Prime4+ slows down after some time of use

Engine DJ Hardware Standalone Controllers
21

I understand your logical reasoning with this and I always appreciate and applaud such thinking-through. However, if it was software clogging up (I suspect you’re thinking of something like the old windows and Mac “memory leaks” etc then everyone around the world who’s on the same firmware version that your prime 4 is on, would all be experiencing the same behaviour that you’re seeing. As they’re all not… then it’s got to be a different cause at the root of your issues as it can’t (for the reasons outlined above) be the firmware (assuming you’re not on a really old firmware version)

So, I’m intrigued now… and I’m wondering about what you might use which maybe not lots and lots of the other users use… for example:

• Do you power anything from the usb ports on the Prime? Something which might draw more power, three hours into the night (or maybe you don’t plug it in until you’re three hours in… like charging something up iPad/iphone

• Do you run lighting from your Prime ?

• Do you record audio on your Prime 4 ?

• Do you do anything differently after 3 hours - eg: more streaming in of requests (tidal gets laggy at busier times) once the dancefloor gets going? Play shorter tracks/edits? Play longer mega mixes after 3 hours?

• more scratching after three hours?

• more use of fx after three hours?

• if you’re on wifi music streamed in, rather than local stored music , does the venue have more public (also sharing the WiFi ) after three hours ?

Also, it’s worth trying an ssd which many other users on this forum use - the Samsung - if it doesn’t have the same lags that you’re experiencing after 3 hours now, then it might be something temperature or cache based on your Crucial drive - crucial are well known of course, but who knows, they might use some sort of cache which fills up after a few hours

Some food for thought maybe

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22

*• Do you power anything from the usb ports on the Prime? Something which might draw more power, three hours into the night (or maybe you don’t plug it in until you’re three hours in… like charging something up iPad/iphone * No, I don’t power anything else from USB ports. I charge my phones with a regular charger designed for them.

*• Do you run lighting from your Prime ? * No, only music. I control the lighting with QLC+

*• Do you record audio on your Prime 4 ? * No

*• Do you do anything differently after 3 hours - eg: more streaming in of requests (tidal gets laggy at busier times) once the dancefloor gets going? Play shorter tracks/edits? Play longer mega mixes after 3 hours? * I usually play smaller local events/weddings. I use my own library 95% of the time. Tidal is the only one I use if someone asks for a song I don’t have in my database.

• more scratching after three hours?

*• more use of fx after three hours? * These are undemanding events, ripping songs to the beat, simple transitions on swep fx.

• if you’re on wifi music streamed in, rather than local stored music , does the venue have more public (also sharing the WiFi ) after three hours ?

I only use a local database - my SSD, and, as mentioned above, Tidal if necessary. I have my own LTE router that I use at parties; I don’t rely on Wi-Fi from party venues.

Also, it’s worth trying an ssd which many other users on this forum use - the Samsung - if it doesn’t have the same lags that you’re experiencing after 3 hours now, then it might be something temperature or cache based on your Crucial drive - crucial are well known of course, but who knows, they might use some sort of cache which fills up after a few hours

I considered this, but after contacting a Denon user, he ruled out the SSD, but pointed me to another clue: Polish characters in the song titles. I quickly built a library of English-language tracks, about 1.4k. I ran it through the DJ engine and loaded it onto the console. I’ll be testing it out. Maybe this is a clue. But it’s strange that it happens after 2-3 hours, not immediately.

*I understand your logical reasoning with this and I always appreciate and applaud such thinking-through. However, if it was software clogging up (I suspect you’re thinking of something like the old windows and Mac “memory leaks” etc then everyone around the world who’s on the same firmware version that your prime 4 is on, would all be experiencing the same behaviour that you’re seeing. As they’re all not… then it’s got to be a different cause at the root of your issues as it can’t (for the reasons outlined above) be the firmware (assuming you’re not on a really old firmware version)

I’m trying to find the cause. I posted on Denon’s Facebook forums – Polish (2.2k members) and international (28.5k members). In this official group, with 154k members, the admins haven’t approved my post for 12 hours… I wonder why?

Where I managed to post it, the response is as I expected. Many people are having a similar problem, including SC4 and SC6000 models. The main recommendation is to downgrade the firmware to 4.2.0

23

Whilst I agree with some of your tests and outcomes , for the reasons I’ve stated above , I can’t agree with your use of “many” in your quote above - remember some people post under different names on different social media pages - could be that 20 names on social media pages equate to 5 users mentioning the same fault in 4 places

24

Thank you for posting about this issue and continuing to advocate for a fix. It seems to be getting attention. =)

25

i notice on your previous comments you mention having a large library of stems converted tracks.

Can you try loading a drive with non-analysed tracks to see if they can be used to DJ with and not have slowness issues.

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26

Agree, we need to keep this topic alive. I have also seen many negative feedbacks about slow performance after a few hours. I have the same experience using SCL4.

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27

Thanks for the response.

I received a tip that the Denon library doesn’t support local characters and is strictly designed for English songs. This means that my Polish characters like ś, ć, ą, ę, etc. in song names can cause such problems.

I quickly deleted the previous library, formatted the SSD, rebuilt about 1.4k songs, just the songs without special characters, and am testing. I’ve noticed an improvement, but there is some performance degradation, though not as significant as before.

If this is confirmed, every language that has its own special characters will have to change them to their English equivalents, like I changed ó to o.

28

I had a library of about 6k songs with STAMP, and then at a party, a friend asked me why it was stuttering so much, and from then on, I started paying attention to it. I decided to organize the library, formatted it, selected what I needed, and I had about 2.4k songs left, and analyzed it through Engine DJ. This didn’t help, so this thread arose.

Generally, if you simply plug in a flash drive with unanalyzed songs, the Denon will slowly analyze them locally after loading them. It takes much longer than on a computer, but it works. I tested small libraries. When someone played their own background music, some instrumentals, I would plug the flash drive directly into the console and play them.

But I’ll try it :smiley:

29

Apologies I didn’t mean fully non-analysed.

Can you do a library of analysed tracks but don’t do any stems analysis, just the standard waveform and beat grid? I’m wondering if the stems files are what might be causing issues.

I don’t use stems and I never have performance issues, even after 5hrs solid dj sets in a warm bar stood next to the hot kitchen.

P.S. I’ve got a good amount of tracks with accented characters so not sure it’s that causing it.

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30

My toxic trait is that I aggresively remove all the special characters and metadata from my tracks as first step in adding to my music library.

Only reason why I started doing it 20ish yr ago was that I had some silly music player on my PC that had issues with it so I added that rule in mp3tag software and now its a habbit.

I guess you could say it’s a good thing (not that I recommend it) as it saves me potential issues + saves me from thinking if I need to search for Beyonce or Beyoncé or Beyonc to get all the results.

And now I remember that I even had a rule to shorten all those feat, featuring into ft and remove the dot to see the most of text on CDJ screens.

Anyway….inMusic, fix your fracking software

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31

Yes I have done something similar with my tags since it caused problems using a laptop to DJ with in 1999. But as you say in 2025 this really shouldn’t be an issue.

32

It’s not an inMusic thing, it’s a Unicode thing. Errors happen on AT/Pioneer gear too.

33

I want to explain my situation and evaluation to you, I have two Prime 4 Plus, one white and one black! I have two internal SSDs, a Samsung and a Crucial just like yours! With the Crucial I also notice a slowdown that is not very evident but still annoying! I did a test, I inverted the two SSDs in the two prime , and where I put the Crucial I have that problem that does not occur with the Samsung! So I think it is a Crucial problem!

34

I’m not ruling out the disk’s influence, as I suspected it too, but everything points to the Polish characters ę, ą, ś, ć, etc. It’s currently testing a library made entirely of English song names. I ran it twice, 5 hours each, and it worked flawlessly, with occasional minor hiccups. I added a folder with Polish songs and characters. The performance drop has become more pronounced.

35

So you didn’t told me the whole story on messenger, as we talked. Ssd drive (model, quality), case ventilation etc… all these factors add up.

Anyway, I hope additional knowledge will help you in proper performance.

36

Again, denon trying to blame others and the user for its laziness or coding failures.

SQLite stores all text as Unicode characters encoded in either UTF-8 or UTF-16 (and performs automatic conversions between these formats when necessary…). This means you can freely store characters from any language (including accents, Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic, emoji, etc.) as long as they are valid Unicode characters.

It would be very strange and rare if by syncing from PC or Mac you’d have non-valid unicode characters in filenames or ID-tags. If non-valid unicode appears in denon’s databases, that’s not a user issue, but a denon-failure.

37

Where? Can you link to where anyone from InMusic has commented to blame the user?

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38

I was wondering that too. Lol

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39

Yeah such a ridiculous statement to make.

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40

Denon doesn’t blame the user, they just don’t inform them, which is understandable for some reasons, but on the other hand, it’s generating the same problems I encountered.

The truth is, I went back to my old library of 2.4k songs with Polish characters and the same thing happened – a performance drop, while the library with English characters works normally after 5 hours. I even tried to boil the console by blocking all its vents, and it still worked, but the one with Polish characters freezes. I reworked my original library of 2.4k songs, removed all Polish characters from the file names and tags, and loaded it onto the console.

I’ll test it and see what happens. Of course, a home test won’t be a full-fledged test in a party, but 5 hours of playing and skipping between songs should already show something.