Synching Vs Beatmatching: What’s The Difference?
At the risk of starting an argument, I want to talk about the issue of synching vs beatmatching. Really, aren’t they both kind of the same thing? Well, as these things usually go, the answer is both yes and no.
For sync to really work well, you need to be playing music that is pretty simple in terms of beats. Any technology, like Traktor, is going to be able to beatgrid that music. Throwing in songs that change beat at some point is really going to confuse that software. The DJ will have no choice but to step in and smooth out the process manually. There are also other problems with sync buttons. They’re pretty useless when it comes to matching tracks from mixed sources, like CDJs, USBs, etc.
Using technology to improve DJing and our ability to get the crowd feeling the music is absolutely worthwhile. But, you can’t forget that at the root of DJing is the DJ’s skill in intuitively working with the music. You see where I’m going with this? No matter what you choose, you’re going to have to know how to correct whatever the software is doing yourself.
