Ask ten DJs whether a section marker should be a hot cue or a memory cue and you'll get eleven answers. The debate is real, but most of the heat comes from the fact that only one DJ app even has the distinction - and that's exactly where libraries get messy when you move between platforms. Here's how the two actually differ, and how Lexicon keeps them straight whether you're a one-app DJ or someone who jumps between Rekordbox, Serato, Engine, Traktor, VirtualDJ or djay Pro.
Hot cues vs. memory cues: the real difference
A hot cue is a trigger. You drop it on a pad, you hit it, the track jumps there and plays. Eight slots on most hardware, instant, performance-facing. A memory cue is a marker. It doesn't sit on a pad - it shows up as a navigation point you scroll to on a CDJ, a place to set your load-in, your next mix point, or the drop you want to be ready for. Memory cues are effectively unlimited; hot cues are scarce.
The catch: memory cues only exist in Rekordbox. Serato DJ Pro, Engine DJ, Traktor, and Virtual DJ have hot cues and nothing else (Technically VirtualDJ does support "marker only" cues but you can't easily navigate them). So "when should I use a memory cue?" is really a Rekordbox question. If you ride CDJs off a USB, memory cues are how you navigate a track you didn't pre-load onto pads - keep them for structural markers (intro, drop, outro) and reserve your eight hot cues for the sections you actually trigger live. If you're on a controller in Serato or Engine, the question is moot: everything is a hot cue, and your only real decision is how to spend those eight slots.
How Lexicon stores cues: one pool, not two
This is the part that trips people up. Lexicon does what every DJ app except Rekordbox does - internally there are only hot cues. When you import from Rekordbox, your memory cues are merged into the same cue pool as your hot cues. There's no separate "memory cue" object sitting in your Lexicon library that you edit independently. You can mark cues as memory cue for Rekordbox export only.
If you specifically want a cue to land as a memory cue back in Rekordbox, you turn on the DJ-app-specific cue feature in Lexicon's settings and tag it accordingly by clicking the small "M" button on a cue. Otherwise the distinction is handled automatically by the import and sync options below.
Importing without losing your memory cues
When you bring a Rekordbox library in, Lexicon gives you a Hot- or memory cues choice on import (Sync to Rekordbox manual):
- Both - imports your hot cues and your memory cues, merging the memory cues into the hot-cue pool. This drops duplicate cues on the same timestamp.
- Only hot cues - ignores memory cues entirely.
- Only memory cues - ignores hot cues entirely.
For most people, Both is the right call. The one thing to know: if a hot cue and a memory cue sit at the exact same timestamp, Lexicon keeps one and drops the duplicate. That's usually fine - two cues on the same beat is redundant anyway - but if you've deliberately stacked a colored hot cue on top of a memory cue at the identical position, expect to lose one of them on the way in.
The round trip is the clever part. When you sync back to Rekordbox with the Cue Destination set to Default, Lexicon converts the cues that started life as Rekordbox memory cues back into memory cues at the same position, and sends the rest as hot cues. Your original layout survives the trip. If you'd rather force everything one way, you also get All to hot cue, All to memory cue, and All to hot and memory cue to copy every cue into one bucket or both.
Cross-app conversion: what survives, what changes
Move a Rekordbox library to Serato or Engine DJ and the memory-cue concept simply has nowhere to land - those apps don't have it. Lexicon converts everything to hot cues, which means a track with a fistful of memory cues can suddenly overflow the eight hot-cue slots Serato and Engine give you. Anything past eight still exports, but the deck will only show the first eight, so it pays to think about which markers actually earn a pad before you convert.
Colors are the other thing that shifts. Cue colors don't map one-to-one between apps, so Lexicon has a Change to nearest color option in the sync settings that snaps each cue to the closest color the target app supports. Engine DJ in particular works from a narrower palette and ignores greyscale tones, so turning that option on saves you a library full of blank or wrong-colored cues. Going the other direction, syncing from Traktor - which doesn't store cue colors at all - can overwrite the colors already in Lexicon, so treat Traktor as a one-way street for color unless you've checked your settings.
The practical takeaway for multi-app DJs: design your cue strategy around the lowest common denominator. Eight meaningful, well-colored hot cues travel everywhere. A sprawling mix of memory cues and hot cues only fully survives inside Rekordbox.
Keeping them tidy across a big library
Once your cues live in one place, Lexicon's batch tools are where the cleanup happens - and this is the real argument for managing cues here instead of in each DJ app one track at a time.
Recipes (right-click tracks → Edit → Recipes) are bulk operations across a whole selection:
- Quantize Cues snaps every off-grid cue to the nearest beat - only works on tracks that already have an accurate beatgrid, so analyze first.
- Delete-cue recipes can strip cues whose label contains specific text - perfect for clearing out, say, leftover Mixed In Key energy markers across thousands of tracks at once.
- Color recipes let you standardize or replace cue colors in bulk, which is how you fix those black memory-cue imports before they hit Serato.
The Cue Point Generator (right-click tracks → Use → Generate Cue Points) goes the other way: it has an advanced algorithm that detecst the drop, breakdown, and fade-out, then lays down cues exactly where, named how, and colored how you specify. Run it across a selection and a whole crate comes back with consistent, sensibly placed cues.
When auto-detection misses - live edits, mashups, anything with an unusual structure - Custom Cue Anchors is the escape hatch. Enable Advanced Options on the Cue Point Generator screen and switch it on, and instead of guessing, Lexicon uses anchor cues you've placed (your own "Drop #1", breakdown, intro, outro) and instantly applies your generator template relative to them. There's a hotkey to re-apply your last template to a new selection, which turns per-track cue work into a few keystrokes (Guide: the fastest way to set your cues).
So the hot-vs-memory argument? Have it if you ride CDJs - that's the only place it changes what you do. Everywhere else, it's eight hot cues and a tidy template. Lexicon's job is to make sure that whichever camp you're in, your cues land where you meant them when the library moves.
