Beatgrids · 7 min read

How to fix a beatgrid in Rekordbox

A wrong beatgrid breaks everything built on top of it — sync, quantize, cues, loops. Here are the three ways grids go wrong, how to fix each one manually in Rekordbox, and when it's worth automating.

Problem 1: half or double BPM

The classic: a 174 BPM drum & bass track analysed at 87, or a 70 BPM hip-hop track read as 140. The grid lines land on beats, but every other one — so quantize pulls cues to the wrong beat and sync drifts against other tracks. In Rekordbox's grid edit panel, use the /2 or x2 button to halve or double the BPM. This is the easiest grid fix and the most common.

Problem 2: the downbeat is in the wrong place

The BPM is right, but beat 1 of each bar sits on beat 2 or 4. Everything "works" until you phrase-mix and your drops land a beat early or late. Find a clear first beat of a bar (kick drums at the start of a phrase are your friend), then use Rekordbox's grid shift tools to move the grid so beat 1 lands there.

Problem 3: the track drifts

The grid is perfect at the start and a beat out by the outro. This means the track's tempo actually changes — common with older recordings, live drummers and some edits. A single BPM can't describe it. In Rekordbox you can adjust the BPM at the point the drift starts, creating a second grid section. It's fiddly, and each drift point needs its own adjustment.

Don't forget your cues

Cues and loops are stored against the grid. Fix the grid after setting cues and they'll all be in the old positions — re-snap them or set them again. This is why the correct order is always: grid first, cues second.

Fixing grids across a whole library

Manual grid fixing is a few minutes per track — fine for one problem track, painful for a hundred. CueStem scans your library locally, flags the tracks whose grids look wrong (half or double tempo, drifting BPM, uncertain downbeat) and explains why. Half/double tempo fixes are free and instant, and your cues re-snap to the corrected grid automatically. For the stubborn ones, an optional AI Grid Fix re-tracks the beat and downbeat — only the tracks you choose are uploaded. Either way, the corrected grids export straight into Rekordbox with your cues and loops.

Honest caveat: no automatic analysis is perfect on every track. CueStem flags lower-confidence results so you know which ones to spot-check by ear before a gig.