Wrong BPM on Prime 4 and Denon DJ's on Pioneer Gear questions

Engine DJ Hardware Standalone Controllers
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Hi. I just picked up a Prime 4 and it is easily blowing Pioneer out of the water, particularly with the fact that you can Wifi into Beatport directly from the unit. Out of BPM Supreme, MP3pool, and Beatport, the tracks from BP seem to sound the best and have the best selection. So that is a HUGE selling point. However, the BPM of a lot of psy-trance tracks are wrong!

I just spent a couple of hundred bucks on buying a collection and I’m sure I’ll be buying more. I want to make sure I have a good collection via USB for gigs where wi-fi may be dodgy. However, this leaves the problem of plugging them into CDJs for gigs that require the use of the club’s gear.

To solve this problem I decided to do all my track prep in Recordbox and then export into Engine OS so I have a RB collection and an Engine collection. However, upon transferring the files, Engine OS decided to re-write the BPMs of my tracks. The incorrect BPMs are a problem on Beatport as well.

For example: Free Tibet by Vince Vici. The correct BPM is 138 but both Beatport and Engine OS reads it as 108 BPM.

I turned off “Auto Analyze tracks” in Engine OS on my computer before importing. However, when loading tracks into Engine to fix the Hot Cue button colors, I noticed Engine re-analyzed the track and changed the BPM back to 108. So I changed it back to 138. I did this with my set list for the night (about 25 out of 150 tracks). So the tracks in my playlist were fine however…

I loaded a track which I had not loaded into Engine on my computer yet. The BPM was read / set correctly by Recordbox despite it being incorrect on Beatport. The track is 7 O Clock by Dago and Omiki. The BPM was set to 140 and appeared as 140 on the Prime 4 screen. However, once I loaded it into the Prime 4 it changed the BPM to 69.

This is a MAJOR flaw that is making me consider returning the unit. It would be workable if you can change the BPM in the Prime 4 but it looks like this has been a feature request for a long time that has never been implemented. WHY? This is a MAJOR brand killer.

If there is a way to change the BPM that I’m missing in the latest firmware update, please let me now. But Denon, you HAVE to fix this! This is a MAJOR ISSUE!

I used to spin on vinyl so I can beatmatch by ear but for mismatched BPM’s, it throws off a lot of modern DJ processes like looping and effects.

The Prime 4 is the most advanced unit out there and the only real competitor is the Pioneer DJ XDJ-XZ. However, from what I understand it lacks the ability to be able to wi-fi into Beatport, Soundcloud etc directly from the unit so it’s basically a controller that can take a USB input because you have to plug a computer into it to stream from Beatport. If I’m wrong, then I’m returning the Prime 4 but so far I don’t think it has the ability to do so like the Prime 4 does. But like I said, this BPM issue is a major brand killer.

In order for Denon to succeed, I think there are two vital things that have to be done.

  1. DJs have to be able to prepare their music in Recordbox (it’s free after all) so they can plug into a Pioneer without an issue.

  2. The Prime 4 should NOT re-write BPMs

  3. All Denon gear needs to have the ability to change the BPM

  4. All controllers need the ability to change the color of the Hot Cue buttons from within the unit itself and default to multi colors. This is the issue I ran into when I did all of my music in Recordbox then just plugged in the USB into the Prime 4. All of my hot cues were green and it was kind of daunting to have to count which hot cues were which from the screen to the buttons.

Is there a solution to any of these problem or any work-arounds that I’m missing? Or am I going to have to take this technologically advanced piece of gear back because of these fatal flaws? I mean with with nothing but sincerity and respect because this is an amazing piece of equipment.

Thank you.

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For the tracks you purchased on beatport, analyse in EP first, then use Reanalyse.

The first analysis - reads whatever bpm is included in the file from Beatport, whilst the re-analysis will disregard that BPM info and EP may give better result.

Unfortunately for streaming tracks from beatport and beatsource that are provided by the DSP with wrong BPM info, a forced re-analysis is not possible on the players.

You can test this theory out by streaming the same track from beatport vs tidal.

Tidal does not provide BPM so Engine OS has to do the calculation.

The Free Tibet track is 138 using Tidal

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Interesting! I just did “reanalyze” and it corrected the BPM!!! This is GREAT!!! Thank you so much for your comment! I will also look at Tidal. If their selection is as good as Beatport then this is a decent band-aid for now but Denon… SERIOUSLY! We need to be able to reanalyze tracks in the OS. I don’t know why this is such a major firmware update issue. Or at the very least add Beatport to Engine Desktop version so we can analyze tracks in Engine and then transfer the metadata over to the USB.

Regardless, thank you Mufasa for the reply! This helped alleviate a lot of the headaches I’ve been having. Cheers!

I do have one more question:

What do you do when you have to use the clubs gear? Do you use the Engine to Recordbox converter or just do everything in Recordbox? I am thinking a good work flow would be to create everything in Recordbox → import into Engine → reanalyze all tracks. Then I would have a Recordbox ready USB and an Engine ready USB. Ideally, any gigs would let me use my Prime 4, but I don’t want to get somewhere like a festival and be expected to use Pioneer and plug my USB in only to find that the converter doesn’t work or be that pain in the ass DJ who insists on using my own gear. I’m not anywhere close to there yet but I’m thinking long term because I’m loving this Prime 4 and coming from a vinyl background, my skills are coming back QUICKLY! It’s like riding a bike :smiley: I wish I would have done this years ago!