I think I've had enough.

I've been stuck in a needy relationship that's not going anywhere. It's just take take take, and I'll be honest, I've had enough. Yeah there's been some good times, but now things are stale. I'm sick of the promises, the glitches, the insensitivity, the assumptions, and the lies. It's not me, it's you. And before you ask, yes, there is someone else. 

Traktor, I'm leaving you. 

For so long, I've put up with your awkwardness, given you all my time, and hoped that one day, you and I would work in perfect harmony. But now, I've given up on that dream. 

The final straw came when I realized that even though I'd put many hundreds of hours into organising my collection, setting cue points, loop points, and beatgridding all my tracks, that none of this could be transferred to Traktor Pro. Not only that, but I'm going to have to change my whole way of working. Again. Traktor 3 was almost perfect the way it was, just a couple of little tweaks here and there, a sampler, and it would have been there. But no, that's not good enough, apparently what we need is a complete overhaul. That in itself, I'd be fine with if it added something to my experience of DJing with it. But instead, things have actually been taken out, rather than extra features added. And that wouldn't be so bad if they weren't features that were actually nessessary to DJ with. 

So now, I face a tough decision. Do I stay with Traktor 3, knowing that how I have it now is never going to progress any further, hoping that one day, Traktor Pro is going to emerge as something actually worth using - in the mean time updating 20k tracks to the new format, just because the developers didn't see the need for their loyal customers to be able to make a seamless transition between the two versions? Or do I head to Ableton, where I'd still have to put in the hours updating my collection, but be able to rest safe in the knowledge that the interface is going to stay familiar for the foreseeable future, and I'll likely not have to do all this work all over again? The reasons for staying with Traktor have been getting less and less clear for me, and with yesterday's announcement of Ableton Live 8, there's now very little that's keeping me using it. I've been toying with my DJ layout for Live for a while now, and every time I have a play with it, I discover new things I can do. With Traktor, I always feel like I'm fighting against the software, rather than working with it. If NI have a change of heart, and start listening to their users rather than dictating to them what they need, my Traktor collection will still be there, but as of today, I'm starting work on getting everything organized in Ableton.