How to Visualize Your Serato DJ Set

Finding ways to visualize your music sets can be hard. You have to pay thousands of dollars and sink hundreds of hours into complicated visualization software like Adobe After Effects and Blender. SYQEL makes it easy and fast to visualize your audio from Serato DJ. SYQEL allows you to select a number of pre-made visuals that react to your audio input. SYQEL also has a visualization engine that cycles through thousands of visuals automatically. Increase your audience’s engagement with visuals and take your content to the next level.

SYQEL works seamlessly with Serato DJ! You can create mesmerizing visuals easily by routing your set’s audio to SYQEL. Let’s go over how.

You’ll only need a few things. 

1) A computer 

2) Serato DJ 

3) Google Chrome and a SYQEL account

4) (Windows Only) Virtual Audio Cable 

5) (Mac Only) Serato Audio Output MACOS

First and foremost, we need to create a SYQEL account. Head over to syqel.com to get started and create a free account.  

Once you do, you will be greeted with the main page. SYQEL runs off your browser, so you don’t need to download anything.  

SYQEL offers two different visualizer engines shown on the left-hand menu. The first is Three.js, which allows you to hand-pick pre-made visuals. The second is called Milkdrop, which cycles through hundreds of thousands of visuals automatically. 

Today we’ll be using Three.js, so we’ll be able to pick out our visuals. 

To do so, click on the settings button in the top right menu.

Once you click on the settings icon, you’ll be greeted with the settings page. 

This is where you can create a new visual playlist. 

1: Name a playlist or select an existing one.

2: Then, click on available visuals. Here you can scroll and see all the pre-made visuals you can use in your playlist.

3: When hovering over a visual it will animate to your microphone input.

4: Once you find a visual you like, simply click on it and it will automatically be added to your playlist.

Next, head over to the watermarks section of the settings page.

1: You can upload up to 9 watermarks.

2: Choose their size and positioning.

3: Don’t forget to save your watermark settings at the bottom of the page!

You will be able to cycle through these once you have your visualizer started, so you don’t have to stop the visualizer to switch through your watermarks. 

This is an optional step!

If you would like to create different frequency reactiveness templates, for different styles of music, this is a very powerful tool to use!

To start click on the frequency reactiveness section of the settings page

This will determine how your visualizer reacts to the audio. If you only want the kick and bass to affect your visuals, you can set that here. You can save your settings as an audio preset, which we can then choose when we set up our visualizer engine. 

Click on the visualizer behavior section of the settings page. You will see three options.

1: The framerate of your visuals. You can set this up to 244 frames per second.

2: How many seconds each visual lasts on screen before it cycles to the next visual in your playlist. 

3: How long the transition is to each visual. 

Make sure you save your settings at the bottom! 

Now you’ve created your first playlist and set your visuals frequency reactiveness and behavior. Our visuals are ready to go, we just need to set up our visualizer engine. 

First, let’s click on Three.js in the left-hand menu of SYQEL. You will then see 3 drop-down menus appear.

1: First is your audio input which we will go over in the next step. 

2: Second, you have your playlist selection. 

3: Third, your audio preset selection.

Let’s go over how to set up SYQEL to receive audio from Pro-Tools.

There are two main ways to route Serato’s’ audio into SYQEL. 

1: First, if you are using Realtek Desktop Audio, that will show up here in the drop-down menu. 

2: We can use a Virtual Audio Cable.

Let’s go over how to set up Serato’s audio preferences.

1: In Serato DJ, navigate to the top right and select settings (both windows and mac)      

2: Select the audio menu.                  

3: Simply select “Make audio available to other applications. 

This will prompt you to download a virtual audio cable, let’s go over how to set that up.

Download a virtual audio cable. They are easy to obtain, free, and open source. 

Download HERE

Once you have your cable installed (virtually!), the process is the same as above. Head to Serato’s audio settings and select “Make audio available to other applications”.

We are almost ready to visualize our music.

1: Select “Line 1” Virtual audio cable as your input.

2: Then, select the playlist you created earlier. 

3: Finally, if you saved any audio presets in the frequency reactiveness menu, select those here as well.   

Before we start our visualizer, let’s go over how to route your audio on MacOS.

For users who are on Mac the process is much simpler. When you click on “Make audio available to other applications” you will be prompted to download Serato Virtual Audio. Follow the given prompt and you are set to go! 

We are ready to start visualizing our sets directly from Serato DJ!

Once you have all three of your parameters selected, hit the Start Visualizer button to immediately begin the visualization. 

The visualizer will start reacting to your audio as soon as any audio is playing in FL Studio. Simply hit Stop Visualizer to stop the visualization.

Let’s go over how to record your visuals via OBS

I recommend using OBS to stream SYQEL. Download HERE. It’s super easy to set up. 

1: Launch OBS and create a new window capture source.

2: Select Window Capture.

3: Have Google Chrome be the source! You should see SYQEL in your new window source.

Back in SYQEL we can go full-screen.

1: Hide the toolbar by pressing the hotkey “h”. 

2: Click the full screen button at the top right.

3: Navigate to the top left and hit the menu button.

You are now full-screen! OBS will be able to capture your visual full screen without any cropping. 

Now, we can start recording or streaming.

Now, with Audio coming from Serato, your visual is started, and OBS is recording SYQEL, we can hit the Start Recording or Start Streaming button in OBS! Your audio source in OBS should be the same as the audio source in SYQEL. So now you’re recording your music and your visuals with no latency.

Finally, if you want to cycle to the next visual, change watermarks, or disable your watermarks while you are recording, you can do so with the help of hotkeys! 

1: “Enter” will lock a visual in place, so it will not cycle to the next one in your playlist. 

2: “Spacebar” will cycle to your next visual in your playlist. 

3: “Backspace” will cycle to your previous visual in your playlist. 

4: “h” as we described earlier, will toggle the toolbar at the top on or off. 

5: “L” will toggle your watermarks on or off. 

6: “0–9” will cycle through your uploaded watermarks.  

There you have it! 

A complete guide for streaming and creating visualized sets, directly from Serato DJ. 

For a more in depth tutorial using SYQEL, check out the complete guide HERE.