Hot Cue vs Memory Cue

What is a hot cue?

A hot cue is a saved point that plays. Press the pad and the track runs from that position, with no second step and no waiting. Rekordbox gives you 8 hot cue slots per track in EXPORT mode, labelled A to H, and 16 in PERFORMANCE mode, labelled A to P. Serato DJ Pro and Engine DJ Desktop both store 8 per track on pads 1 to 8. djay Pro stores 16 cue points and splits them into two banks of eight.

Because it fires instantly, a hot cue belongs on the points you need under pressure: the first beat you would ever mix from, the drop, a vocal you want to drag back in, a saved loop. Hot cues are also the layer club hardware exposes. Rekordbox's manual says plainly that hot cues can be called out and played on DJ equipment, and that how many you can reach depends on the equipment.

What is a memory cue? Rekordbox and the 10-slot pool

A memory cue is a saved point that does not play. Call it and, in rekordbox's own words, the playback position jumps to the cue point and pauses. You decide when the track starts. One track holds up to 10 saved cue points, and saved loops come out of the same 10 slots, so a track carrying four memory loops has six memory cue slots left.

You can also step through them in order from wherever the playhead sits, forward or backward, which is what turns a handful of markers into a map. The search box version of the question, "what is memory cue", rekordbox answers in its own manual under the MEMORY CUE panel: saved cue and loop points, each with a time, an optional comment and a marker on the waveform.

Memory cues travel, too. Save them in rekordbox, export the track to a USB drive, and the saved cue points come with it for your performance on the DJ player. That is why so much club prep lives in this layer instead of in the pads.

Memory cue vs hot cue: what each one does in rekordbox

The practical difference is not speed, it is intent. A hot cue is a decision you have already made and might act on in two seconds. A memory cue is a note to yourself about how the track is built.

The same job in other DJ apps

Outside rekordbox the two-layer idea mostly disappears. Serato DJ Pro saves 8 cue points per track and every one of them is triggered from a pad; its temp cue is the closest thing to a marker you do not play, and that one is deliberately not saved to the file. Traktor Pro 4 keeps 8 hotcue slots, but a stored point can be given a type: a Load point sends the deck straight there when the track loads, and Fade In and Fade Out points drive automated mixing. VirtualDJ keeps everything in a POI editor, where a hot cue is one type among Load Points, Remix Points, Automix Points and saved loops.

So if you prep in one app and play in another, expect the memory layer to be the part that does not survive the trip. Anything you want to keep should exist as a hot cue somewhere.

Setting one of each, in practice

The order matters more than the clicks. Map the structure first, then decide which of those points you would ever press mid-mix. For the full click path with screenshots, see set cue points in rekordbox.

Changing hot cue colors

Color is what makes a pad readable in a dark booth. In rekordbox, right-click a hot cue pad to type a comment and pick a color, and right-click a saved time in the MEMORY CUE panel to comment on that one. Preferences also carry a global HOT CUE color scheme: CDJ shows hot cues in green and hot loops in amber, COLD1 uses blue and green, COLD2 a blue gradation, and COLORFUL a multicolor set.

Serato DJ Pro lets you name and color cue points the same way. Engine DJ colors them by right-clicking the pad. Traktor Pro 4 colors by type rather than by choice: the floating cue point is white, a stored cue point is blue, Fade In and Fade Out are orange, and a loop is green.

• One color for the point you would load and mix from, on every track
• One for the drop, so it is the same pad position in your head every time
• One for vocal entries, if you cut and drop vocals live
• Nothing decorative. A color that means two things means nothing

Where the name comes from: memory cues in psychology

The DJ term is borrowed. In psychology, retrieval is the process of bringing stored information back into conscious thought, and retrieval cues are the prompts that set it off. The standard retrieval psychology example is the tip of the tongue moment: the name is in there, but nothing is pointing at it until somebody gives you the first letter.

Two ideas from the retrieval cues psychology literature map onto track prep neatly. Retrieval cues priming describes an early prompt making later recall faster, which is what a mix-in marker does to a transition you have not played yet. Retrieval cue failure is the opposite: the information is stored, nothing points at it, and you end up scrubbing a waveform with a full floor watching.

A memory cue definition that fits both fields: a stored signal that points back at something you already know. In memory cues psychology the types of memory cues are usually grouped as context, state and semantic, meaning where you were, how you felt, and what the idea connects to. A retrieval cue example from outside the booth is a smell that returns a whole childhood kitchen. A DJ memory cue example is narrower and far more useful: a marker at 1:32 carrying the comment 'vocal in'.

Where Vibes fits

Vibes does not set cue points, and it does not play to DJ hardware; export goes through your DJ app. What it does is the part that happens before the markers. It analyzes BPM, key and the energy curve, and it detects sections such as intro, buildup, drop, breakdown and outro, plus lead and vocal regions. Open a track in rekordbox with that structure already known and you are placing memory cues at points you can name, instead of hunting for them. See track analysis.