Hi,
Mixing in a song that has about double (or half) the BPM of the first is a great and effective way to go away from one genre to a complete other one. It is great fun and can give a lot of energy on the dancefloor and djay does handle this well.
Djay does detect that transition between those 2 tracks can better be mixed in half/double-style and so it brings up of down the second track to a certain bpm so that this mix can be done. (e.g. 90 with 180 bpm or 120 together with 60 bpm).
→ You can see and hear this in my video
My question is about where is the tipping point? When does it decide to mix half/double-style and when does it decide to bring the original bpm’s together?
The second question is: is this a setting and can it be changed?
Thanks in advance.
Good question @DJ_Big_Blender. I don’t know the specifics myself, but I’ve reached out to engineering to see if they can clarify the details.
Hi @DJ_Big_Blender, sorry for the delayed response on this one. It’s simply whichever one is closer to the main track’s BPM. In other words, it checks which is the shorter difference in terms of how many percent of pitch would need to be applied. I hope that helps!
Hi,
Thanks for the reply, but I’m still not quite following. Could you maybe walk me through the calculation?
In the video at around 4 minutes, I am using these two tracks:
- Be Faithful (101 BPM)
- Love You More (168 BPM)
Track 1 is playing at its original speed, and djay chose not to apply the half-BPM trick (i.e., doubling 101 BPM to 202 BPM, then pitching Love You More up by 34 BPM to match it, which would be around +20%).
Instead, it slows Love You More down to 101 BPM — a drop of 67 (!!) BPM, or roughly -40%.
So in this example, it seems that djay chooses to slow down a track by as much as 40%, rather than speed it up by 20% using the half-BPM trick. That’s hard for me to understand.
By the way, in my opinion, transitions that require more than a ± 15(?)% tempo change — whether up or down — shouldn’t even be supported, because they just don’t sound good anymore. A great feature would be if djay automatically ignored the Sync option once the pitch shift exceeds a certain threshold. That would apply even when using half/double BPM tricks.
Thanks!
Hi @DJ_Big_Blender, hmmm… 101 syncing to 168 and not going double seems like it could be a bug. I’ve passed this onto engineering for further review. Good catch!
Thanks!
But please also ask them to consider the option to completely ignore synchronization with these kinds of completely insane tempo differences. Of course, this should be a customizable setting because it depends on the type of DJ you are and the kind of music you mix.
You’re welcome. I’ve passed that on as well…
Hey @Slak_Jaw !
Then maybe turn this question into a bug?
I changed the original title “Mixing Double/Half BPM tracks (where’s the tipping point?)” into the new one.
