external audio beatmatching ?

[MonkeyKing]

Hi guys,

I was just thinking of a simple idea who could be really cool and, for my understanding, achievable:

Routing an external audio source into Cross (a track played by another DJ for example), audio that would instantly be analyzed by Cross (BPM and peak), and have the possibility to use the beatmatching function (sync) with this external audio source.

Yes, I know it sounds evil, and people will say "use your ears", but this beatmatching function is not only the "easy" way, it also offers the possibility to do great things such as Looping one of the track in a very clean way and on a significant laps of time laps which is not easy to do, specially on back to back with other djs.

One way to route the external audio to Cross will be to use a "mini microphone" on one of the input of the soundcard. the microphone will receive the current track that is played on the club speaker and send the wave form to Cross. Cross will get basic information such as super accurate BPM (for a lot of electro tracks the BPM will remain the same all along the track) and Peaks. Even if Cross can't analyse the whole track and even if Cross will actually only analyse what has already been played one second before, it will be sufficient information for the software to do a basic beatmatch job. Some manual adjustment with pitch bend function will still be possible.

[Alexkidd]

too much fuss for nothing... why not just tap the tempo?

[Hannes]

how will you analyze something like a stream?

bpm: what if the other DJ changes the pitch?
peak: what if the other DJ changes the volume?

you already know what i'm gonna say...

[MonkeyKing]

to cinq:
It's not just about getting the tempo, actually you just have to check the mixer if you want, most of the time mixer will show you the tempo of the track currently playing.
It's more about beatmatch another track in such a accurate way that you can even mix a track that you are actually looping on 4 or 8 beats, which kind of hard to do because i feel that a loop tend to easier go offbeat.
So what i propose, it's not super useful if you have the classic electro track that have 1 min beat intro and give you time to mix it properly, but can be very useful for track that have very short drum/beat intro (like 10 sec) and with vocals right away. When using sync function in Mixvibes you can easily loop the very short drum/beat part and mix it for a while with the other track currently playing on the other deck of Cross, and when you feel it you unloop and let the vocals enter. But doing this operation in back to back is difficult (for me)

to j-kut
Actually, I think it's doable to analyse stream, at least for all the 4/4 electro music. Because the software just need to analyse one bar or 2 to get the essentail information to be able to proceed to a basic beatmacthing.

Anyway, it will not replace the "ears" but the more you DJ the more you find that there are all kind of enjoyable thing to do.
To mix properly 2 tracks on analogic vinyls is always a pleasure 'cause there is always a risk that you do not have anymore with the digital solution.
But, on the other hand, thinking about a track that will perfectly fit the mood of the dancefloor, 30 seconds before the end of the track that is currently playing, having time to find it and load it in 3 seconds (instead of looking in a vinyl/cd bags), and beatmatch it perfectly in 1 second...is also enjoyable. Maybe because, I still can't find the tempo and beatmatch a track in less than 5 seconds manually.

cheers