Scratch Live is vinyl emulation software that operates exclusively with Rane hardware. Mix and scratch digital music on your computer with Serato Control Vinyl or Control CDs. We've been hard at work making Serato DJ Pro the best DJ software on the planet. View all the pricing information for Serato DJ Lite and Serato DJ Pro products. Free trial, buy or subscribe. Aug 20, 2008 I really want to be able to practice with all of my tracks without the need for burning piles of CDs. So, I'm looking to either purchase Traktor Scratch or Serato Scratch Live. My friend told me that Serato is quite simple, really only enabling you to get your digital tracks to your CDJs and nothing much.

How Much Is Serato Scratch Live Without
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Serato Scratch Live Versions

When you want to take your DJ skills to new heights it pays to know a little bit about the types of software that are on the market. There are two mains options: Serato DJ Pro and Traktor Pro, so to make sure you end up with your perfect match we’re going to take a closer look at both and see how they get on.

Let’s start with a little bit of background on both.

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Serato is the creation of cofounders Steve West and A.J. Bertenshaw and their story began way back in 1997. This was the year that Steve was attending Auckland University in New Zealand, and he stumbled on something that was set to change the art of DJing forever.

He was learning to play the bass guitar to give himself a break from his studies and wanted to be able to slow down the complicated bass solos he was trying to emulate so that he could clearly make out each individual note.

The problem Steve found was that by simply slowing the playback speed he’d unintentionally alter the pitch of the notes.

This was no good because it wouldn’t give him an authentic feel for what was actually being played. All he wanted was a slower piece of music that sounded exactly the same. There were a few rudimentary pieces of software available at the time but they didn’t do a great job and often took a whole day to do very little of note.

Ever the innovator, Steve turned to mathematics for the answers he’d been looking for and used his knowledge to build a unique signal processing algorithm. This finally allowed him to alter the playback speed of any audio file without having to put up with unintentional modifications to the pitch.

Over the next 7 years Steve and A.J. tried to introduce their new idea to companies all over the world with varying results.

When they realised they were speaking to the wrong people they decided to turn their attention to the world of DJing and developed a technique for scratching with a mouse off of a CD. This eventually led to the release of Serato Scratch Live in 2004 and scratch DJs haven’t looked back since. You can check out the latest version of Serato Pro DJ here.

Traktor kicked off the 21st century with a bang and has since gone on to become one of the biggest pieces of software in the world, but how did it all begin?

Back when it was first released in 2001 Traktor was only available for use on PCs.

The early years saw a productive partnership between Native Instruments and Stanton Magnetics that was principally geared towards vinyl emulation, scratching technology, and expanding the range of hardware that could be used with Traktor.

When this collaboration came to its natural conclusion in 2006 a decision was taken to shorten the name to make it more appealing to the mass market. From then on Traktor DJ Studio 3 was known simply as Traktor.

Traktor Pro then followed a couple of years later as did Traktor Scratch Pro with its added DVS functionality. These innovations allowed for quick and easy time-coded control of CDs and vinyl inside a single software suite.

Over the years Traktor has continued to expand and release new software suites under its brand. 2010 saw the debut of Traktor LE which was a budget option aimed at entry level users who would gain little benefit from paying for a large amount of specialist advanced features.

It became commonplace to find Traktor LE included with a wide range of MIDI devices. This allowed the name to continue to grow as more and more DJs not only sought it out for advanced sampling and looping, but also learned to DJ on it from the day they started out. You can check out the latest release of Traktor Pro here.

Serato is known principally as a highly detailed piece of software with a slightly geeky style that is used by a whole host of scratch DJs. By being able to delve into the fine details of how harmonics are treated during scratching,

DJs are able to rapidly speed up and slow down their music without any artefacts arising due to changes in pitch.

One of the big advantages of going down the Serato route is that it allows you to pair up with Rane hardware and import your entire music library instantly. This allows you to scratch and sample any track with the click of a button without having to shuffle through your collection and manually upload each track that you’re interested in.

The real brains behind Serato is the complex mathematics that are used in the fast signal processing algorithms.

How Much Is Serato Scratch Live Without

Whilst the foundations were laid way back in 1997, Serato continue to innovate and fine tune their offering so that it works with an ever-expanding range of hardware.

Not only that, but due to the inherent fast response of the algorithms they use you can scratch and record in real time without having to spend hours afterwards trying to pick out the true sound from the distorted or frequency shifted harmonics.

This makes Serato a great choice for DJs looking to experiment with their music, and specifically for scratch DJs where the ability to improvise on the spot is crucial to performing.

Traktor is just as multi-purpose as Serato, but as with every product it has its own specific strengths too. Whilst it is a little less geeky in its implementation, the maths that allows you to chop and change any song without altering the underlying harmonics is still present.

Its real strength lies in sampling so that you can easily pick out key sound layers from other tracks and mix them in to create something unique and original.

By being able to layer sounds and identify potential interferences between harmonics you can preserve the tonal independence of each part of any given track. This makes it a great option for those of you who want to be able to create a multi-layered sound that feels like it really speaks to the crowd and allows every listener to be able to enjoy each layer and tone.

Another aspect where Traktor is particularly strong is looping over and over again. In other pieces of software this can be quite a laborious and time-consuming process that can’t be sped up in anyway. Traktor approaches things a little differently and hides a lot of subtlety and complexity under a simple and intuitive GUI.

This isn’t to say that it cuts out functionality to make the user experience a little less daunting at first. What it really does is make what used to be a complex process simple and straightforward for DJs of all abilities.

This approach is one of the principle reasons why suites such as 3 LE have taken off to such a great extent. Without the intuitive aspect of the GUI many DJs would find looping much harder to pick up than they do.

Serato does a good job of supporting most of the major brands on the market when it comes to powerful yet easy to use hardware. Rane, Pioneer, Mixars, Roland are just a few of the major brands that are supported by various versions of Serato software.

To ensure you get the perfect fit for your setup it’s important to make sure that the hardware you buy works with the specific version of Serato that you’ve had your eye on.

Take the Roland DJ-505 for example. It’s designed to be paired with DJ Pro and can also be used with Serato DVS if you want to be able to scratch vinyls and CD off one setup.

This video is a great introduction to the power of Serato compatible hardware like the 505.

The interfacing process is quick and easy for such complex bits of tech which