SC6000 soundquality

I know this question has been beaten to death but it still seems like there is conflicting information: some people say using the digital outs plus using the latest firmware (2.3 I think?) has helped solve the issue of the high frequency roll offs quite a bit while other places I have read said that it doesn’t matter whether you use the analog or the digital outputs, the result will always still be a high frequency roll off.

I’d really like to at least snag one of these players since they seem really interesting feature wise as well as the fact that they are actually available. I had planned on getting an XDJ-XZ for a while but it seems like they are going to be impossible to snag without being on a waiting list for 8 months so thats initially what got me interested in the Denon line.

So I guess ultimately as of right now how is the sc6000 looking in terms of sound quality and is an external DAC plus digital outs even worth it? I’m actually still leaning towards getting maybe one sc6000 but I will admit it ■■■■■ knowing I would basically have a permanent Low pass filter on (albeit slightly) at all times on this thing, especially considering how much money you need to put down for one. The one thing that I could do to help solve this (at least for the high frequency rolloff issue) is to get a hardware eq where I just raise the frequencies above 16khz. Would hate to have to spend more money just to get a flat response but then again the cost of that versus Pioneer stuff still checks out.

Also in addition to this I’ve been reading some of @Reticuli s posts (which have been incredibly informative) in regards to some of the intermodulation distortion. Not sure how much of a big deal that is ultimately since I’m the type of person who at least currently usually just snags 320’s off of bandcamp to throw on a drive to play out but thats not to say I wouldn’t want to have higher quality down the line. I remember seeing a post somewhere from a Denon representative that said that they were aware of these other audio issues and would address them but only if the community upvoted the issue request enough since they had “more pressing features to implement” which to me sounds crazy since decent playback is kinda the fundamental feature you get the players for in the first place.

Anyway maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill with these things. I’d really love to have em but I’m just genuinely curious if people think Denon will ever even fix this. Or maybe in the longterm someone can hack together some sort of custom firmware to address it but I doubt this would be the best place to discuss that haha. I’ll be honest though if anyone from Denon is reading this, this issue is definitely at the very least making me pause to re-consider my purchase and I don’t think I’m the only one who’s done so

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Given that an equally few pioneer users have mentioned the same high end roll off, plus it’s not like anyone’s going to stop dancing because… I really wouldn’t worry about it. Other parts of most PA systems will do far more “damage” (lol) to the audio chain.

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I think you are. Sometimes I think audiophiles should be banned from touching DJ equipment, innocent people read their posts and end up like this. :disappointed_relieved: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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They’re sounding sweet, loving mine to bits - if you’re curious about them, go try them out - pretty confident you won’t regret it :blush:

The SC6000 has a slight roll off after 16kHz and a slight dip around 250Hz without key lock enabled. This is due to audio processing as I recorded using the digital output on the sc6000, not the analog output. It is a bit more prevalent on the analog output.

But, it is so minuscule that the percentage of people that notice is so small, it doesn’t even matter.

The CDJ3000 has a similar roll off at a higher dub/octave, but above 17.5kHz with the almost exact same dip around 280Hz.

I haven’t tested the XZ.

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An external DAC isn’t going to mitigate the aforementioned faults. An outboard EQ will also do more harm than good on Prime playback treble response, as you’re just going to boost the aliasing artifacts, ultrasonic noise, and rest of the IMD. Like I’ve said, the roll-off is less a degradation than the distortion and ultrasonic noise. If you add a low-pass filter to a WAV file, it’s still not going to sound like Prime playback.

I think whether you’re making ‘a mountain out of this’ has more to do with your preferences regarding fidelity and what kind of music you play most, and less related to the quality of the tracks you’re using. In fact, the way distortion noticeability thresholds work, the relationship between track quality and playback on Prime would more likely be the inverse of what you assumed. You might find the amount of distortion in an MP3 tolerable by itself from reference gear, but not tolerable to you on Prime, while an original WAV of the same track might be barely tolerable to you on Prime because its cumulative nonlinear distortion hasn’t passed the necessary audibility threshold.

I certainly agree this is something InMusic could focus on and potentially even resolve fairly easily, but for many people it doesn’t appear to be a dealbreaker. If you use MP3s right now and mostly play very densely produced music without a lot of space in the mix, then the current Prime sound quality might present an issue to you. For instance, I think old tech trance and industrial MP3s on old gear sounds better than the same tracks in original WAVs on Prime, but YMMV.

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iirc a certain portion of the distortion comes from forcing the sample rate to be 96khz no matter what the original sample rate of the track was, right?

it’s tough; i really want these players but it also ■■■■■ knowing some of these problems then are actually unresolvable by alternative solutions

Out of curiosity - how was the measuring process to find those dips? :blush:

I assume, but it’s not just forcing it to 96khz, but also having to be compatible with 192khz files that no one else bothers with. So, it might be massively upsampling to the product of every sample rate multiplied together that it supports, and then back down… all in real-time using very computationally efficient methods. If you take some original 44.1khz WAVs and convert them to 96khz or 192khz using a good, slow, post-processing method like iZotope 64bit SRC and play the saved, new files (that still measure quite pristine) on the Prime players, you still get much of the same distortion Prime playback will add again. Therefore, it’s messing with even those sample rates extensively. The speed changing (the pitch fader) functionality is likely also tied to this, because speed change is essentially like using part of the SRC process. If you’re already doing massive full SRC, it makes sense the pitch functionality would just be part of that.

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