Deck controls
Beat display
The beat display shows where you are inside the current bar and phrase and, when two players are linked, how far the incoming track sits from the one already playing. It counts beats, not time.
In practice
Use the beat counter to find the phrase and the waveform to find the change. They answer different questions.
Load, cue to the first downbeat, and check the counter reads one — if it does not, the grid needs nudging before anything else happens. When both players are linked, the phase meter shows the incoming track’s offset in beats, which is a far more precise instrument than watching two waveforms drift. Trust it for the count and your ears for the tempo: it will happily tell you that a wrongly gridded track is perfectly aligned.
4
Beats it counts to
32
Beats in a standard phrase
Grid
What it is only as good as
Where these come from: The 4/4 phrase arithmetic every club track is displayed against — see the time signature page for the catalog reading. For what we can measure, see when the grid is lying to you.
Why it matters
It answers a different question from the waveform. The waveform shows you what is coming; the beat display shows you where you are in the count, which is the thing you need when deciding whether to open the fader now or in eight bars. Reading it is the difference between a transition that lands on a phrase and one that lands somewhere.
It is also the fastest way to spot a beatgrid that is wrong. If the display insists you are on beat one while the record plainly disagrees, the grid is off, and you have found that out before the fader moved rather than after.
Frequently asked
Why does the beat counter disagree with the music?+
The beatgrid is placed wrong, usually because the analysis found the first transient rather than the first downbeat. Nudge the grid to the real one and the counter follows.
What is the phase meter for?+
It shows how many beats the incoming track is ahead of or behind the master, so you can correct with the jog before the fader moves rather than after the room hears it.
Is the beat display the same as the beatgrid?+
No. The beatgrid is the analysis stored with the track; the beat display is the readout of where playback currently sits against it. A wrong grid produces a confident, wrong display.
Related terms
Beatgrid
A beatgrid is the map your DJ software lays over a track marking where every beat falls. Once it is right, sync, looping and quantise all work; once it is wrong, everything built on top of it is wrong too.
Beatgrid drift
Beatgrid drift is a grid that lines up at the start of a track and slides out of alignment later — the tempo the software stored is close to the real one but not equal to it.
Phrase matching
Phrase matching aligns the structural sections of two tracks, not just their beats — so the incoming record’s first bar lands on the outgoing record’s phrase boundary and both arrangements move together.
Needle search
Needle search is the touch strip beside the jog wheel that jumps playback to whatever point you touch, mapped left to right across the whole track. It is the digital equivalent of dropping a needle.
Explore: Phrase counter · Beatgrid · Phrase · All DJ terms