Jogwheel Seek behavior like Serato

Hello, the behaviour of platters when searching through a track (eg holding “shift” on controller, then using a platter to scrub forward or back through the track) doesn’t work very well for me coming from Serato.

In Serato, as long as my hand is on the platter, Serato will keep playing the track as it would have before scrubbing. When I finally see the place in the track that I’d like to skip to, I take my hand off the platter and Serato instantly goes to this spot.

In djay, the playback position changes almost instantly as I start searching by holding shift and using platters to scrub. The behaviour is almost the same, but I am unable to precisely decide when to skip ahead because djay doesn’t wait for me to remove my hand from the platters.

This way of seeking through tracks in Serato is very valuable to me because I don’t want my audience to hear me skipping ahead until I’m ready to skip to that location. Is there some way to replicate Serato’s platter search behaviour in djay?

Is this common to all controllers? I know mine isn’t designed to work specifically for djay, but the mapping that’s provided is pretty darn good. Do the dedicated/integrated hardware controllers like the Mixon 8 behave differently?

Thank you.

djay 5.2.6
macOS 15.1
controller: Pioneer DDJ-SR2

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  • Device model (e.g. 2020 iPad Air 4th Gen):
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Your question/suggestion/feedback:

Hi @chuckles, I’ve changed your topic from a question to a suggestion and have forwarded this idea to the dev team for consideration. In the meantime, please use the blue Vote button at the top left of this page so we can gauge user demand for this feature. Thanks!

Hi again @chuckles, do you know if Rekordbox has this same jogwheel seek behavior? Or is this a unique feature to Serato?

I don’t — I haven’t used rekordbox.

And I’m very sorry, but I’ve just realized that Serato doesn’t even do this :sweat_smile: I don’t know where I hallucinated this behaviour from, but I sure do feel silly, and the topic name isn’t accurate. Sorry for creating any extra work for your team with my confusion. That said… this is still a feature I’d love to have.

On reflecting more, I did tune into some kind of difference in the way that djay and Serato treat seeking with shift+jogwheels, and it’s that Serato instantly jumps to the playhead marker, whereas djay waits for what seems to be 1 bar.

Maybe the way djay seeks could offer customization to be either instant like Serato, “snap-to” a given quantization like 1 bar (or 4 bars), or to wait until the dj removes their hand from the platter to snap to a location in the track.

Or maybe it’s just totally great as-is :wink:

Ah okay. Thanks for clarifying @chuckles. I recommend you try changing your Quantize and/or Sync Settings and see if you can dial in the behavior you are looking for. Maybe Quantize>OFF and Beat Sync Interval>1 Beat.

I finally figured out what it is that’s different about the seek behaviour that’s been getting to me. Guess I just needed a holiday to clear my head.

In Serato, holding shift while scrubbing with the platters moves the playhead forward or backward at one bar intervals even when a track is paused, which is very useful for scrubbing forward or backward an exact number of bars (eg 16) when setting cue points. Set my first cue point, hold shift, scrub forward and boom, set second (or third) cue point without worrying if I’m aligned with the downbeat because I know that I am. Same for setting loop in/out points.

When Djay is paused, the seek behaviour takes me all over the place in terms of my placement in a given measure, and the quantize feature doesn’t seem to alter this behaviour. So setting cue and loop entry/exit points is a slower process.

Unless there’s some way to quantize while paused? I’m impressed with the tremendous amount of power and thoughtfulness in Djay, but I’m realizing I’m unaware of many features that might be hiding.

Hi @chuckles, thanks for the additional info. I don’t believe there is currently a way to achieve this in djay. However, I have passed this onto the devs for review and consideration. Thanks!

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