of doing 256 of them at once should have no trouble at all... 2 GHz might be a bit ambitious what with propagation delays and all, so maybe 1 GHz or even 500 MHz would be more realistic - it'll still shit all over it.

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Not a fan of it myself. Maybe the music I'm playing but it just doesn't sound right to me.

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