Numark Mix Track Platinum Instructional Tutorial and Review
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My name is Brennan Galley and I am the Canadian Technical Sales Manager for inMusic Canada. I tour Canada coast to coast and show musicians how to use innovative instruments, DJ and Music production equipment. One of the companies I represent is Numark.
Numark Mix Track Platinum Introduction.
The Mix track platinum is the newest member of the Mixtrack family from Numark. It is a DJ controller that comes with Serato DJ Intro. Both platters have adaptive capacitive touch. Capacitive touch is used when you touch the deck. Doing this will dead stop the playback of your song and allow you to scratch the track inside of Serato.
There are three controllers in the Mixtrack family from Numark. There’s the Mixtrack 3, the Mixtrack Pro 3 and the Mixtrack Platinum.
The Mixtrack 3 is a straight up DJ controller. It does not have a sound card inside of it. What this means is the software will use your computer audio output to play music. This means you won’t be able to have a separate headphone output to preview your songs. However, there are ways to mix without headphones. This is demonstrated in 03. Mix Track Platinum Blending Songs Without Headphones.
The Mixtrack Pro 3 works the same as mixtrack 3. However, it does have a sound card in it. There is a stereo RCA output on the back and headphone out on the front left.
The Mixtrack Platinum includes a sound card like the Mixtrack Pro 3. In addition it has LCD screen’s inside of the jog wheels to give you detailed track information. It has volume control for each individual track, and allows you to have control over 4 decks. The Mix track 3 and Mixtrack Pro 3 give control for 2 decks.
All three members of the family work the same so this video series will help you get started with the Mixtrack 3, the Mixtrack Pro 3 and of course the Mixtrack Platinum.
01. Loading Tracks into Serato
When you load songs into Serato DJ you need to do some preparation and organize your music. In the bottom left of serato there is a bin section. Create a new Bin. Rename it and than drag your music content into this folder. As Serato loads the track it will analyze the key, and the BPM of the track. It does this really well with songs that have a strong beat. After the track is analyzed you can manually put cue points into the song. This will give you locations that you can jump to so that you can extend and remix the song. If you press an unassigned cue button while the song is playing back it will mark the location inside of Serato. If you want to erase a Cue point that you have created, hold down shift and push the cue point that you want removed. This video shows you how to navigate loading a sound inside of Serato using the controls of the Mixtrack Platinum.
02. Blending Songs
The Mixtrack Platinum has a headphone out. This means that you can preview the music through your headphones before playing them out of the main speakers. This is great for figuring out track pitch and track timing on the fly. If either of these factors aren’t right than your mix will sound wrong. This video shows you how to Mix two songs together using headphones.
03. Blending Songs Without Headphones
When you are mixing songs without headphones it really comes down to your preparedness. If you have organized a set list inside of the bins in Serato, you will know that track to track everything will sound right. A lot of the tracks that I DJ with are ones that I have made. This means that I can intentionally write songs in certain keys so that I can be lazier as a DJ. Serato helps you identify what songs will sound good together. It will tell you what the key is of your song with a numb system. The numbers go from 1 to 12 and there is an A version and a B version. A means Minor Key, B means Major key. Any song that is one number away from your current song will sound good blended together.
This video will show you how to use the outer rim of the jog wheel to tempo match song using visual cues inside of Serato.
04. Pad Mode – Manual Loop
The Mixtrack Platinum gives you some additional controls for your song. With Manual Loop you set your own in and out points.
This video shows you how to enter the Manual Loop Mode and how to set an in point, an out point, and how to kill the loop. One thing that I failed to show in this series is how the kill button can be pressed again and repurposed to recall the loop that you most previously had set up.
05. Pad Mode – Auto Loop
When Serato analyzes your songs it figures out the BPM. If you want the timing locked down when looping your song, use Auto Loop.
This video demonstrates how to access the Auto Loop setting and how to use the pad controls to lengthen or shorten your loop point. Press the Highlighted pad to turn off the loop.
06. Pad Mode – Sampler
Inside of Serato you can load samples. These can be from a full length songs or single hit. I like to use them for single sounds so I can instantly finger drum over any song. When you first turn on the sampler it will set up for the Main output (labeled M when you drop down the sampler Window.)
In this video I show you how to open the Sampler window and how to assign the audio output. If you pick a channel output for the sampler, instead of the Main audio output, you can use the filter to change the sound of the samples.
07. Scratching and Cue Playback
The Mixtrack family of controllers come with Capacitive touch platters. What this means is that when you touch the top of the platters the track comes to a dead stop. If you keep touching the top of the platters and move the wheel back and forth it will scratch the track.
This video shows how to use the cue pads and the capacitive touch platters to scratch your track.
08. Effects
The Mixtrack platinum gives you tactile control over the effects inside of Serato. If you hold down shift and press the effect on off button you can toggle through the different effects that you have available on your computer. The ribbon control acts as an effect amount control and is simultaneously applied to all three effect slots.
This video show you how to apply effects to the music playing back in Serato.
09. Jog Wheel Display
The Mixtrack Platinum comes Jog Wheel displays. These give you critical track information and allow you to spend more time DJ’ng and less time looking at your computer.
This video shows you what the track information means and how to use it to help your performance.
The Mixtrack Platinum is an affordable controller loaded down with features. If you have any questions or would like other subjects covered please let me know. If you would like to set up a SKYPE tutorial please send an email to fiercemule@gmail.com
I’m having a problem with my mixtack platinum, only one jog wheel will go into scratch mode the other won’t is there some certain way to set it so that it does, the other wheel is there with no problem but when I touch the one wheel it will just slow the record down like I can just drag it backwards to align the speed but not to scratch with it. Any help you could give me on this would be wonderful.
Hi Ricardo, There is a button labeled ‘wheel’ It’s just above the pads on the inside of both the left and right deck. Each deck has its own wheel button. When this button has the red LED Light on, touching the top of the jog wheel will stop the track and allow you to scratch. When it is off than it will slow down or speed up the track so that you can get two songs sync together. I hope this helps. If you continue to have problems then reach out to Numark Support. You can get ahold of them here http://numark.com/support
Thanks,
Brennan.
thank you for your reply, I’ve tried that with the light lit and not lit and still no luck, it works like that for the one side but not the other, I’m getting ready to send it in to Numark because that’s how I thought it should have been, I guess mines is just busted, sucks too because I just got it in the mail 2 days ago, real bummer, now I still have to do without and go back to the Mixtrack Pro, thank you for the help though.