Announcing PRIME 4 & Serato DJ Pro Official Compatibility!

I’ve played with the Prime 4 for more than 7 hours straight on Serato and I definitely agree that the sound is very “different” and overall better when using stand alone mode. Not bad in software, but MUCH crisper or warmer sound than with SDJ.

However, the times I’ve used Virtual DJ, it sounded phenomenal. The MCX-8000 had a great sound but the VDJ for some reason made it sound so much better.

If you guys haven’t ever tried VDJ, it is well worth it, with nothing out there comparing to features.

I also, used the latest 1.4 firmware without too many issues with Serato. The only issue I saw was a slight freeze only twice during the whole set I was recording in Serato. Recorded Flawlessly and with proper volume.

Again, only the channel faders affect the recording in serato, though there is a recording level adjustment in the software as well.

Good stuff guys.

EP messed up Many of my BPM’s and beatgrids. When testing, I had both EP and SDJ open on my Macbook.

I’m using the following method to correct songs:

  1. When I knew the beatgrid was off in an EP gridded song, I just dragged the song directly from the EP library to a “Reanalyze” crate in SDJ and reanalyzed the song.

  2. I drag the song back from SDJ to EP and the beatgrid was now correct, along with BPM.

other than reanalyzing my whole drive in SDJ, anyone else doing anything similar?

Soooo refreshing being able to NOT worry about BPM and beatgrids being off now that it has Serato compatibility.

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Heyyyyy, sooooooo am I reading correctly? Are you saying EP messed up your existing Serato library’s grid info? : /

No, havent really noticed the beatgrid messed up in Serato, only in the EP library as others have stated.

I actually have a separate, duplicate drive specifically for Serato if it was needed and the SSD internal drive for Denon.

I have an adapter that lets me use the Denon drive as an external drive on all my machines. It also contains a copy of the Serato drive that it imported to create the existing Denon drive.

It just plugs into the drive like a cable.

Hope that is not too convoluted. Serato and EP keeps their beatgrid map in their own library database for the same song on the drive as far as I know.

And you are correct, a EP analysis is firewalled from Serato etc.

With the newer EP updates, I deleted my EP database and re-imported my Serato library and did a new analysis in EP as required.

I don’t use EP for anything other than to get music to a drive.

All my library management is done in Serato and I plan to stick to this until EP is really ready for Prime Time.

Hi @cesarvog

How did you managed to use Prime 4 as VDJ controller? Did you midi mapped yourself?

I’m trying to push Traktor official support to beat Pioneer in terms of Live & creativity (remix decks, STEMs, multilayered effects, etc)

You could all support it here

I can confirm that SDJ compatibility does work on 1.4 beta 2.

No need to downgrade. SDJ works with 1.4 beta 2 including Tidal streaming

Ok! Whew! That’s what I thought so that scared me a bit before a big gig today! LOL

Thanks for clarifying! Everything seemed smooth for me while playing out last couple of nights but still, bigger gigs heighten my anxiety levels. haha

Thanks!

Haven’t used laptops for DJing on for several years so I feel the time spent on getting a standalone media player to entertain serato was a waste for most. But I’m not the worlds only dj, I know.

But now it’s done, I’m hoping that denon resources will turn to more productive things again.

Interesting view.

Why is it a waste? Who are these “most” you speak of?

  1. Denon used a promised Serato compatibility to promote these products.

  2. Serato support was a popular feature request here as well.

  3. Denon, InMusic and Serato go way back. My guess is that the moving jogs on the M may have something to do with the delay. The 5000 and 4 got serato quick enough.

  4. They are working on the other improvements simultaneously. a major BPM algorithm rewrite.

  5. I’m sure Denon DJ can still bring improvements to current products and bring out new features/products at the same time.

  6. The pioneer CDJ 2000s have Serato, besides rekordbox. It will not be a prudent business decision if Denon do not cater for the Serato cohort.

Now they need to get into Virtual DJ mobile DJ market at least on the P4 and native database import in EP. (I’m not a Virtual DJ user but it’s the next big market share, mostly mobile djs who actually buy gear and use them regularly)

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Agree 100%. The more options for our Prime players the better. Plus I can’t stress this enough. Until EP steps it up I’m back to Serato with my Prime equipment and I’m ok with that. And at the end of the day I still have standalone as my backup if something crazy happens with my laptop.

Don’t misunderstand. I am hopeful Denon brings it in a big way with a future EP update. But I still want pitch/tone play and smoother beat jumping on our Prime players. They are why I’m super happy about getting this Serato support along with of course Serato’s superior BPM analysis. I roll up to my show and know that stuff is right and that means a LOT!

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That makes sense.

“most” covers a lot of DJs, so I’m sure you’re wrong. It was something that was on the box from day 1 so resources were already in place ahead of time.

Also, Serato was the “resources” doing the work.

This is exactly how I use it for now. Serato as main play and stand alone second until EP improves.

I believe it fair to say that there are more DJs worldwide who don’t use serato, compared to those who do. There are several platforms to DJ on, and serato is just one of those platforms. Could there be more DJs DJing with a collection of vinyl (not just a pair of DVS vinyls lol) than serato? Hmm there are a lot of purists still out there? Are there more CD DJs out there than serato? I’d suspect not as CDs can be ripped blindingly fast? Maybe that’s the “most” that the poster was getting at. I doubt we’ll ever know the proper accurate market share… cause if we asked say DJTechtipstoolz we’d probably get 99% laptop users. Ask a mobile beats Las Vegas audience (when they’d sobered up) and we’d probably get a splattering of almost every playback type going… (the MBLV a few months ago had someone trying to sing the advantages of minidisc :minidisc: (!!!)

I don’t agree the serato controllability was a “waste” per say - it’s another arrow in armoury of automatic weapons in the Prime arsenal. I would say it was more of a distraction to the development teams at denon. I’m hoping for many and various improvements on engine Prime database management and in its primary standalone mode from now on.

Fingers crossed

Denon is a business and for profit. If they didn’t think the distraction will bring in some earnings they won’t bother.

They have brought out many updates in the last few months plus Serato. Updates and improvements dropping faster than one can install em.

Software DJ solutions is where I envisage a Rider shift. So they need to bring on Traktor, Virtual DJ support soon. The CDJ is industry standard now, kinda reminds me of the sorta stronghold technics had on the TT market, even when there were cheaper alternatives with better features.

I’m not saying Serato is the most used DJ solution , but it’s most likely in the top 3 worldwide.

Digital DJ Tips survey for 2018.

One may say, not every dj was sampled (even clinical researches don’t sample every candidate in the population).

Response bias is another thing to consider.

Sample size of 33k is good.

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Those are the couple of things I was referring to, as you pointed out also. Ok you didn’t go as far as asking the Traktor user group how many of them used serato ha ha, or vice versa.

And geographic differences too. Some countries got saturated by trial offers of one brand of software, or another.

But anyways however loved or unloved serato is or was or might be, or might not be in the future, denon Primes now have a way of getting it to work with a certain amount of onscreen feedback, which will be a benefit, in certain circles

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Again, I fail to understand how ANY concentration on a feature that actually sold the units to all the Serato DJ’s …AND was always promised even at NAMM is even questioned.

Reminds me of the discussion of why include sync when “most” dj’s don’t use it.

Two good reasons:

  1. As Mufasa stated, this is a business and you want to appeal to the largest audience your product can reach without hampering your current clientele.
  2. It’s an industry standard feature that “can” free experienced DJ’s up to concentrate on other aspects of their performance. However, in my experience, it doesn’t work that well unless you really know if your beatgrids are spot on and how the song flows.

One good thing is if you don’t like something that is an option…don’t use it. Problem solved.

It is interesting to hear those so vocal about something that has been in the pipeline for ages.

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Hello, can you please inform me, I’m new to all this, I want to be able to use machine mk2, along with my prime 4 with serato software as a both machine software and as a midi. How would I sync them together in order to be able to play song on my serato, then be able to do some finger drumming on the machine mk2 while all the audio are coming out from my two main speakers?