Around December 2021, I bought myself my first DJ equipment.
I knew absolutely nothing about DJing.
At the time, I was living in Mallorca, where I had contact with raves and DJs and decided to gift the child in me with something I had always wanted: to play a musical instrument. After some research, I chose an entry-level controller: Roland DJ-202. It worked with Serato, which, at least from my very amateur perspective, felt quite intuitive and nearly the same as the Pioneer ecosystem I had seen DJs using.
To complete my setup, I bought a pair of €20 headphones and connected the controller to my Alexa speakers.
So amateur. So demure.
It was the beginning of an amazing adventure.
I started reading Reddit forums and watching YouTube tutorials and, within a week or two, I was throwing DJ sets for my five-year-old nieces and nephew.
My brothers lent me their ears too. They even invited me to DJ at some of their friends' house parties and... they did NOT love it.
I remember DJing at a Brazilian Christmas party in Ireland, but since I didn't include Sertanejo in my repertoire, I got musically banned.
A week later, my friends and I organised a New Year's Eve apartment rave in Dublin, and I got the chance to DJ for almost two days non-stop.
I would play Techno, House-Disco & mix them with Brazilianities.
And I was obsessed.
Wherever I went, I would bring my equipment with me. The controller became a basic item of my luggage.
When I moved to Barcelona, I started organising spontaneous house parties with live music. I would leave the decks open if anyone wanted to try their music too, and I casually turned my bedroom into a disco floor.
A few months into Barcelona, I started improving my music setup. I got a pair of JBL Professional active monitors and, after more investigation, decided to try something new.
That's when I acquired a Native Instruments Kontrol S4 MK3.
I was absolutely in love with its knobs, functions and value for money. But yes, it runs with Traktor, which is not the industry standard and can be tricky to set up. I really like it for its possibilities, though.
Let's get to the technical part about Traktor.
First of all, a positive side: you don't have to export songs from an app to your pen drive in order to be able to load your songs on Traktor. You can simply copy, drag or transfer them directly from your computer to your USB stick.
With Rekordbox, it is different: you export your songs from your computer to your USB stick through Rekordbox, which also prepares the USB with the database information that Pioneer DJ equipment uses.
This is because, with Rekordbox, the USB is not only carrying the music files. It is also carrying information such as playlists, cue points, beat grids, metadata and waveforms, which compatible Pioneer DJ players use.
The file system of the USB can also matter. Depending on the CDJ model, different file systems are supported. Older CDJs in particular may require FAT32 and may also have specific requirements regarding the partition scheme, while newer players support additional formats such as exFAT. So if your USB isn't formatted in a file system supported by the particular CDJ you're using, it may simply not recognise the drive.
Traktor, however, supports most common music formats, without the need to format your USB stick. Since you're simply dealing with standard files on a computer-readable drive, the process is easy. It also saves its collection information, including playlists and performance data, in its own database file, collection.nml. Traktor supports common formats including MP3, M4A/AAC, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and OGG Vorbis.
EXCEPT: if you stick a Rekordbox-exported USB stick into Traktor.
Then the songs can get displaced from whichever way you ordered them, and this can make it very difficult to find your songs across your folders.
So, from my experience, I wouldn't use the same USB stick interchangeably between Rekordbox and Traktor unless you know exactly how each system is managing your library.
Traktor Pro is paid software, unless you have a licence, which is provided with some compatible Native Instruments hardware.
Don't even try the Demo version of Traktor Pro if you're trying to properly set up your equipment — you won't be able to do much. If you have access to the full version of Traktor Pro, you will have to install it on your computer through Native Access: a free app for downloading, installing, activating and updating Native Instruments software, all in one place.
That is:
Install Native Access, register your purchased equipment, log in with your email and hardware serial number, navigate to Traktor Pro under Native Access, download it and install it.
Then you're nearly ready.
Once this is done, you can adjust Traktor Pro to your preferences.
One of the main points is to connect your speakers to your console (hardware), through the software (Traktor Pro). You might have to adjust your sound input and output on your laptop.
If it's macOS, go to System Settings → Sound and check that the correct input and output devices are selected for your setup. Then go back to Traktor Pro, under Preferences → Audio Setup, and assign the appropriate audio device.
Then just navigate around Traktor's Preferences and find out what's best for you: how you want the available tools to be displayed for you, which tools you want to hide or show, which part of the display you want them to be in, what FX (sound flavours) you like better.
Play around and have fun.