Tuesday, February 21, 2012

How To Sync Traktor To Reaper

I finally got Traktor to sync with something else - Reaper - using MIDI Clock (running on Mac OS X, on the same machine). Here's how I did it..

Start Traktor.
Start Reaper.
Open Reaper Preferences, select Devices > MIDI Devices.
Double click "Traktor Virtual Input" and select "use this device" and "send midi clock to this device".
In Traktor, open the sync panel thing up the top by clicking the metronome.
Click "EXT" button - this tells traktor to listen for MIDI Clock.

Now get a track (with an accurate grid!) loaded into a traktor deck.
In Reaper, have something that has a beat set up (i.e. a loop from a recording, midi loop, place some audio in the timeline).

Press play in Reaper so your loop plays forever.
In Traktor, the sync panel should show a tempo similar to the tempo in Reaper. You'll notice that it wavers about a bit.
Press play on your gridded track and click Sync.

The Traktor deck should be roughly in sync with Reaper! (In fact, it is loose enough that it sounds a bit like a real DJ is nudging it.)

Questions:
- If we send the MIDI over a network or MIDI connection to a different machine, will this sync well enough to bother with?
- Can we sync two copies of Traktor (on different machines) this way?

If you have problems (or corrections), comment below so we can determine what I really did to make this work.