Traktor 3 FLAC dilemna - beat grids and cues are off beat

digitalprime

Bit of history first... I purchased Traktor Scratch Pro back in 2010 and installed it on my 2009 MacBook Pro. I never upgraded and spent the last 10+ years meticulously putting cue points in my tracks and I even describe each cue along with how many bars until the next cue. I have been digitizing my files into FLAC format so they are compressed, lossless, and support ID3 tags. I never upgraded to Traktor 2 or 3 over the past 10 years (much to everyone's surprise). My 13 year old MacBook is now showing its age, so I finally upgraded to an M1Pro and decided it was time to get Traktor 3. I was shocked to find all of my FLAC beat grids and cues are off beat. My WAV and AIFF files are fine. I found a Reddit forum from 3 years ago complaining about this same issue.

I thought maybe if I set a manual grid marker and shift it, that would work, but it only shifted the grid with the cues still off beat. I can delete cues and redo them, but that also means I have to retype or copy-paste the notes in each cue. I have over 1,300 FLAC files.

So what should I do? Does NI plan on fixing this issue? Should I just switch over to AIFF to future proof the possibility of dealing with this again (and double the file footprint in the process)? The collection file is a simple XML file, so I'm surprised no one has written code to shift the tags that way. Or maybe NI could create a beat grid/cue software that lets users enter in their offset and it fixes everything.

In short, should I stop using FLAC and redo everything or wait to see if NI fixes this issue? As of now, I can't use Traktor 3.

digitalprime

Here is how I document my cue points.

Wyley

I think this is due to differences in the types of encoders and decoders used. You'll have to seek advice from NI support on this one.

wayfinder

How far off-beat are the cues? When you have sync enabled, and the grid is on-beat, starting from a slightly off-grid cue will not play the track off-grid, so it would be enough to fix the grid (which with the right control setup can be done really quickly). If the cues are more than half a beat off, I don't know how to improve the situation.

digitalprime

Thank you both for responding. The first screenshot is at normal zoom. The second screen shot is zoomed in plus how much the phase has to be off to be on beat.

If there is no fix, and I want to continue using FLAC, does anybody know what encoder I should use in the future? I have been using Max for Mac for my conversions. I checked my MP3s, and they seem fine as well.

Matt_NI

@digitalprime Just like @Wyley suggested, you might be better off seeking further insights from one of our Traktor specialist. Please feel free to hit them up via email here: https://bit.ly/n1trakt

digitalprime

Thanks for all the feedback. I tried fixing the grids, but when I closed Traktor and reopened the next day, they were back to where they were before. I tested again, and it kept doing the same thing. So I have decided to switch to ALAC. I can adjust the grids as I go along, and the "snap to grid" will just have to do for the cue points until I can slowly adjust them over time. I have noticed that my old version of Max only has one choice for FLAC, but the current one has "Built In" or "Core Audio" to choose from. But I am just not going to risk it.

lord-carlos

I think if you change the grid, you have to press the lock icon. It's in the same UI group as all the grid change buttons.

wayfinder

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/7574#Comment_7574

I just realized that it is literally impossible for the grid to be more than half a beat off the actual hits, but that has nothing to do with your problem, I'm sorry :)

I don't know how good you are with programming, but one other thing you could try is change the cue positions with a script, right in the collection.nml file. I personally would probably not be able to write something like that without a lot of research, but if you already got game like that, it may be an option.

digitalprime

@lord-carlos - I am well aware of the lock icon. I had all my grids locked. I unlocked them, moved the gird, and locked them again. But for some reason, the grids kept resetting. I'm just going to switch to ALAC. I have some 96K FLAC files that I may try the Core Audio FLAC for in the future, but for now I'm converting the 44K to ALAC (my Mac likes them better anyway).

@wayfinder - I'm actually a software engineer and have worked with XML in the past, but not sure I want to mess with that.

alec.tron

Hi,

bummer none of the Traktor Team came to your aide as this would be deep inside Traktor dev/code voodoo, and sounds to be a Traktor issue, especially when aiff/alac do not show the same... and I as a strong flac supporter & user would hope all core bugs & issues to be fixed first (before any new features are introduced...)

iirc 2 dev-/tech-y people from the forum had a replicateable grid shift on a given format they spent a wee while on to analyze a few years ago. I'll see if I can find it. Maybe that gives additional info/insight. But can't remember anymore if this was flac related...

c.

alec.tron

Ah, found it (https://github.com/digital-dj-tools/dj-data-converter/issues/3), but it was on mp3s going from Traktor to Rekordbox through a converter.... not flac conversions.

Bummer. All the best! Hope you can stick with flac ;)

c.