Firmware update thoughts

The jog bend has not been changed on the non-M that is still asymmetrical and twice as sensitive as it needs to be in forward, and the M’s jog bend with motor off is still about the same sensitivity in both directions as the non-M is in forward. That couldn’t have been a high priority when people were having the (kind of alarming) speed problems, InMusic wanted to preliminarily change the corner frequencies and curves of the (I presume) SRC filters for us, and they were developing the Prime 4, too.

Anyone else noticed the pitch increments of .01% seem harder to lock in? i found it impossible to lock a track in at 0.82%. The pitch was constantly jumping from 0.81% to 0.83%. Then later in the track i was able to fine tune it. Not a massive deal but a little annoying when you want to set the pitch and focus on a long transition to be constantly trying to dial in the pitch. Cannot remember how this was in the initial firmware release but far from ideal in the latest release. Saying all that, still way better than the 0.05 increments on the old firmware.

Otherwise enjoying the update and hoping for more features/regular updates going forward

The larger the pitch range, the harder it gets, of course.

I mostly use +/-4% and no problems there.

Isn’t that the expected behavior? If you have smaller increments, it requires less movement to change the increment…

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Completely expected behavior and not a problem. It’s a totally ludicrous thing to think the pitch wobbling between two adjacent one or two hundredths of a percentage randomly is going to foul up a blend, let alone the nonsense I was hearing both on this forum months ago and on the Pioneer forum that the solution to that was LESS PITCH RESOLUTION.

Luckily I managed to grab the update for the SC5000 before it was taken down. I don’t use Serato so everything is working as expected.

Generally, with both v1.3.1 on the units and Engine Prime itself, everything feels faster and smoother than before. The new sorting options and crate/playlist editing on the player are welcome additions.

Hard to judge if there has been any improvement in sound quality without a proper A/B test with v1.2 but the high end sounded more open and crisp. Might have just been the expectation though :grinning:

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The point i was making is that i couldn’t get it to lock in at 0.82%. It was continually jumping to numbers either side. Totally agree that the small difference doesn’t make that big a deal. Been a house DJ for 25 years starting on vinyl so understand the concept of proper beat matching.

I wanted to add that I grabbed v1.3.1 yesterday before it was taken down and installed it last night on the SC5000s. The high-end frequencies are indeed improved compared to 1.2.2. I updated one player and did an a/b test with the other. I could hear the difference most when increasing the high frequency to maximum on the DJM900-NX2. It has been improved and the sound has an air of openess about it and sounds really great. So much so that my default EQ at zero sounds fantastic and balanced as is, whereas before I was adding a little top-end. I use Adam AX7’s for montoring which have an extended high frequency response. I can also honestly say that it is the best sound quality I have heard in a long time. The pitch resolution fix is there also and seems to work fine. I no longer regret having these players over the competition. The search features are super useful also and I have yet to try the key change feature.

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That’s not necessary at all to get it locked to an exact one hundredth of a percentage. What are you trying to do, play two identical hour long pre-mixed tracks on both decks to create your own flanger effect or to pretend you’re doing turntablism with slip? If it wobbles back and forth between two values continuously for the next hour that only means you’ve got half the effective pitch resolution. So what. And it doesn’t even do that. It might just eventually settle on the next adjacent value after a little while. Big deal.

Did i say it was necessary? It was an observation. End of story.

Anyone having problems with creating loops on the fly?

I’ve noticed a slight ‘updating’ delay when popping in and out of my playlist window that I don’t recall from before. It’s like it’s re-sorting every time. May just be part of the new search features but it slows me down a few ticks when I’m used to just jumping in and out. Anyone else noticed this?

I finally get what you are saying on this - I don’t regularly use the jog, I prefer the pitch bend buttons as it makes me feel more like how I used to mix on the 1210s (hold down the 33, tap the 45).

If you move the jog wheel half a turn and then half a turn back with a track perfectly in sync, it then needs another half a turn to get back into sync, which makes no sense at all.

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That’s what’s happening, unfortunately. Issue has been known for a year and a half, now.

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Yes it should be the same back-forwards, but I didn’t notice it really (adapted even) because I seldom use other devices at the moment.

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Some of the old Denons had not only the oversensitive & asymmetric jog bend but the Pioneer-style jog bend deadzone. :crazy_face:

So, I managed to play a little bit more with the new firmware realese and this is what I came up with… This is only my personal opinion and by any mean shold be considered a “dictat”! This is mainly due by my personal experince, by the way I like to build a DJ set and the genre I play… I will consider two categories of features: the BASIC and the ADVANCED (read “Nice to have”). BASIC:

  • The beat grid should follow the beat (that is why we call it BEAT grid) without warping the track.
  • When an AutoLoop is set I should have the possibilty to recall it from anywhere in the track.
  • At least the preference field of the track (1 to 5 stars) should be editable on the fly.
  • When I set an AutoLoop in some cases it is disabled by pressing PLAY or CUE. I don’t want this!

ADVANCED:

  • When a playlist is sorted by a search key I would have the possibility to set a secondary search key to have things more organized. EX: Playlist sorted by KEY and then by BPM. Now the secondary key is fixed to Play Order, not so usefull.
  • The playlist shows the BPM (integer number!) of all the tracks. When you load a track the BPM has one decimal digit and the fine tuning has two decimal digit…Give me at least one decimal digit in the playlist too…
  • The default sort order for a playlist is the Play Order. This should be changed in the preference once for all! I like my playlist sorted by BPM and everytime I had to change it…
  • The CUE point should be set when the track is stopped also when it is in play mode and stopped by holding the jog wheel.

Again, this is only my personal opinion and for shure I left something that I don’t remember at the moment…

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Here’s my take on FW 1.3.1 (05-17-2019). tl;dr I’ve got zero complaints or issues.

  1. Faster library load time, search, waveform refresh, toggle between layers ect.
  2. UI is more snappier and fluid.
  3. Triggering of HOT CUES and CUE in a staccato fashion exponentially improved and no lag.
  4. Overall heat dissipation underneath the main screen (MCS board is located) is reduced, IMHO due to reduction of sloppy coding, thus undue strain on processing.
  5. Scrubbing of loaded song is tighter audio wise and visually on screen.
  6. Boot-up & shutdown times greatly improved.
  7. Loading and ejection of USB, SD and external HD (Mechanical HD and SSD HD) times greatly improved.
  8. Handling of music files and libraries on USB, SD (average 64GB of music) and external HD (Mechanical HD and SSD HD average 1.4TB of music) times greatly improved.

I’m not looking feature sets updates, nor do I really care at this point. 1.3.1 to me is a maintenance package and I intimately understand how the internal workings of a new audio product design and product launch works and what it entails. I’m thoroughly impressed and how DENON handled the “firmware hiccup” in literally a few days, kudos.

IMHO team DENON on-line support (this forum) and technical support and doing the right thing and DENON DJ/inMusic is getting their money’s worth with that team. I look forward to see what’s down the pipe for features in the future.

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That would have to be user specified because I would hate that; I’ll often skip to the main part of the tune so I can adjust my levels before dipping into the mix, but if the cue jumped to that point and I had to then reset my cue, this would cause untold issues, especially on a fast mix.

Why do you need it to be a able to jump back to the cue while your hand is on the platter holding the music still?