Allo.

Quick introduction, love house and dance music, got my decks 2 weeks ago, been lovin em, causing me to neglect the girlfriend, they are CDJ-200s.

I guess Im posting this here cos I dont know where else to, please redirect if necessary. I have an issue when playing a CD (Burnt Audio Cd off Itunes, or nero) The CDJ takes a while to decide on the bpm of a track for instance. I may be playing a track which starts off at 158bpm then the CDJ will drop it down to a more steady 128 where it will stay, problem is when cueing in new tracks and looping them and trying to suss the incoming song;s bpm to beatmatch it with the outgoing song's i often get the wrong number, and adjust the bpm with the pitch slide all wackily. Is this a problem? or is it normal? I cant really beat match by ear yet, still difficult to sound out the beats over all the synths and fuzz. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! (Also any advice on tips on beatmatching by ear) Thanks Heapss!

1) Don't use VBR MP3 files - they have a potential to "wander".
2) Use songs with a consistent beat, something easy for the CDJ to detect the BPM of.
3) Don't rely on the numbers. Practise will make perfect.

Cool thanks Pulse. One question was is a VBR MP3 File? (Im not using data discs because they are so unruly, just like 70minute CD-R's)

Cheers

VBR = Variable Bit Rate. It's garbage, never use it.

oh ok, so how do I know if a track has variable bit rate is there something I should look out for?

Songs legally bought on the net are 320 Kbps CBR MP3, so no problem. You can buy WAV 1411Kbps too, you shouldn't encounter any problem.
But when you encode tracks from CD's make sure that your encoder is set to CBR MP3 and at least 256Kbps

To know for your actual tracks, ctrl-i or command-i with iTunes brings you ID3 tags infos and infos about the file itself. Other players should give you that kind of informations