User Manual

6 The Decks
TRAKTOR 2 provides you with four virtual Decks. The Decks can be seen as the virtual
equivalent to hardware decks — just with a bunch of powerful additional features and the
flexibility of a computer-based system.
Your Decks can handle three different types of audio material, each of which is assigned
to a specific Deck flavor.
6.1 Deck Flavors
For each Deck you can choose one of the following flavor:
▪ Track Deck: A track is a song stored in digital format on your hard disk. Use this mode
if you want to play back a particular sequence of tracks — a so-called Playlist. Decks
handling tracks are called Track Decks.
For a tutorial on using Track Decks please refer to ↑15.3, Playing Your First Track.
▪ Sample Deck: A sample is a small piece of audio material. Its physical content does not
differ much from a track’s content (it’s all about audio stored in digital format on your
hard disk). There is a difference between samples and tracks in terms of size and pur
pose, though: in general, a sample is much shorter than a track, and it is aimed to be
added to (or blended into) your main mix. Notably, samples are perfect material for live
remixing! Decks handling samples are called Sample Decks. Each Sample Deck pro
vides you with four sample slots with a full set of sample-related features.
For a tutorial on using Sample Decks please refer to ↑15.8, Using Samples in Your Mix
(Not Available in TRAKTOR LE 2).
▪ Live Input: Whereas the two aforementioned audio material types are played back from
your hard disk, the Decks can also be switched to Live Inputs, in which case they trans
fer audio signals coming from the outside world to TRAKTOR’s audio processing and
mixing facilities. Whether it’s a microphone, a turntable, a keyboard or anything else, it
gets directly inserted in TRAKTOR’s signal flow.
TRAKTOR LE 2 offers only two Decks and Deck Flavors cannot be changed. In TRAKTOR
DUO 2 and TRAKTOR SCRATCH DUO 2, four Decks are available but you can only choose
Deck Flavors for the upper two Decks.
► To select a Deck Flavor, click on a Deck letter to open the drop-down menu. Now select
the desired Deck Flavor.
The Decks
Deck Flavors
TRAKTOR 2 - Application Reference - 66