All is not lost 
Because one might not be able to hear those frequencies doesnât mean that one canât feel them.
Good shockwaves are the key.
1 Like
These are exactly the same results I got when trying out the original fix for the high end roll off problem on my SC5000. It was the same for analog & digital outputs, using 96kHz pink noise. Good enough for me.
Maybe the source material makes the difference. I never played a mp3 so far.
2 Likes
the point was that the highs of the mp3 in question did sound better than the denons but not better than serato or traktor or foobar or ⌠you get the idea. so this example demonstrated exactly what it was supposed to. i could try it again with the original file and a lowpassfilter applied instead of the mp3 but i wonât. the mp3 thing was just an optional, additional example. even if it would be completely wrong, it wouldnât change the actual problem.
anyway i spent more than enough time on such a simple and obvious problem. even more so because first and foremost i was looking for a statement from denon. unfortunately that didnât happen despite my issue being up since september (and in fact a lot longer in other threads before that).
so, given that 1.6 is unlikely to change things sound wise, i took a pending offer for a pair of cdjs at a decent price (not much more than a single sc6000) and finally have proper sound again. but as mentioned before, everyone is of course free to believe whatever they want. not my problem anymore.
for the record though, i still think denon should fix this because monopolies are always bad and pioneer needs some serious competition.
3 Likes
I took mine back to the store, if they fix it in the future I will consider buying it again, but until then I will just stick with turntables.
I really donât want to buy Pioneer, the prices they charge are pretty disgusting to be honest & I donât want to support them, they are making it an elitist hobby or only supporting professionals, If you can get them cheap though, good luck to you, prices in Australia are much higher than the rest of the world.
I really do hope Denon get this right in the future, Pioneer doesnât deserve to rule the market.
Would love it if Native Instruments came up with a media player of their own with Traktor software inside it, but not holding my breath, they seem to only be interested in making controllers that support Traktor softwareâŚ
While some of you are erroneously totally dismissing the implications of the attenuated highsâ cumulative effect with your own hearing loss, the roll off is the least of the issues with the sound of the Prime playback processing. As for how degraded the CDJ-3000 SRC is, I donât know, but plenty of mixers do SRC to 96 well enough and Prime playback notably and oddly supports and converts wider formats⌠with its constant extreme and arguably poor realtime conversion of everything possibly being the culprit. I have previously already outlined various easy likely remedies InMusic could implement.
Edit 5/26/2022:
Reading back through this thread, I noticed some things that should be clarified for those referring back to this laterâŚ
First, I want to reiterate for posterity that distortion is cumulative.
For reasons that should be obvious, an MP3 brick-wall low-pass filtered at 15khz is indeed going to have less additional roll off caused by Prime than an unaltered lossless version of the same track subjected to the Prime firmware.
To quoteâŚ
âI noticed it especially with the summing of two tracksâ
âI have come to the same conclusion,whilst beat matching its so bad for me trying to keep time as I cannot tell one track from the otherâ
âitâs as you said, it gets really confusing to know which track is which, everything gets so dam muddy,â
All this is explainable due to the signal-correlated intermodulation distortion, which are ânonlinearâ harmonics, about 100X the original signal that gets embedded in the sound by the playersâ SRC and speed change algorithm mostly separate from Elastique keylock. The massive oversample used and the speed change stuff seems to be part of the same code, and it appears to be producing massive amounts of these aliasing âreflectionsâ regardless of where the pitch fader is. Elastique just adds slightly more roll off and slightly more IMD. If it was just linear harmonic distortion from JFETs or tubes of the same quantity, youâd probably think it was musical sounding and not really muddy, especially in-the-mix. You might even think the linear harmonics made the sound both warmer & richer at the same time, with no loss of detail. With IMD, youâll be summing the worst kind of distortion of two or more tracks, and your brain just canât âgetâ IMD, as it doesnât enhance musical harmonics but simply obscures. Itâs not musical info, and your brain canât derive the musical notes or separate the information out as well. IMD is just nasty chaos.
As for the 24/96 pink noise test⌠you should be using flat noise, not what you used. But regardless, there shouldnât be ANY roll off on any source gear of a 96khz sample rate audio file that early. It should have flat treble out to like at least 40khz. So thatâs an absurd failure of the firmware to have a 96khz file perform worse than a 44.1khz file would on proper gear. Think about that.
To be fair, the original Prime firmware actually had more roll off on 96khz sample rate files than on 44.1khz files when using Elastique, though, so they did slightly improve the high frequencies, especially on higher sample rates, but itâs still rolled off. âHey, weâre only 1-3dB down instead of 3-6dB down at 20khz on a 96khz sample rate file, now!â Yeah, itâs an improvement, both in overall reduction of roll off and how at least now you do get some consistent additional extension with higher sample rates, but still pathetic.
Again, though, the IMD is the bigger issue and has much more degrading effects on the fidelity than the roll off. If you take the original track and just low-pass it with a filter to replicate that treble performance, that would not sound as bad as Prime. You could blend and sum to your heartâs content and it wouldnât be profoundly muddy or difficult to separate the sounds like Prime is afflicted with.
Your graph also didnât show the ultrasonic range. If it had, youâd have seen a big bump of ultrasonic noise at about 30khz, which is also not good. No opamps, headphone amps, power amps, or speaker drivers perform optimally when fed ultrasonic noise.
7 Likes
Where have you been?! 
2 Likes
COVID messed up the left side of my head. Canât tolerate loud music, or even have much desire to deal with music at all. Better than I was a few months ago, at least. Thanks for your interest.
People, wash your hands and donât touch your face. These viruses are spooky: can attack the brain, shred heart muscle, and mess up your immune system. Not just some respiratory virus.
14 Likes
Speedy recovery!
2 Likes
Youâll recover soon!! 
Sorry to hear that mate, nice to have you back
Good to see you around again. Letâs hope you fully recover soon
Yeah, I had it for months before they figured out what was wrong with me⌠botched test that got mishandled, tons of specialists, and here I was spreading it. MRI, blood tests, on and on. Going to take months more probably to feel like most of myself again. Never even had a fever, but felt like something was trying to eat my brain, and my blood pressure was doing weird stuff. Hopefully Iâll get back into music eventually, but whatever happens it could have been much worse and Iâm lucky it didnât go into my lungs and do that crazy âstormâ cascade stuff.
Thanks guys. Be well.
11 Likes
Get well soon, mate, we keep our fingers crossed for You.
2 Likes
Sorry to hear that, I wish you a full recovery.
2 Likes
Final firmware 1.6.0 is out, someone tested it? Has anything changed in audio quality/roll off? Will try it tonight!
Having a bit of a play right now. No audible difference, but will do a test later. Got that CDJ3k recording cueâed up too
1 Like
At first I thought the time stretch was better. I might be wrong, though.
Comparing two players on headphones (fw 1.5.3 vs. 1.6.0) I can hear no difference in high frequencies.
1 Like
I noticed some tracks are a bit more âsparklyâ on 1.6 on my SC6kM but it might be a placebo effect. But to be fair to my ears 99% of tracks (I only play lossless btw) sounded good on 1.5.2 (maybe not perfect, but I have a proper DAC/Hi-Fi system for critical listening if I want to just enjoy the music)
6 Likes
