How to · Engine DJ

Rate tracks with stars in Engine DJ.

Star ratings in Engine DJ help you surface your best tracks fast. Assign them in the app or let Vibes write them into your library during export so they are ready before you open a crate.

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Vibes library view showing track ratings and vibe tags

Rate tracks in Vibes and export ratings straight into Engine DJ.

Rate tracks with stars in Engine DJ, step by step.

Engine DJ lets you assign one to five stars to any track from the desktop app. Ratings are stored in the shared Engine DJ library database, so they are visible on Denon hardware players and standalone units that read the same database. In Engine DJ 5.0 and later, you can also set ratings directly on the hardware itself.

Open your Engine DJ library

Launch Engine DJ on your desktop. Your full track library appears in the left panel under Collection. Click All Tracks or open the crate or playlist you want to rate.

Make the Rating column visible

Look for the Rating column in the track list header row. If it is not visible, right-click directly on a track (not the column header) to access track options, or check the View options in the application. Note: Engine DJ does not have a confirmed right-click column-chooser on the header row - if the Rating column is hidden, consult the current version's settings or View menu for column visibility controls.

Click to assign stars

Click the Rating cell for a track and select the star count that matches your rating, one through five. The rating saves immediately to the Engine DJ database (m.db) with no separate save step required.

Sort by rating

Click the Rating column header to sort your track list by rating ascending or descending. This lets you quickly surface your highest-rated tracks in any crate or playlist. You can also create a Smartlist with a rating-based rule to automatically populate a list of top-rated tracks.

The catch

Rating tracks one by one inside Engine DJ is fine for small collections, but if you manage hundreds of tracks across multiple DJ apps, you end up duplicating effort every time you rebuild or sync a library.

Submerge

Kiasmos

Click a star or press 1–5

The faster way

Rate once in Vibes. Export to Engine DJ automatically.

Vibes writes star ratings directly into the Engine DJ database (m.db) on export, so every rating you assign during prep land in Engine DJ without touching a single track inside the app.

See how it works

Rate tracks inside Vibes and export with Ratings enabled under the Engine DJ export toggle.

Combine star ratings with Vibe tags, BPM filters, and Camelot key filters to find your best-fitting tracks for any set.

Ratings transfer works alongside cue points, vibe playlists, and Combinations in a single export pass.

If you manage Rekordbox, Traktor, or Serato alongside Engine DJ, Vibes keeps one canonical rating that exports to each platform.

Organize in Vibes, export to Engine DJ.

Your playlists, tags, ratings, and cue points travel back to the gear you play on, so nothing you do in Vibes is locked away.

Track 001

Artist A

128

Afterhours

Mysterious

Introspective

Track 002

Artist B

124

Cozy Floor

Peaceful

Home

Track 003

Artist C

132

Rave

Aggressive

Festival

Build & Release

Playlists

Vibes

Mood

Aggressive

Euphoric

Melancholic

Mysterious

Peaceful

Playful

Tense

Function

Arrangement

Sets

Club Night 12/28

NYE Closing Set

Rooftop 01/04

Frequently asked questions

The honest answers, including the trade-offs.

Not entirely. Vibes is a prep and library tool: it lets you rate tracks during your prep workflow and then writes those ratings into the Engine DJ database on export. You still use Engine DJ (or Denon hardware) to perform and browse your library on the night, but the rating work is done before you ever open the app.

Yes. When you export from Vibes with the Ratings toggle enabled for Engine DJ, Vibes writes the rating values directly into your Engine DJ m.db file. When you next open Engine DJ the stars appear on those tracks exactly as if you had rated them inside the app.

Yes. Engine DJ 4.x supports sorting and filtering by the Rating column in the desktop app. Once your ratings are written in, you can sort any crate by stars or use the search tools to narrow to your highest-rated tracks.

Methodology