New firmware for Prime 4

I m kinda disappointed still no new firmware for Prime 4 for new feautures such as track preview or track bpm editinig directly on the machine. now it’s like even the smaller brothers prime 2 and prime go have better feature

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We’re told that Prime is Prime. What features get written into one prime can be shared to all primes (true primes not mcx8000). Track preview, we were told, is more difficult to route audio for track preview on prime 4 as it’s 4 Audio channels to preview rather than two channels to preview on Each sc5000 player.

With no way of doing gigs for probably the rest of 2020, and the tortoise-like “progress” of denon with firmware together with its zero output on software upgrade of engine prime, I’m thinking of selling my prime 5000s and 1800 and just see how low the sc6000 primes prices descend when we’re let out next year.

Not the time to be dissappointed, I’m sure that the Denon Team is working hard on it, to bring new features asap to all their gear. Last they surprised us all with the rollout of the X1800 Firmware Version 1.3 (no one had on the radar, we only wished it to come true). They listened to us and overhauled the x1800 Firmware to be more equivalent to the X1850 Features. Most other companies wouldn’t care about already sold gear after its release. Or do you know any other DJ Mixer which got new features 3 years after release?

Perhaps next will be the SC5000 / SC5000M and Prime 4 on the list bringin’ the beta to RC Status :sunglasses: can’t wait to get my hands on the improved rc for my decks.

This may be true for core functionality, but as hardware and components start to differ there will be technical limitations as we have started to see.

Prime is Prime could be interpreted as your collection will work on every prime branded device!

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I’m really disappointed with the lack of bpm adjustment on the machine as my only laptop that I primarily use for video editing isn’t formatted to fat and I can’t reformat the drive cause it will cause major headache for me Also I can’t connect prime 4 to my pc as I don’t have usb 3 . I tried with usb 2 didn’t work So many of my tracks just don’t automatically scan correctly I even invested in a ssd card for the prime 4 thinking I wouldn’t need a pc for cue points or anything like that I would just record all my old vinly over and use a usb for digital tracks Apart from buying a new laptop I’m not sure what to do really

I am waiting for track preview, i hope it’s here by next year.

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@Tommot Sorry but before buying a product you do not inquire about how it works or what you need to make it work better? Don’t be unwary. At the moment only and I say only Denon allows you to have a car like Prime 4. The other brands certainly are no longer ahead of this system.

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@REIS: See here for more info on what Tommot experiences:

I love the prime 4 its a amazing bit of kit . it’s been really tricky getting to grips with it but I’m there now . I still can’t connect my pc to it so my ssd drive is useless but I just get round it by using flash drives to and from the prime and my pc . Maybe I’ll try again in the future but I’m happy just creating sets at the moment

Since the release of P2 and Go i ve been waiting for a new firmware for P4 to get track preview. for me the lack of it is very limiting when you have tons of tracks. having to load one by one on the deck is a tedious and time consuming process. Please Denon hurry up!!

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I’ve searched through a lot of duplicated posts so far today about this feature but could’nt find what I was looking for. I’m fairly sure denon said that they would try to look into a way of adding this used-by-some convenience feature to prime 4 but that they were having difficulty making the headphone routing work on a single 4 deck machine. Remember of course that the sc5000 and the 5000m, the go and the 2 are all 2 channel so I guess they don’t hit that 4 deck headphone routing problem.

It might simply be that there isn’t a safe way of doing it. Like as a question if you were on your prime 4 playing all 4 decks in sync and then tried to preview a track, you wouldn’t expect one of the 4 playing decks to go silent or stop while a pair of sound data channels on a 8 channel (mono) sound card Inside the Prime 4 handed over two busy channels to the headphone routing of the preview track. So what would be the alternative? A message on screen to say “Track preview not available when 4 decks are playing - please stop a deck to preview or cue a track” or maybe the track that’s nearest it’s end fading out to give track preview audio? Or the track that’s at the lowest volume (and therefore having the least amount of impact on the output) stops to free up some lines for track preview?

Maybe 4 stereo channels, not five is the max that prime 4 can do, from a hardware capacity point of view. After all it wasn’t sold as a 5 channel item.

If they, denon, can do it, if it’s possible at all. Then I’d have thought that they’d add it at some point. There’s probably more important requests for them to be working on though to be honest especially as other deck users are mentioning that track preview isn’t working right for them on two layer units now - sounds like it’s playing the wrong tracks during preview or some audio buffer is playing back fragments of previously played songs for a few seconds before it starts playing the song people wanted to preview. Probably best that denon Make track preview work properly before spreading it around even if there aren’t hardware channel limits and more important widespread wanted features.

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Maybe they could direct route the track preview on headphones. In this case you should just have cues off.

That might be another thing that hits a hardware limit and then makes it impossible.

Even with the question of how many sound card channels (8 needed for 4 x stereo signals) put to one side, there’s the overall bandwidth for data coming from the hard drive or SSD. There might be 4 tracks loading in from hard drive, the set might be recording back to that drive, or a different drive, some or all of the tracks might be too big to load totally into playback memory so keeping any bandwidth bottlenecks busy. So to burden the prime 4 with an additional task of finding and previewing a fifth (or sixth if recording) stereo audio stream/signal, or a sixth one, might be just not possible.

Hi @waltkr

With all due respect…

Prime 4 has never been sold saying that Preview was possible.

So to say it’s very limited how to use the Prime 4 due to an add-on feature that Denon has surprised a lot of us with, for free, I can’t quite follow.

Unless you bought your Prime 4 with the hope that it will come to it someday too.

They have promised, in those cases its possible, that all Prime units will get the same options - this is based on if there is no hardware limitations.

I use the X1800 / SC5000 setup myself, and yes, it is a very cool option, but despite having an SSD with about 70k tracks, it is minimal how much I use Preview. I know my tracks. (more or less)

But Denon has said they are looking into the possibility of implementing this on Prime 4 and then I think they will announce one day whether or not it is possible. Maybe because of hardware limitations, it’s not possible at all. (But I do hope for all Prime 4 users that they will find a solution, to make it work :muscle: )

Yet again - it’s an added feature and they haven’t officially used it as a sales pitch for Prime 4.

They did so with the MCX8000 and StageLinq where it was written on the boxes - I think they learned from that.

Looking at what the ads say about the Prime 4, wont you agree that you get what it says, and maybe even more, due to the fact that they keep implementing new stuff/ effects/ upgrading EP for free?

I think it wouid a nice feature to have but as you say it wasn’t the reason I bought the prime 4. If and when they do add this feature people will move onto the next feature they want adding. It’s human nature by enlarge that need to want more. I think the bpm analysis was really key and important, in fact one of the reasons why I bought the prime 4 over the xdj xz. I wasn’t happy with engine prime up and till that point. Now it’s not perfect but bpm are more often than not bang on. It’s a pleasure to use this hardware with the software with no sync and to trust the bpm and your ears :wink: New features will come they always do. And also at some point a new prime 4 chanel all in one will come out. Maybe not for 2 or 3 years but it will come. That’s digital life. I used to be eagerly awaiting the next new feature and dissapointed when it didn’t come. I’ve learned over time to remember why a bought it in the first place and be satisfied. Just my 2 pence worth. Hope that’s helped somebody.

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You can’t create a software/firmware called Engine OS and Release different versions. And the P4 is the admiral device.

I am sure Denon is working on a Prime4 update.

I honestly said that i love this unit and i bought it regatdless the features i do miss. i just pointed out that this update doesn’t add anything new and useful to my experience and hope that soon a new release will have everything implemented.

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