Serato DJ finally learns how to follow real drummers

Have you ever been in the situation where you had a senior audience and you wanted to use the old-fashioned funk or disco tracks of the 70’s from your collection but the beatgrid was giving you headaches? The constant jog-wheel nudging, the sweat and tears at the end of the set and the perpetual next-day search online for a re-drum/re-edit version? Well, this is not an issue anymore. After many years of requests and discussions on forums, Serato has finally listened to the worldwide DJ community and released a game-changing feature in the public beta of Serato DJ 5.0 - Lucid Beatgrids.

The new analysis system is designed to better handle tracks with changing or fluctuating tempos. Instead of applying a largely fixed beatgrid across an entire song, Lucid Beatgrids can follow tempo variations throughout the song. The feature could also improve the accuracy of beat-synchronized effects, loops and Sync when mixing music that was not recorded to a strict click track. This is useful for DJs working with rock, funk, disco, soul and older recordings featuring live drums. In these tracks, small tempo changes often caused conventional beatgrids to drift away from the actual beat.

Serato DJ 5.0 Beta also introduces Open Streaming, which allows the supported streaming services like Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify, Beatport and Soundcloud to be accessed within the same session, as well as Cue Loops for Serato DJ Pro users.

The downside? Tracks analyzed in previous Serato versions need to be re-analyzed in Serato 5.0 to use Lucid Beatgrids. 

As the software is still in public beta, it is better to thoroughly test the new analysis engine before relying on it during live performances.