Over To You: Syncing CDJs With DJ Software

Digital DJ Tips subscriber DJ Chris Drifter (great name, Chris!) writes: “I have been DJing since 2004, basically I used to play from vinyls and CDs and nowadays I started to using Traktor Pro. I have bought the Traktor Kontrol F1 controller and made some of my own Remix Sets and I combine this with two CDJ players in my mix. My basic problem is that these systems aren’t in sync so I am continuously having to keep them so manually. Any bright ideas to fix this?”

Digital Dj Tips says:

Interesting question Chris. While setting up Traktor and something like Ableton to stay in sync is easy enough, I’m scratching my head as to a good way to do this in your set-up – or even what you’d gain from doing so (like, a master/slave arrangement) even if you could. In theory you’d need a Midi clock send from the CDJs to Traktor, but the CDJ tempos are going to vary (it’d only take one “bad” mix to throw things off, for instance), so I can’t see how these items can really be linked and automated in sync in any useful way. Even the infamous Pioneer CDJ2000nexus sync button can’t save you here! 😉

Why not just map a button somewhere (keyboard? controller?) that you can use as a “tap” BPM button for Traktor’s master tempo so you can tap in occasionally the BPM you’re DJing at on your CDJs? That might be a pretty effective manual workaround.

However, as I’ve never had to do this nor tried to come up with a solution, I’m going to throw it over to the readers.

What would you do in Chris’s situation? Do you run Remix Decks / software alongside a traditional DJ set-up? What’s your tip for keeping them in sync? Please share your thoughts in the comments…