Stacked waveform overlay hack on Traktor

[Dj8lok]

So I've been a long time ITCH user (been spinning on my ns7 for a while now), but I recently bought a kontrol s4 for it's awesome effects and dedicated filter knob. While it's great, the single biggest missing feature for me is the stacked waveforms from ITCH, which in my opinion are far superior than the side-by-side waveforms in a lot of ways. I'm not here to argue which is better, I'm just trying to find a workaround. The best thing I've come up with is using decks A and C instead of A and B as the main decks, but the problem is the s4 mapping has A and C mapped to the left deck, meaning that using the two as the track decks would be a huge hassle. I'm obviously new to the program, but if anyone has any ideas on how I could change the mapping to assign decks A and B to the left deck and C and D to the right, it would be a lifesaver. (or perhaps changing the visual layout of the program such that A and B are on top of one another)

[HBBoogie]

Are you beat gridding your tracks? If not, then you will have to beat match by ear.

If you are beat gridding your tracks you can see how far off you are buy using the phase meter.

(the little bar right above the waveform display)


The phase meter is Traktors way of showing you how close or far off your beats are from being in sync without having to stack waveforms on top of each other.

Yellow on the left side of the center line means your track is behind and you need to speed it up until there is no more yellow. The same is true for the yellow being on the right side of the center line. Just slow your track down until there is no more yellow.


watch this video @ 1:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE170D92xdM

Right at 1:33 he uses the pitch bend buttons to speed up the track. When he does this, the yellow phase meter bar moves towards the center line until it disappears and the tracks are in sync.


Remember, the phase meter will only work if you properly set your beat grids. -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBBfstjM3cY

[Dj8lok]

Thanks for the in-depth reply HedBanger. However, I've already beat gridded my tracks and I know how to use the phase meter, so my particular reason for wanting to use stacked waveforms has more to do with phrase matching. I tend to like juggling around lots of songs quickly, and sometimes i might hit that play button a couple beats too late, so with the vertical overlay i can quickly realign the incoming track to the begging of the phrase on the first track I'm mixing into, and it helps a ton in general when I'm brining a new track in since I know I'm bringing it in at the right point in the song. I know that it's technically possible to do this by ear, but I'm no DJ guru and frankly after a song is both tempo matched and beat matched, it's quite hard to tell solely by ear that it's phase matched as well.