Well Hi there! For months a have been preparing older tracks, with wrong tape edits etc.
Now that I finally want to bring it to the club I have a serious problem with my players. I can’t seem to get my head around this. Maybe someone knows an answer to this.
Problem is this, I’m trying to create a continuous eclectic mix that gets garbled continuously in sync mode, let me explain:
Players are connected via a cat5 cable that came with the players. Firmware v3.3.0.
I’m playing a constant musical loop on player A on Layer A.
I’m mixing in a track on player A on layer B.
so these two tracks are on top of each other with sync engaged. Beat grids aligned.
Know I Mix in a third track from Player B on layer A so three tracks are in sync. This works a small period of time with a few songs. When I load a new song on player A layer B all the synced tracks are garbled. Swiping songs to the right have the same result as the select/zoom button. Garbled.
So loading tracks garbles synced mixing. Shift locked sync, tried things from beat to bar settings etc.
After mixing several tracks the grids shift again. Loading time of a track increases over time.
All the tracks load via the same internal SSD disk. The problem also exist with Ableton Link Activated. I cannot create a consistent mix at all.
I have tried several brands internal SSD disks including a mechanical drive. They all have the same stuttering effect after a while. It simply glitches. My library is very small one to test things first. I’m talking about 80 tracks.
SSD formatted: Master boot record → exFat, files synced via file manager. Also tried HFS. No dice, no difference.
How many tracks are mixable from 1 source, in this case from an internal SSD drive? When I read the manual you should be able to mix 4 channels with two players, without glitches.
What read/write speed should this SSD have for optimal performance?
From day 1, I have these graphical glitches in the waveform on both players, like frames dropping. Something is not aligned here.
Did I miss an important setting? Is it me? Or are there some serious performance issues???
Hope someone can shed a light on these players!
Best regards, Raymond
Western Digital WDS500G2B0A WD Blue 3D NAND Internal SSD 2.5 Inch SATA, 500 GB Amazon.co.uk
I use one of these for my music in the Prime 2, I have no idea if it’s suitable for network playing on media players but I’ve never had a single performance issue.
I have Sc6000Ms but I never mix more than 3 tracks at a time so I couldn’t really help here. But perhaps @djliquidice could clarify a few things here as he used to using up to 4 players.
Can you record a video showing the synchronization problem? I use 3 channels and sometimes Ableton Link I don’t have issues you describe. Which of your layers is the leading (master)? do you change it during mixing? You mentioned that you are using old tracks, did you warp tracks so that the grid was correct?
exFat is fine. An inexpensive MLC/TLC SSD works well also, given that they are optimized mostly for reads. I would stay with an SSD over mechanical disk due to the random read/write times being much faster. I’m curious about the HFS Comment – i didn’t realize these players were compatible with HFS at all.
You should be able to mix 4 tracks with two decks. I did this back in the early days of the SC5000s (2017) – these devices have the same MCU. I’ve not tried this since upgrading to four SC6000M devices, though can give it a shot.
Waveform issues are known and common on these players. The Graphics thread is not the highest priority compared to the audio thread(s). I wish this wasn’t an issue (and I don’t remember it being much in the early releases), but it is a known thing and likely will never get resolved with the hardware built on these MCUs (Rockchip 3288).
These devices are hard locked at 100Mb/s network speeds, so any attempts to using another network interface (think USB) really breaks things quickly. Seems like the software written is very time-dependent. Think X CPU time for this, Y CPU time for that, etc… This also becomes a bottleneck for any super fast SSD you might want to install.
Questions for you:
Are you syncing with Engine DJ or just windows explorer / MacOS Finder (File manager)? I ask because Engine DJ will pre-analyze your tracks, preventing the machines from having to do the work upon first load.
does this happen with non-warped songs?
Per Gaian’s tag:
I have 4x SC6000Ms, one serves as the Primary deck with an internal SSD. They are all connected via a (relatively inexpensive) managed gigabit 5 port switch. I do play four tracks at a time, but that’s one track per deck. I’ll have to try the above and see if i can replicate doing 4 tracks on two decks (requires some light rewiring on my end).
Hi guys, thanks for replying and providing info! I’m not in the dark after all. Appreciate all your help! My direction was also towards buying Western Digital… So thanks for the advice.
Let me try to answer all the questions in one e-mail:
All tracks are warped (warp markers placed by hand) and synced with Engine DJ software on Macos Monterey platform. So my library is ok. no errors there.
All my songs are obscure 70’s and 80’s electro vocoder tracks that are hard to find. All of them have been corrected, declicked, denoised and saved to wav or aif containers. Also wrong tape edits have been corrected in Izotope RX. That shouldn’t be the problem here. These songs play fine.
I have not been testing this on straight Beatport stuff. Can do that, but that is not why I bought this system in the first place. I still think these are miles ahead on the CDJ3000’s. Till yesterday. This is for me a serious performance issue. I cannot bring it to the club this way yet.
…I thought that the players ports where 1000Mb/s and the mixer was stuck at 100Mb/s.
@mrtime I have a video with this skipping behavior, can I attach that on this forum somewhere? All the tracks are warped correctly, no defective beat-grids. All has been corrected has been done in Engine DJ itself.
If you are going to replicate this, try loading songs on top of two playing tracks. Curious on what the outcome will be! …And at what read/write speed is your SSD?
You can use wetransfer to upload your video and share the link here.
Could you carry out the same test on tracks from recent songs that have been analysed but not modified to see if you encounter sync loss issues.
You indicate that your tracks were originally from the 70s and 80s. You may be aware that at that time most tracks had tempo fluctuations during the track because they weren’t all done on Daw like today on a linear 4/4 rhythm. The slightest fluctuation in tempo can disrupt the analysis of the grid and therefore lead to loss of sync. If you don’t encounter this issue on recent tracks with a linear 4/4 tempo, then the issue isn’t with the players but with your tracks.
Gaian I’m sorry. Don’t feel attacked by this. But I do not totally agree with your opinion. I cannot at this point. These tracks play well in Engine DJ Desktop software. no problems there. I have a video that you can inspect. WeTransfer - Send Large Files & Share Photos Online - Up to 2GB Free You can exactly see that the players have some kind of problem. Maybe it’s grid related, maybe it’s sync related, maybe it’s cue related, maybe it’s the player itself that struggles with something. We simply cannot confirm at this stage that it are actually faulty tracks. I would like to see some log file. No fuzziness. That would help. Denon, is there a way to run Engine DJ in developer mode?
Let me be clear. I have been beat matching by ear from 1980, so i’m in it in for a very long time. I’m also an IT specialist and ethical hacker and know how to handle stuff with Linux, Unix or Windows. I’m tech savvy. That’s why i’m looking at Denon and not Pioneer. I Have seen the progress of Technics, Pioneer and Denon. Pioneer got lazy and Denon is too upfront. Now I’m at the point that i re-edit stuff, because there is a lot of rubbish music out there. I know the faults of some records and I know how to correct them to be spot on 4 to the floor. Please don’t have any doubt here, I’m not a beginner DJ. I would like to be taken serious…, because I do run the extra mile that others don’t do. Maybe we all learn something about this issue.
@reese All tracks have been warped/analyzed with Engine software, no other software involved. I do think that Ableton messes up some songs and is not consistent enough with it’s algorithms, It speeds up certain parts and slows down certain parts. Melodyne also not working properly. It is simply not consistent. I spend years with Ableton and messed with transients to know that it fails sometimes.
Please share, and if someone knows an anwser why deck B shifts when loading tracks on deck A, then I would like to know some thoughts on debunking this problem.
Hi mufasa, thanks for replying and watching the video. What kind of files did you use, wav, flac, aif or mp3?
It is easy to replicate for me and it happens after a while, but sometimes it happens at once. It’s weird. Right now I’m looking at the bit depth of the files (this eventually speeds up loading times of the track as well) and filtering aif, wav, flac and mp3 files to see if I can narrow down the problem.
We are taking you seriously, hence the back and forth from so many people here. Please don’t mistake some “basic” questions for disregard. We are trying to understand.
Some of us (me included) are veteran DJs (1999 here) and software engineers (and some hackers also) with a sh!t ton of experience. I personally built tools around this ecosystem from my own streams.
You need not state your experience — it will shine from your interaction with us.
We ask to understand and I am going to ask you to take a deep breath and take the time to answer our questions.
We recognize this stuff is frustrating. Some Engine OS bugs frustrated me enough to compel me to volunteer loads of hours to support this community and the net result was a critical bug being fixed.
Welcome to the community my man, you are surrounded by people who care .
All that said, thank you for providing details that are critical for us to help troubleshoot.
Is there any way you could provide the Wav files — assuming it’s not violating the law?
“You need not state your experience — it will shine from your interaction with us”
@djliquidice respect will grow after working together with people and I appreciate what all you guys here are saying on the platform to help me, don’t get me wrong. I already tried to write that down. I failed here I think No worries, I mean you all no harm!
“With dual output 24-bit, 96kHz digital audio quality, the SC6000 supports all major compressed and uncompressed music file formats” as stated on the website.
But what if pulling 3 files from the same SSD, with multiple cue, loop and warp markers in place, and all these files have different sample formats bit-depth, keeping the key in sync, would that eventually be borking these machines??? What is the limit here?
Are these defective loops, cues or grids? Still don’t know.
I started cleaning up. To make it more simple. Don’t know where else to start.
logic:
As a monk I have gone through my library and looked closer to files with a bigger bit depth. Maybe this causes the grids to jump around. Not sure yet. Some of them were 24 bit and others 32 bit. This far I reworked 15 files. The machine is 24 bit, so 32 bit, too high? I brought them down to 16 bit. Renamed/analyzed the files. Lost all the warping and cues etc, ■■■■, ■■■■, ■■■■.
Freezing warped tracks would be a life saver here. A new option in the beatgrid editor? Freeze track after warping → BIG YEAH.
Tossed out the older files. Need a way to update this in the library at once, otherwise the old files still bug you. Old fashioned. Isn’t there a cleaner way to do this, like update in database in a contextual menu like re-import track information? Loading time increased after checking out bit-depth, logical of course. These 15 songs work altogether, no jumping grids or whatsoever.
I made a playlist of these edited files. These are .wav. and .aif files. I still have a bunch of flac files that I’m going to check manually. I can’t see the bit-depth directly with these files.
So maybe it has something to do with the file format you’re using and/or the audio resolution (sample rate + bit depth).
I’m not expert enough in this area to know whether using several tracks simultaneously at a high sampling rate could cause this type of problem.
80% of my collection is made up of MP3 320 kbps and 20% is made up of flac 1411 kbps but I’ve never really bothered to know whether the latter were in 16 /24 /32 bits or in 48/96/192 khz…
Perhaps you’ve put your finger on the fact that there could be something wrong with using such high sampling frequencies on 4 decks at the same time.
There aren’t many of us here who use 4 decks at the same time on one side and there aren’t many of us who use tracks with a sampling frequency above 48 khz either, so I’ll let you imagine how many of us do the combination of the two at the same time.
Hi there!
Well ok. Might be some kind of bug, but ok. Let’s see if we can debunk it! I saw your request to send files. I’m happy to. …Only I tossed out some files and saved others, I can take a look at backup files I still have, let me find these for you. When I run into new grid skipping I will save these and send them to you also. Meanwhile It wouldn’t hurt to create some 24-32 bit files yourself. Curious if this will happen to your players to.
My left deck is deck 2A where also my SSD is placed in the video. This skipping occurs when layer 2A is in the sync lead. 2B is loaded, working fine. Deck 1B, I load a song and everything is well.
3 tracks spinning.
Now when I have to load 2B and 2A and 1B are still playing on top of each other, this skipping occurs with in my opinion files that could have a bit-rate that maybe troublesome. Same issue with platter on, it doesn’t matter.
The 15 files I reworked are .wav and .aif files. 16 bit 44khz. The new files have no problems including older files I saved in wav or aif.
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No worries, I mean you all no harm!