Last Saturday in the middle of a session when I had been there for about 3 hours. Suddenly the music went off. I looked to see if it was because the power had gone out or any fault with the speakers but no, everything was ok, the prime 4 light was on and it seemed to be sending sound to the speakers. But it wasn’t and then a horrendous digital noise almost destroyed the speakers. With over 400 people I had to reboot the prime 4 and it continued to make this digital noise like a glitch. In addition to the PA it was also coming out of the booth monitor and the Zone output. I restarted it about 2-3 times and until I disconnected it completely from the power (removing the power cable) it worked again.
I was testing version 3.3 during the previous days at home and it seemed to work fine.
This is already the second time that denon prime 4 has left me without a performance. The previous one was with version 3.0.1.
Now I have 2 events this week and I’m trembling that it will happen again.
Every venue is different, I’m not a resident dj, I perform in different venues for companies and corporate events and festivals.
The other time the prime 4 was out, it was when it connected to Tidal it gave an error and you couldn’t load any songs from your hard drive or usb and you had to turn it off and on again.
Another time with version 3.2 it happened to me that the artwors didn’t work and sometimes you couldn’t load a song on one of the 4 channels and after a while it would let you.
I see too many bugs for a “professional” standole when you are live for a lot of people or a company event it can’t fail. I’m seriously thinking about changing brands because it’s not professional at all these failures.
These are failures that have happened during this season.
I also have strange bugs sometimes, whatever the firmware, the file or the format mp3/flac. It comes when I start the Prime4, I load a title, play it for 1 or 2 minutes, then stop and leave the Prime idle for a while without doing anything. When I come back, the file doesn’t start, if I load another one, same thing it refuses to start. I have to stop and restart the Prime4 and then it works… Pretty bad when you know you have a gig just after with hundreds people
At the show we have some connection boxes that indicate the current that arrives and the consumption.
I also looked at how the current was coming in and in principle everything was correct.
A place where they usually do events.
I have another unit in case it fails, but you are in the middle of the song and it starts to produce some very loud and unpleasant noises, at least 3 minutes have passed between the time you react and change.
Of course I always have an ipad with songs to play instantly.
But what I want to say if someone else has happened with version 3.3.0 of engine?
It sounded like an audio sync problem with the sound card.
It’s great that they put so many features but the basic one, that it’s stable and doesn’t crash in the middle of a session, they don’t take care of it.
I don’t care about having 2 million fx or a very cool touch if it leaves us out in the middle of the session.
Whilst it’s easy to point at the firmware, it’s important not to rule out a single unit with some sort of local issue or a one-off hardware fault, rather than just scapegoating the firmware.
Of course, it can also be a hardware failure, not just a software failure.
As for the power failure, it is a bit unlikely. Since we go with our current distributors and stabilisers but you might know as well. Although I’ve had the prime 4 since February and in some previous versions of Engine also the pitch has made the fool (more people have told me about it) and various problems.
I use it about 6-7 hours a week approximately.
I was just asking users what had happened to them too, and I’ve already seen that several of them have also had problems with the new Engine 3.3.
Hopefully version 3.4 will be released soon to fix these glitch problems and digital glitches with the sound card.
Personally, I would send the reader urgently to after-sales service!
I had this type of suspicious noise on my DJM800 console more than once, I had it checked twice, they could not find the problem because it was occurring randomly, then the console fell broken down in the middle of the wedding evening (luckily it happened around 3:30 a.m. and the owner of the place required the music to stop at 4 a.m. max).
My console went to the after-sales service, and it was the DSP processor that was broken.
I would have had it for €400 excluding tax and without labor!
Well 1st thing i would say if you arnt already doing it is bring a quality power conditioner at minimum and even better one of those plus battery back up system that can clean up signwaves as well. These are just good habits to use for any high end computer or audio gear, better to be safe then sorry…
2nd ive hand weird issuses wirh the prime 4+ and some thumb drives causing weird audio problems or drop outs. These days i stick to a high quality fast samsung T7 drive… but i plan on getting something of the same level to put inturnally as well. I think quality drives halps prevent some failures.
Hope u find the problem but it sounds like it might be hard to reproduce.
Hi, I already use a quality power safe,
about usb and disks. I use a samsung t7 1tb and a sand disk extreme pro 512gb usb.
I’ve been using it for a while now and depending on the firmware it has been giving me more or less problems. The current version is giving a lot of failures to people. What I see is that it seems that some people feel bad that it is said. There is no need to be a hater or fan boy here. It is for me a working tool and if it fails, it is commented to be able to fix it as soon as possible.
Personally I am quite disenchanted with Denon, I bought the prime about a year ago with great enthusiasm and it has given me some major headaches, for me that as I say I live to be a dj, the software engine is light years away from others to organize and prepare the session. I haven’t used other standalone systems, I don’t know if they have the same faults that I’ve found. It’s a pity because if it worked properly it would be ideal. Not to mention that the Prime 4 when you send timecode to resolume arena and use the ableton link for the light program (dashlight) suffers from delays and jumps in the sound and display (I bought it especially for that and it turns out it’s not usable). It’s like it offers more than the processor can handle. I don’t know if the prime 4+ has a better processor.
Id say perhaps record some video footage of the issues so people can see it happening, that ways you’re likely to get some more accurate resolutions to your problems.
also through thomann I contacted Denon and sent them the videos and they replied that this was “normal”.
From the last failure (the sound stopped suddenly, and some digital noises started as a failure in the sampling frequency) as I was in a show with 400 people, I didn’t make videos, I tried to solve it as soon as possible. It took a long time until I disconnected the IEC connector because even though I turned the equipment off and on, the deafening noise continued.
