I’ll try and look into this, but right now I have no idea. I am not having any issues going from players to mixer by SPDIF and from mixer to computer with USB ASIO or WDM. I believe I have complete consistency that I can tell between the player layers, but I have not checked the individual input channels’ outputs from the mixer lately. USB output channels 9/10 with PGM bus is the same as ever, though. If my layers from the players are producing consistent sound to each other, I’m unsure how updating the players would affect the mixer’s input channel loopback.
If you believe there’s a bug on the SC5000s or X1800, you might want to make a bug report and post a video in it of your problem.
I have my only sc5000m connected to my x1850 line in ch1. Traktor 3 through USB 1 on the mixer to ch 4. And then Dj player pro on my iPhone through USB 2 on the mixer to ch 3. Same track on all 3 manually synced and leveled the best I can.
The results…
They all sound good but a little different. I prefer traktor’s sound cause it just seems more full spectrum in sound. The difference was not enough where I couldn’t mix between all sources without concern. I do most of my listening from the sc5000m btw and I don’t feel the sound quality is bad.
Improvements are always welcome though.
I’m liking the dj player pro app on my phone. Enough to ditch Djay pro.
I don’t tell that big of a difference in the Prime mixer firmware yet to change that, but the X1800 has always tested well, at least when the sample rate is matched to the input. The X1700 rivals the MP2015, DB4, and anything from Pioneer, so that’s a high bar to match, particularly its upsampling capability and the discrete analog sections on it. The X1700 is very high-end, plus you get the ability to even match sample rates that you don’t with the Rane, A&H, or Pioneers. You do have that ability on the X1800, too, though I don’t think the overall new Denon design is at the same tier, at least with the Rane and old Denon. The MP2015 and X1700 also lack the choice between their isolators on the channel tone controls and an EQ mode. Of course, you also have that on some of the Pioneers and on the DB4. Everyone who has the Prime players should certainly check out the Prime mixers for the integration. If InMusic ever adds a rotary mode (to swap upfaders and sweep FX) and sweep FX deadzone adjustment on them, then I’d have even less reservations. Ditto with an option to link PFL solo cueing & layer changes or an auto split side setting.
thanks @Reticuli, always a pleasure to read your posts!
in fairness “anything from pioneer” can be reduced to the nxs2. i have no measurements but by ear only the nxs2 is decent although a little dull.
i asked because i’m coming from analog gear like rodec and soundcraft and the main reason for me to get the x1800 is the adjustable crossover frequencies. the latter unfortunately is rare so the x1800 seemed like a good choice.
anyway it should arrive next week and then i’ll hear it myself.
I’m not sure why Pioneers have never had that ability. Old Denon and Evo 5 have that, and MP2015 and PPD9000 let you at least choose between some different preset bands. Of course, X-9 has a laggy but fully-adjustable parametric-style EQ. In contrast, the new DJM-V10 has completely-fixed, partial-cut shelf & parametric band EQs without even allowing isolator mode, though it does use fixed-gain ADC stages like Rane, Denon, and Numark, which is a first for Pioneer. Some people are liking this latter change so much they’re now complaining that the digital inputs sound worse to them on it, possibly due to how everything is running at 96khz. Maybe V10 owners should get some Prime players to use with it.
Tbh It’s the analogue output from the player itself I’m most concerned about as they’ll be going to a rotary analogue mixer. Do people ever put an external DAC on these?
A digital mixer with SPDIF input and/or the DSP/DAC after that is a DAC, so I guess technically the answer is yes, but as for if anyone has put outboard dedicated DACs after the player SPDIFs prior to an analog mixer, then I don’t know if anyone on the planet has done that yet. Seems like a big hassle. You can try, but the 4-channel AK4413EQ DAC and the accompanying opamps & stuff on the players don’t seem to be the problem. Actually, quite a few people have commented they find them slightly more forgiving-sounding than using the SPDIFs (AK4103A) – combo with digital mixers might be just less revealing of the common processing degradation or possibly that the analog outs on the players are bypassing another SRC stage to the SPDIF that are fixed at 24/96 currently and are instead using the oversample. I doubt you’re going to get much improvement with two stereo DACs per player and then routing that to an analog mixer… short of like dCS discrete DAC stuff. That’s expensive, though. I think dCS got their start doing signals intel hardware for like GCHQ or something. MSB is also well-regarded. If you’re rich, be my guest and try some expensive DACs. Please report back with photos and recordings so we can vicariously enjoy the super setup!
It’d probably be smarter if you’re staying rotary to just go players to your current mixer or even buying a digital rotary mixer like the MP2015, DB4, or a NXS2 with a rotary panel (rotarykits.com). Or paying to have the X1700 or X1800 converted by someone. The MP2015 and NXS2 are fixed at 96khz, DB4 fixed at 48khz, and Denons are adjustable. Again, the known problems with the Prime player sound quality has never been related to the analog output stage on them that I can tell, but rather the digital signal processing code & maths being done to the music. The tests I’m showing are with the digital outputs on the players, and they don’t improve much with the analog outputs, either. Now to be fair, it’s not that hugely different to what you’d get with DJ software if you unwisely set the software and your audio interface to like 192khz (you need an interface that supports that sample rate) and played 44.1khz files on it. If you test such a setup, you get similar kinda muddy, mildly-distorted sound and tests using RMAA and sweeps look similar. And now, of course, we apparently have that -6dB headroom on the Prime players, at least. The headroom, gain-structure, and metering on DJ software is a big gripe of mine.
Oh, and as a fellow rotary head, may I please request you heart this feature request?
then you have the same problem. just moved to the mixer. if you play 44.1khz files, then at some point they have to be upsampled. whether that’s the player or the mixer doesn’t change the problem itself.
Fortunately or unfortunately, not all SRC is equal. The MP2015 uses quite good dedicated SRC chips from Texas Instruments for the purpose, the successors to the TI SRC chips first used on the PPD 9000. The resampling being done on the Prime players seems mushy and colored-sounding in comparison to the Rane, the Pioneers, and especially the old Denon X1700’s capability… my favorite probably being the old Denon upsampling. The Rane TI chip method is pretty transparent-sounding to my ears, though I have no doubt if we could change its sampling rate it’d be even better, but the old Denon method of interpolation seems almost beneficial. InMusic could improve the Prime player SRC, but probably at the cost of processing throughput. The easier solution on the players is just to either let us choose which sample rate the player is running at so we can manually match them to the majority of our files we will be playing (like DJ software lets us) or to just have the layer change to match the sample rate of the files being played automatically (as Pioneer CDJ/XDJs do it). And of course then you could pair it with the X1700 or X1800 set at 44.1khz, which will give you the most accurate sound of all, if perhaps not quite a artificially-luscious as the X1700’s 96khz seems to make things. If you want to learn more about just how different SRC can be, take a look at this site:
so with the sc5/6000 we’re basically screwed because it always converts to 96 and we can’t change that? assuming of course that we don’t play 96khz files.
To support all the compatible rates the Prime players currently support without simply changing the layer to match it you first have to go to a multiple of all of them, an oversample. Then at some point it has to be decimated down to 96khz. Both the way up to the oversample and the way back down to the current SPDIF fixed rate of 96khz require low-pass filtering at every step. If you try playing a 96khz test track, though, you see the same non-linear harmonics being generated in the sweep. So simply playing 96khz sample rate tracks won’t currently even avoid this with the way everything is being commonly sample rate converted. What’s the oversample? When is it brought down to 96khz? I don’t know. It has to be brought down 96khz by the time the data reaches the SPDIF, at least.
That’s always a possibility on a digital mixer where the SPDIF inputs are being fed a different rate than the mixer is running at, but in practice I have yet to prefer the analog connections when the digital are available. I can imagine you could end up with such amazing analog conversion stages compared to some really simplistic linear SRC that such a scenario might occur. I know some installers were telling people that on the DJM-900Nexus with the CDJs when using 44.1khz content, but I never found that to be the case on its predecessor or its immediate successor. Granted, I haven’t used the Nexus as much as the 800 or the NXS2.
I don’t know that the SC5000 digital out has any more SRC hoops the data is going through than DAC is presented with. They might be doing the bump down to 96khz prior to all its core audio processing like speed and key change algorithms, in which case all the SRC stuff would be common to both the DACs and the SPDIF. I haven’t measured an improvement in the analog outs, but people claim the analog outs are a little more pleasing. Like I said, that might just be because the analog outs (and the analog mixer they’re going into) are less faithfully relaying the player common SRC distortion than the SPDIFs.
Personally speaking, I have a number of digital mixers and on none of them do the Prime players sound to me improved connected in analog as compared to using the SPDIFs on the same mixers. That doesn’t mean that using the Prime players with an analog mixer couldn’t have sonic benefits, though. Sometimes more accurate sound isn’t necessarily desired.
That may be my case I added a 3th player to my setup (SC 5000’s + Xone DB2) recently, so I switched to analog inputs (DB2 has only two digital ins).
DB2 matrix input makes comparison between inputs easier, and to my ears analogs do sound a little bit more pleasant even with the added DA/AD conversion. (Sorry for the weird English, I’m from Brazil ) edit: almost all my music is 44/16 wavs, and a few flacs/aiffs
What does accurate sound really mean though? I know I wasn’t in the studio with Louie Vega when he produced his latest track so I’ve no idea how it sounded in that studio. As you say it’s if you like the sound, the rotary mixers are not really meant to be super accurate but have a particular tone to them that people prefer from one mixer to another. The big Rane is way too complicated for me, far too many buttons. I’m using a Urei 1620 and have just got an Alpha Recording System so will see how that sounds, super simple in both function and signal path.
The reason for the SC600 is really to get access to all my music easily, so library management is probably more important than all the bells and whistles.
Rotary controls by themselves don’t improve sound, and in some cases give greater issues than linear.
The tentative link between rotary and sound quality is that some mixer makers have recognised that those who hanker after rotary are often those who yearn on about the warm fuzzy sound of vinyl and so often a mixer which has rotary channel faders will have some nicer, richer pre-amps and other behind-the-scenes circuitry within.
Rotary controls used to be considered by some as better for smoother longer running mixes and more subtle blend mixing, than what a linear fader could produce. It was hinted also that human wrists rotated more smoothly than their arm could extend or withdraw as they do when pushing or pulling a linear fader. However since channel fader curve settings came into mixer controls, smoothness of operation comparisons really leave the two types of control equal.
I thought that briefly on the MDJs using the DB4, but then found I preferred the overall clarity and transient crispness of the SPDIFs to the slightly sweeter, less hard highs on the analog inputs. The DB4 also sounded more consistent that way with the other mixers, so I went back to the SPDIF. The MDJ’s DACs haven’t knocked my socks off with analog mixers, though, so I assumed it was just strange synergy. After that I put the Primes on the DB4 and didn’t notice the same sweetness connecting analog, just a bit more dull to my ears. First world problems.
Well in the case of my tests, it’s nearly or identical results in RMAA from the player when the pitch fader is at zero as compared to the original RMAA test track itself run directly in RMAA, and with sweeps you should be getting just the sweep’s single tone at any one moment and not all the other harmonics. Using just your ears, you shouldn’t hear a difference between the Prime players’ SPDIF out at zero pitch at least and any bit-perfect transport like a CD player or a computer with Foobar and its own SPDIF output to a common DAC. So on this latter ears thing, you could go from the Prime players to a computer using SPDIF and use the computer’s USB audio interface as the common DAC, or your USB-capable digital mixer as the common DAC and compare the audio between the Prime player and Foobar to the mixer. In place of the computer with Foobar or some other bit perfect software player going to the USB-capable digital mixer, you could simply use a Pioneer player, too.
