BUG - Prime 4+ 4.2.0 Audio Dropouts

Morning everyone. I’m sure I’m not the only person experiencing a problem where seemingly randomly the player will lag slightly (think low fps), often accompanied by a short (less than a second) drop of audio. Everything seems to stay in time when this happens, as if the controller has frozen for a split second. On an £1800 almost brand new controller, this is definitely not cool. How are these bugs slipping through?

I have not found a pattern or cause for this issue. At first, I thought it was only when loading a track, but it appears to do it at random. I am almost certain the issue was present both streaming from Tidal and also local tracks (flac) on the internal drive.

Edit - The only other thing I noticed is that the issue seems more apparent if you are trying to do things very quickly. Backspinning fast to the start of a track, for example.

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I think I’ve experienced something similar but wasn’t completely sure if it was the controller or me just not listening properly. I haven’t noticed it on any recordings I’ve made though so I’ve never raised it before.

I expect I not the only one

I have the same problem and have already contacted support, but so far there has been no successful solution. It seems to me as if the RAM is reloading data and the track is buffering for a short time. This always happens during the final mix into the next track. I have now downgraded to 4.10 so that the player runs normally again.

Yeah, I’d be inclined to agree with the general theory behind this, it definitely sounds like the same issue

Yeah, let’s see what other solutions support can suggest, or whether they are aware of this problem and whether it can be solved with the next patch.

Typically when this happens, it’s due to the quality of media storage being used (i.e USB). What brand are you using? For the record, I use SanDisk (USB, SD) and Crucial SSD’s. I’ve had the most trouble-free performance and reliability out of these.

I’d expect that on 15 years ago’s storage maybe but not with a (worst case) 50mb flac file. It’s a good point though. Pretty sure it’s either Crucial or Kingston I fitted, can’t remember to be fair. Currently have a more pressing issue as the fader curve knob has a broken connection. Second unit to do so. Awful design!

Sorry to hear that. I’ve had my Prime 4 for nearly five years, use it several times weekly, and it’s issue free. I also owned my x1850 and two MC5000M’s for three years. No issues here.

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A good solution, but I can’t confirm it. I’ve tried several different drives so far, from internal drives from Western Digital, Kingston & Seagate, to USB 3 sticks from Sandisk, Kingston & Hama. The same problem with every drive. But why should it suddenly be the drive’s fault if they worked without problems before. I also re-synchronized the entire library under 4.2 to rule out that it could be the cause, unfortunately it wasn’t.

Well one theory is that with stems it’s loading 3 or 4 times the data, but that isn’t the problem at it happens with any track. Basically, the drives not the problem.

That gave me an idea. I compared tracks that I had synchronized with and without stems, the problem only occurs with tracks that are synchronized with stems. After I removed stems from these and re-synchronized, the error disappeared, except for a few tracks. I have no idea why this doesn’t happen for all of them.

Yeah, it’s definitely just a bug.

Support has now forwarded the problem to the product manager and development team. It is recommended to use a previous version in the meantime. So wait and see.