So the white sheet has been pulled back, and American Audio’s monster MIDI controlling VMS4 has been laid bare. This 4 deck beauty blends analog and digital in one slight oversized box as well as a heap of other goodies too.
The video gives the best overview in one bitesized 2 minute chunk, but most interesting is the emergence of a new version of Traktor. I’m guessing that a new 4 deck version of Traktor LE is coming, but still seems to be in the stages of delicate negotiation right now so no info is available. But the rest of this unit is out in the open, and it’s quite some piece of kit.
Tom says $499(usd) in the video, but the official web page says $699. I’m sure this mixup will be sorted soon, hopefully in the favour of the lower price tag.
M-Audio Torq 1.5 introduced Tempo Anchors, its method for reining in songs that fluctuate in tempo. Inconsistencies in tempo can occur for a number of reasons, but Tempo Anchors may come in particularly handy for live recordings, older songs that weren’t recorded to a click track or complex tracks for which the Torq software can’t precisely detect the beat.
SYNC OR SWIM
If a song’s tempo fluctuates or Torq has trouble analyzing the tempo, then it will be more difficult to sync that song to others. Also, sometimes corrupted digital audio files will be cause a song to go out of sync or glitch because Torq will skip over a small portion of the song and then keep going. In those cases, Tempo Anchors may also help. See the video to learn how to set Tempo Anchors, which are saved in a song’s TQD file that Torq creates, so you don’t have to repeat the process more than once for a song.
A couple of things to remember about tempo anchors:
• If Torq’s automatic BPM is really far off the mark, play the song and use the Tap Tempo function by clicking in the BPM display box to get the tempo close before dropping tempo anchors.
• Always set them up before your gig — not during your gig — unless you really like to live dangerously.
• You don’t have to go crazy with them. If the auto BPM detection got pretty close to the mark, in many cases tempo fluctuations are minor, and you won’t need to drop a Tempo Anchor on every several downbeats. Often, a few tempo anchors can go a long way toward straightening out your tracks.
The need for tempo anchors serves as another example of why you can’t let yourself get lazy as a digital DJ. Software tempo analysis is still far from perfect, and if you assume that the analyzed BPM on your screen is correct before testing it, you could be embarrassed during your gig. The more preparation you put in before performing — including setting Tempo Anchors, the more fun both you and your audience will have. -Markkus Rovito
Today we’re giving M-Audio Torq a little love. Torq users, holler back if you’re out there and let us know what you’d like to see in future Torq articles.
One of the many features that M-Audio snuck into its Torq 1.5 update was the Chain Effects Mode, which gives you an additional routing option for effects and greater creative possibilities. Every effect in Torq can work as either a send effect, which is designed to blend the original audio with the effect’s output, or as an insert effect, which is “inserted” between the deck and the mixer so as to replace the the original audio with the effect’s output.
DEFAULT AND CHAIN EFFECT MODES
When you launch an effect in Torq, the software automatically sets the effect routing Routing button to the most appropriate setting: Send for Reverb and Delay and Insert for the rest of the standard effects.
In Default mode, an Insert effect will be inserted between the output of the deck and the mixer. However, in Chain mode, that effect is instead chained to the output of a Send effect. That means the Chain effect does not apply to the entire song, but rather only the amount of the song passing through the Send effect. So the Send Amount control for the Send effect also determines the amount of the Chain effect you’ll hear.
You choose the effect mode in the Behavior tab of the Preferences window.
To hear the difference between Chain and Default modes, listen to the following audio clips.
In the first clip, the effects are in Default mode. A loop is playing with a Send effect — Delay — with the feedback set to 80 percent and the send amount set to 50 percent. After four bars, an Insert effect — Flanger — drops in. After another four bars, the Delay send amount increases steadily up to 100 percent, drops down to 0 and then goes back up to 100 percent, to show that the Flanger remains constant as the Delay send amount changes.
Here is the same clip as before except that the Flanger is now a Chain effect, meaning that instead of being inserted between the deck and the mixer, the Flanger is now effecting the output of the Delay. Again a Delay send effect has the feedback set to 80 percent, and the send amount set to 50 percent. After four bars, the Flanger drops in. After another four bars the send amount goes all the way up, then all the way down and then all the way up again. Notice that in Chain mode, the Flanger drops out as the Delay send amount drops down, because the Flanger is chained to the Delay’s output. The overall flange sound is also subtle, because you can hear more of the unflanged song.
To further illustrate the purpose of the chain mode, let’s look at Torq’s Repeat effect, which chops up audio into rhythmic stutters. With Delay as a Send effect and Repeat an Insert effect in Default mode, Repeat’s level is unchanged if the Delay send level fluctuates. In this clip, Repeat is invoked in Default mode as the send level of the Delay goes up and down.
In Chain mode, with Delay as a send effect, Repeat only chops up the output of the Delay, so if you prefer, you can use Repeat and other effects like it as an enhancement to the track you’re playing rather than being so overbearing that they interrupt the whole song. In this clip, Repeat is invoked in Chain mode as the send level of the Delay goes up and down. Again, the more you reduce the send level of the Delay, the less you’ll hear the Repeat effect. If you turn off the Send effect entirely, the Chain effect has no effect on the music.
These basic audio examples serve to illustrate the difference between Torq’s Default and Chain effect modes, but the sky’s the limit for where you take Chain effects in your performances. As this blog always emphasizes, practice up, and you’ll figure out how to make the Chain effects uniquely yours. And if anyone at M-Audio happens to read this, consider making it quicker to access Chain mode. Having to open the Preferences window kills some of the spontaneity.
Big Props To the crew at DJTECHTOOLS for the guide!
