How to make an AI track hard-start on beat one

Keep Hard start on bar 1 on under 06 · DJ mix edit in the Club Ready Music studio; it is on by default. It adds "hard start on beat one with no pre-roll" to the style prompt, and after the render Club Ready Music trims everything before the first sample above −45 dBFS, so the first kick sits at 0:00. Because the cue points and the Serato beat grid are computed from bar counts starting at zero, a hard start is what makes them land where your DJ software expects.

Steps

1. Leave the toggle on

Find the four toggles under the bar rows in 06 · DJ mix edit. Hard start on bar 1 is the third. On a phone it is on step 4, DJ settings. Turn it off only for ambient intros where you want a swell before the beat and do not care about grid alignment.

2. Pair it with a drums-only intro

A hard start works best when bar 1 is a clear kick. With Drums-only intro on, the first thing in the file is percussion, so the trim lands on a transient and the grid locks straight away. See get a drums-only intro.

3. Avoid pre-roll in the brief

Do not write "starts with a riser" or "fades in" in 02 · Vibe. Those contradict the hard start and the model may produce a swell that the −45 dBFS trim keeps, because a swell is louder than silence. Write "opens on the kick" if you want to reinforce it.

4. Render and check 0:00

Play the take from the start. The first beat should be audible immediately. The waveform in the result panel begins at the trimmed start, and the start cue at 0 ms is the first entry in the cue list.

5. Check the grid in your DJ software

Load the MP3 or WAV. The first beat marker should sit on the first kick and the intro end and first drop cues should fall on downbeats. If the grid drifts, the model's tempo wandered rather than the start being wrong; see the common problems below.

6. Re-render if the start is soft

If the file opens on a quiet hat or a pad rather than a kick, the model started softly. Re-render with "first beat is a full kick on bar 1" in the brief, or choose the other take.

Tips

• −45 dBFS is quiet. Room-tone level hiss stays below it; a hat or shaker is above it. The trim removes digital silence and very faint lead-in, not musical content.
• Hard start happens before loudness normalisation. The trim is the first step of mastering, then loudness, then mono bass and bass fade.
• It is a DJ default, not a radio one. For a track you will share more than mix, a short pickup can sound nicer; turn the toggle off for that render.
• WAV and MP3 are trimmed identically. Both come from the same processed audio, so cues match across formats.
• DJ edits follow the same rule. If you later make a DJ edit from an uploaded song, the first beat is detected and the intro is built from it.

Common problems

There is still a gap before the first beat. The model produced a very quiet intro above −45 dBFS, for example a pad swell. Re-render with "opens on the kick, no pad before the beat", or trim in your DJ software.

The beat grid is off even though the start is right. The model's tempo drifted from the BPM you set. Models follow BPM approximately. Set the grid manually from the first beat in your DJ software, or pick the take that holds tempo better.

The track starts mid-sound. The trim found a transient that was not a kick, for example a click. Rare; re-render, and check the brief for "vinyl crackle" or similar noise textures that start before the beat.

I turned Hard start off and the cues are late. Expected. Cues are computed from 0:00. Turn it back on or move the cues in your DJ software.