Disappointed by Engine Prime Analysis

Got my Sc 5000 just today and fiddled around with it all day and must say im really really disappointed with the analysis of Engine Prime. Many many times the downbeat was not correctly found so had to shift the Grid inside the player a lot of times. Other times it feels like the grid was off all together. This is THE most important “feature” in a digital media player. They really gotta get this right soon. It was not even difficult music, just 100% quantized House music. Is it only me experiencing this? Did’t find any other people online complaining about it. Tomorrow I’ll try feed it some unquantized Disco and Funk… Expecting the worst.

Asides from that I miss so many basic features. Why the heck doesn’t Denon implement them when they got such fancy stuff as Dual Layer and what not… Sorting by date added… SO f*** important imho… Or tagging in Engine Prime… Or customizing search criteria… Could go on for a while. If this thing should get the new club standard it’s gotta go a long way…

Start with proper Beat Grid analysis!

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First - Welcome to the Prime djs family :slight_smile:

Believe me - the analyze issue you are pointing out are one of the most discussed ones. And also the adjustable beatgrid - couse sometimes you will not be able to get the beatgrid to match at all on the machines.

So nothing else to do than wait :frowning:

Best regards Kim

The EP 1.2 update seemed to affect beat grid analysis a bit. In previous versions I’d have an issue every now and then, but they were pretty rare (or things that are easily fixed - ex. the 2nd beat marked as 1st). Since the 1.2 update I’m getting more false reads that require me to go in and manually reset the BPM.

I expect the next version will have some improvements on this front, as we’re still waiting for the promised flexible beat grids option too.

And that flexible beatgrid will solve it all (almost). They have it on the MCX8000 so I dont understand why it failed to be on the SC5000.

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You’re over-blowing the problem just a wee bit there. I use my players at multiple shows a week. Love 'em.

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Perhaps an Engine Prime update with more requested features is coming with the launch/shipping of the Decks. I know a Serato update is imminent to support them lol.

Use mine as well 2 or 3 times a week - and I also love them. But the flexible beatgrid would save me alot of time.

Could someone explain to me why flexible beatgrid is such a “killer” or “need to have”?

@Reese - Because you on the fly on the SC5000 would be able to adjust the beatgrid (make it bigger or smaller) so it fit the track. On the MCX8000 you can do so by go to Grid adjust, move the beatgrid by moving the platter - and if you press shift meanwhile you either shrink the beatgrid or make it bigger so it fits the track.

So I can simply adjust the beatgrid to the peaks (bpm) in less than 10 seconds on the unit. Instead of manually tapping and editing each track in Engine Prime.

Okay. To me that is not what I see as flexible beat-grid function.

Flexible beat-grid to me would be live tracks or old dance records. Or tracks that jump off grid or change speed mid track.

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@Reese - Thats the advanced version yes… VDJ can do that.

What @Engell said and more

  1. Will be good for disco/funk tracks

  2. If the calculated BPM of Engine is wrong (no software is perfect) one can use flexible grid to adjust the spaces between the markers to correct the bpm to the right value. If you use Serato or Rekordbox DJ or Ableton you will see this very neat feature.

The way it works is this

You place a beat marker on the first down beat even with a wrongly detect BPM then you go further into the song either as you play it or scrub through when you notice the grids are not lining up with the beats you drag the grid forward or backward. As you do this you see the BPM change.

Where it gets more interesting is with disco/funk/live drummers tracks, the original bpm can go up or down. You can place another beat marker on the exact beat further into the track, and make adjustments to the right of that marker without affecting anything to the left of the marker.

Engine Prime has flexible grid technically it’s just very restrictive. E.g. if you place another beat marker midway through a track, Engine will place it on a spot automatically but could be a wrong spot and there is no way for a user to adjust that beat marker.

It might sound like a long convoluted thing but it literally takes seconds to do, obviously except one is gridding a very long disco track.

I even do it mid set in Serato using hardware buttons that most controllers have now, the MCX8000 has it as well.

  • Shift + another button to clear the wrong grid
  • Jog wheel to scrub to the exact location you want your first marker
  • Shift + another button to set that one
  • Touch strip to quickly scrub through the track
  • Grid adjust button + plus jog wheel to fine tune the grids if they dont line up further in track.
  • Scrub to the end if everything looks ok, lock the track to prevent reanalysis. Now you have a tight track that works well with FX, External drum machines and off course sync. :yum:
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Thanks for that precise description @mufasa. I’m usually on via the phone so try to make short statements - but yours are as accurate as it can be!!! :heart:

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Your right, it’s just so fustrating to have such awesome gear that’s being held back by software issues. I’ve played a few gigs with them and it’s so fun. I’m just really bummed that they cant get this analyzing issue sorted out

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Let me ask one more question then. What happens if a flexible/dynamic beatgrid track is mixed with a steady beatgrid track; let’s say for instance using sync for the moment?

You’ll hear auto pitch bend up-down-up-down or time-stretching or am I missing the point here??

A Rekordbox user friend of mine told me of this miracle function years ago when I was using Traktor at the time (that only had the normal beatgrid change +/- like Engine). I asked the above question then also, but he could not give me an answer that made sense and would be beneficial to the mix.

Engell, my reply wasn’t directed at you, it was at the poster who said the units were unusable, which is quite obviously not true.

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it’s much better to fix such tracks in the “studio” properly once and for all. having the dj software do that everytime the track is played? obviously not such a good idea.

further, if done properly once you can play the fixed track everywhere and with everything without any additional work. and last but not least the quality; the sc5000’s keylock is very good but pretty much any other software is not so assuming you have decent stuff in the mentioned studio this is also a fair quality boost.

It’s not a miracle function lol. Some people are in the camp of bouncing the track into a DAW like Ableton and fixing it up permanently.

Why I don’t do that is that I don’t want to ruin the feel of the track.

So say my funk track AA is average 116bpm but fluctuates between 114 and 118 through the track. What elastic bpm does is to tell the DJ software exact points where the bpm goes up and down.

It should not fix the track to solid BPM.

Say I was mixing in a 115 song BB to the aforementioned funk track AA in a portion where AA tempo fluctuates between 116 & 118 that fluctuation is still there but track BB being brought in goes up to stay in sync.

There is nothing wrong with this btw. If not using sync and mixing manually the same two tracks one will be riding the pitch fader to achieve this.

I did try to attach a link to a youtube video showing this last after my last post but the mod bots have swallowed it.

@joxani there are many ways to skin a cat and you are correct.

I even feel if engine prime can read beatgrid information from Serato/Traktor database this might be a work around.

Okay. I understand why people need it nowadays. It’s nice to have the correct grid, so if people can’t live without it, they have my blessing.

I’ll just sit back and mix by ear. :nerd_face:

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Its called evolution :wink: New functions - new ways to mix. I startet in 95 so got no problem mixing by ear, I just like to improve and embrace the functionalities that new gear gives. :slight_smile: But I get your point.