Deckadance 2
Deckadance 2 Posted on: 26.03.2013 by Doreen Schurle Okay, so this has been touched on briefly over in the CMD thread, but this seems like SUCH an important thing it really deserves its own thread, especially since not everyone here on the community
has been interested/maintained their interest in the CMD line.Is it just me, or does this look like it'll completely annihilate Traktor & Serato? The FX possibilities alone are just insane... native support for EQ-specific FX (Isolate FX), multi-FX (super knobs) with pre-programmable envelopes, transport/volume warps (Gross Beats - not sure about that name tbh :-\), and a whole bunch of other things that Traktor and Serato just simply don't have atm... Plus, they appear to have caught up to the major players on a few other points like 4-deck support, spectrum waveforms, etc. I just... argh, as a controllerist they're just aren't words tbh. | |
| Kellie Myrum 26.03.2013 | Hey guys, Are those super knobs MIDI mappable or you're setting all effects and parameters manually? |
| Jetta Drenzek 26.03.2013 | Sampler is pretty barebones. Pretty much the S4 sampler, not a patch on the remix decks. |
| Kandi Odom 26.03.2013 | Am really liking it i see a lot of potential!!!!!!! |
| Leanora Gerald 26.03.2013 | You're making me very curios about this... |
| Jetta Drenzek 26.03.2013 | Yeah I found that SYNC latch straight after I wrote it, forgot to write it in haha. And unfortunately it doesn't help because when I use GrossBeat, there's only one thing I can believe of. VDJs horrible beatgrid function. |
| Doreen Schurle 26.03.2013 | For what it's worth, you can have proper Sync by right-clicking the Sync button, took me a while to work that one out too. There's also snap and quantize in the global section up top. Luckily, if you hover over any UI element, it'll pop a tooltip up explaining both the default function plus any alternatives (shift+click, right click etc). The effects ARE more basic than Traktor's, there no denying that, but I'm hoping they'll improve them somewhat between now and launch... fingers crossed! If it helps, regarding GrossBeat, you can set them to Looping/Retrigger which makes for some interesting effects; being able to use the DC-1 for latching GrossBeats would be pretty neat... just need them to add that Wet/Dry ability :P |
| Jetta Drenzek 26.03.2013 | Right, had a good half an hour playing with it, and the basic functions are there, mdcdesign got 2) spot on, the downbeat was wrong every time. I had no previous experience with grossbeat, which was one of the main features that people where really tommy tanking over, so I don't know what I expected, but that definitely wasn't it, or anywhere near as good as what I would have hoped. Maybe it's nerfed for the demo version? It's pretty much just Traktor's beatslicer but you can set the exact point for it to slice, although the UI is not noob friendly. I'm guessing the grid is how many beats backwards it jumps? So after you've figured that out, it's pretty much Traktor's beat slicer on steroids. Mapping capabilities are nowhere near Traktor standards from what I can see, although it is pretty simple to map functions. No cue on the UI is an odd design choice, but it works fine on my controller. I guess they figured people with a mouse don't cue, cue, cue, play, they just hit play. The sync function acts like Virtual DJs, which I find a bit contradictory to the idea of sync. You press sync, it matches your BPMs, but if you drop it off time, it's still off time, there's no quantising, you're on your own. The isolated FX is exactly how I hoped, but the FX just don't seem to sound as good as Traktors? I'm messing with a flanger as I write this (oo-er ) and it's not exactly amazing. The delay is bit naff as well. I believe I'm just spolied by Traktor's plethora of FX. All in all, it's "almost but not quite". It really does have some great features but they're not implemented right. Like mdcdesignsaid, grossbeat doesn't give you real time control. If you could map grid points to a controller, that would be a massive game changer there, and also some linking between the FX and GrossBeat instead of just volume and time (Although given the layout, I imagine this will be a feature at some point). Actually come to believe of it, the demo shows that happening. I'm going to have crack the manual open on this. Latency is good straight off the bat, which was impressive, and I've not experienced any glitches or slow downs. The side by side (serato) waveform view is exactly what it says on the tin, also. To sum it up, NI isn't going to be bankrupt by the end of the year. But they need to pay attention, because with a bit of tweaking and time, Deckadance is going to be amazing. The core functions are there, it just needs some more real time function to make it killer. EDIT: Somehow, I completely missed the smart knobs. Holy fuck this thing is ballin'. These Macro FX knobs should have been in Traktor when those 'macro' FX came out. I thought this is what NI had put in. I'm guessing NI are putting one in, because obviously the idea is there, they just need to users program for themselves. This doesn't stop the FX from being so beige though, but it's really, really cool. Mapped it to a fader on my F1 right now with gross beat on the pads, it's like Kraftwerk fell into a woodchipper. 2ND EDIT: Hot tamale, make sure you scan and verify your VSTs an use Effector which comes packaged with Deckadance. Now THAT is how you do effects. I'm not sure about the midi mapping ins and outs of VST plugins within the program yet, in fact I believe you're limited to two parameters at a time, but holy crap Effector is great and it sounds good. However, this did give me my first audio hiccup when I was going absolutely bananas on it, which brings back that old "VSTs just aren't stable enough" argument. |
| Jetta Drenzek 26.03.2013 | I'm installing the beta now, will report back soon! EDIT: Literally just installed it on my laptop and started it up, and my BCD3000 is already mapped entirely, even the EQ kill buttons. Well played, IL, well played. |
| Doreen Schurle 26.03.2013 | Right, I've just had a look at the beta demo, and a few things stick out for me as needing to be sorted/improved before I can completely ditch Traktor... 1) Full kill EQs; it doesn't have them. Now, this isn't a dealbreaker for me as I usually use external mixing anyway, but it'd be a nice addition so I can properly use my TM4 with it. 2) Beatgrid analysis isn't brilliant. It gets the tempo right, but almost ALWAYS buggers up the positioning of the downbeat unless you're just playing club mixes. Luckily, fixing it is a 1-click act. 3) No gater FX. It uses GrossBeat for gaters, which isn't ideal as there's no dry/wet for GrossBeat. I like to have live control over my gater time + depth parameters. That's about it really. There's no Cue/CUP button visible in the UI, but I'm guessing it can be mapped. Apart from that, looks bloody fantastic |
| Latoria Kavulich 26.03.2013 | looks awesome. i used deckadance when i first started mixin |
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