Sound quality of Prime 4 is superior to all others testes.. why?

Engine DJ Hardware Media Players
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as a sound engineer and muso, Im a huge stickler for sound quality. I ONLY play (mostly) 44.1k, 48k and occasionally 96khz 24 bit aifs. Kind of at my wits end running multiple library management apps, Irecently said to hell with it and ended up getting a couple of CDj2K Nexuses… And though the file management and just overall speed of workflow is wildly superior - the sound quality sucked compared to the denon in standalone mode. Despite all digital signal flow through djm900. Ive also notices that all other DDJ apps are inferior in sound to denons, native standalone sound engine… talkin with or without pitch n time, at natieve playback or not, via analog outs. The only thing that comes close seems to be DDJ software but using Dante virtual soundcard as audio device.

One would be not insane to hypothesize, that a CDJ2k Nexus - playing a native 48kfile, and running internally @ 48/24 - with no pitch adjustment, and pitch n time off - and using a digital coaxial output, to a digital mixer, with same spec… should yield audio that is danm near close to sample perfect accuracy with the output of the denon…But no. Theres this kind of dull blanket over everything, highest high hats are smeared, and one dimensional.

On the denon, it sounds miles better - clean, crisp, perfectly coherent and none of the arfifacts I notice on the pioneer. I know there were some sound related imprvements on the Nexus 2s, but with the above parameters,Im shocked at how ■■■■ it sounds I cant lie.

It occurs to me also that the cdj-external dj mixer is not a true all digital pathway - because the eq section, and analog gain and what not are an analog pathway and are then re-encoded on the way out the mixer - anyone know if this is true? Perhaps the additional phase of a/d is whats murkying up the water here

Anyways, I ended up selling em and keeping my beloved denon prime 4, which frankly i prefer haptically, and now, in terms of sounds! Now, about that software… heh. glad to see some progresss here but much work to be done.

For science!

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Have you ever abx tested the alledged differences? And could you provide some audio examples? It would be very interesting to study them.

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I prefer my own testes.

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Hi - At last someone like me believes in good sound quality and lets face it it should be better than ever as time moves on. I have a reasonable Hi-Fi from many years ago that pretty good so I make my own digital copies from a large collection I have at 192,000 kHz @ 24 bit Wav and they are the same as playing the record. But for my DJ side of things I feel the same about quality so I reduce these down to 96,000 kHz @ 24 bit for my Denon SC 6000 and the sound is still good. The digital output is a little better on these than the Analogue output but not by much. I use two Seagate hard drives owning to the size of the files my only but big gripe is Denon keep reducing the working memory to add new features and this makes my files longer to load, But yes the sound is good quality.

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44/16 is pretty much sufficient. High samplerates are only necessary for non-linear DSP operations.

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Recording at 24bit @ 192kHz from a playback is just utter nonsense to do, but by all means if you believe in it, that’s fine, of course! :+1:t2:

Curious where you record from and what source the recording had?

If it’s a vinyl record, CD-quality settings are sufficient. That vinyl record most likely had a source master recorder with magnetic tape (Studer usually) and those had a noise floor of about -78dB. A turntable isn’t any better either. CD-quality 16bit @ 44kHz has a noise floor of -96dB, so sufficient for the task.

To circumvent the Nyquist frequency issue, you could go up to 48kHz.:relieved:

Playback of the recording is fine as well, no need for high resolution: https://youtu.be/UqiBJbREUgU

Only if you are the producer of the master recording and want to store that audio signal digitally, then 24bit @ 192kHz might be a good idea.

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That video is very informative indeed and I’ve shared it many times because of how educative it is :ok_hand:

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Since we’re debunking myths anyway, I recommend anyone that is interested in this subject to watch these video’s:

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This. :point_up_2:t3:spot on.

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Negative, Id be happy to (have) but the pioneer rig is gone :confused: Im all for the scientific analysis (well aware of the sometimes misleading effects of preference /bias but, the differences were so clear to my ear that I didnt have to.Noticably worse, and this isnt the first time… I suppose I could try some tests vs.serato / vDJ or withmy ddj400 which also sounds like ass comparitively

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yup, as long as youre maintaining the same sample rate throughout the signal chain, a solid 441 16 is just fine and any benefits from 48k or 96k, I would guess are completely lost especially when ramming it through some giant PA in mono… not gonna notice tht, lol

BUT lossy files - absolutely there is a massive difference especially when you apply pitch variation, or pitch n time, forget about it. then when evrythings recorded and then youre adding a final phase of loss for distribution - no good. I wish some of these tests that claim theres 'no difference’would consider that we play our music at allkinds of different speeds and with or without pitch n time correction.

But anywho, thanx for the replies friends I was wondering if anyone had the same experience, I guess im the crazy one as per usual :slight_smile:

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Im sure theyre lovely but lets stay on the topic of sound quality ROFL

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I buy lossless AIFF b/c I have the same opinion.

It’s also important to recognize that most “normies” don’t care or can’t tell the difference.

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Well who cares about them?? haha. of course. I feellike theres a very subtle difference that SOME people seem to experience it weather they know it or not. but absoluetly true, most people dont give a fuuuudge and would be more than happy to watch blade runner on their iphone screen and listen to all of their music as 128k mp3files from spotify, distortedly shouting out of a speaker the size of a jujubeat, thats their failed life problem, not mine :slight_smile:

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You seem like an agent provocateur sent to spur up a predictable rebuttal while you claim to have no idea about the prior conversations and tests that were run on this forum. I think that’s unlikely you don’t know where this topic has previously gone and where this is going to go, especially since tests are not difficult to run and you claim to be a sound engineer. Your first posts just so happen to be on this topic? Not plausible, but whatever. I’ll take the worm.

Denon DJ Prime playback of 192khz track doesn’t even have the frequency extension of a 44.1khz track played from the average smartphone, let alone average dedicated hifi players, let alone the average professional audio gear. Denon DJ Prime playback also adds about 100X the intermodulation distortion over what the original test signal contained. These are not difficult to check yourself, and even easier to just spend a few minutes actually searching on the forum for sound quality and audio tests run by multiple people.

All the flagship Pioneers from CDJ-1000mk2 to CDJ2000NXS2 are bit perfect from the SPDIF when the pitch fader is at zero and (in the case of the later units) you’re not using the weird sort of quasi sampler thing where you can instantly hot cue other tracks, in which case it may resample the hot cue if it’s a different rate than the loaded track that’s dictating the rate of the SPDIF. You seem to be under the misconception that the older CDJs are running at 48khz, which they are not. They run at 44.1, 48, or (optionally on the later units) 96khz, depending on the rate of the track. The CDJ-3000 and the Denon DJ player separates are all fixed right now at 96khz. The CDJ-3000, though, is clearly doing higher quality sample rate conversion, but there’s also less being done with more processing power on the new Pioneers vs the new Denons that are using weaker chips to do a lot more.

Most DJ software is also superior in audio processing fidelity to the Denon DJ Prime playback… assuming the former + hardware is matched to the rate of the tracks you’re playing. You can test this empirically, too. Torq 2.0 does do some hinky stuff, but part of that is because there are non-bypassable channel isolators causing some phase distortion. Both Torq 2.0 and Prime use a particular efficient version of Elastique, and AIR did code both originally, though they claim they don’t share any significant code. Even if you account for the isolators, Torq 2.0 still out-tests Denon DJ Prime playback, though to my old ears Torq 2.0 sounds the closest to Prime playback.

My personal favorite sounding software to DJ using controllers with is actually the older versions of VDJ before they started adding stems and a bunch of other stuff. At zero pitch and properly rate-matched, it’s indistinguishable in the digital domain from an old CDJ, and it has better key lock & change than old CDJs if you use that, too. The oldest 2ch versions of Traktor also tested similar to that, but most current DJ software I’ve tested doesn’t produce poor, degraded sound, even if some aren’t quite audiophile grade bit-perfect processing.

As for why you think Prime sounds better, you might be playing very sparse music, or you might be very sensitive to high frequencies. Prime in my experience doesn’t do well with complex high frequency information and very dense music lacking dynamics but can juice up minimalist stuff pretty well. Kind of like running minimalist stuff through guitar pedals. Overly pristine stuff can actually sound more interesting. You might also be very sensitive to frequencies in the top octave, and the high-frequency roll-off of the Prime anti-aliasing filter may be more pleasing to you than more accurate treble. YMMV.

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A little earlier this summer I found myself at 3am in a barn in a field with about 200 people stomping it up to LFO by LFO out of a Prime Go and a bunch of vintage Turbosounds. TBH I didn’t pick up on any added intermodulation distortion. “Subjective”, I thought at the time, while gurning at my mates.

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You were skeptical, then you verified it with tests of your own, but I can’t find that thread or post anymore.

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Thank you for the detailed information regarding the various players. Quite interesting because I actually prefer the sound of the denon gear. (for what its worth, I too was a fan of the sound of VDJ, with careful attention to the sound settings, (i.e. not smashing up against a limiter, and without any pitch n time algo, just regular old pitch) to my ear, sounds quite good.

Bare in mind, my curiosity on this topic was piqued whilest comparing my denon prime 4 with a new-to-me pair of CDJ2K Nexus (not 2’s) which do have the (alleged) capacity to run in 44.1k and 48k, not 96 - a user switchable parameter which is not dynamic based on what is being played - as far as I can decypher, these preform the bare bones SRC from your source material, in 48 and 44 to whatever mode you’vd opted to run the player at, and to my dissapoint, wont even play 96k or 88.1 or any kind of ‘exotic’ files, much to the dismay of my extensive ambient collection… and the main reason why I ultimately opted to go back to my beloved denon prime, inferior library software notwithstanding.

Ill try and not take the accusation of being some sort of SQ troll instigator too much to heart, lol… though you have quite an imagination… a good thing to have, I think. I do appreciate the good info though, so I will not return the jabs, and say, thank you! Right on the money as to whta I had hoped to learn from this discussion, and, fyi, I did and do ask these questions in earnest, with no agenda or bias, with the sole intent of selecting the gear that will best represent the music that I play.

Im a stickler for sound quality, and find all this stem algo ■■■■■■■■ to be, rather disturing and, sound like, well, absolute ■■■■ and I even avoid pitch n time for the special-est occasions, where I absolutely just cant live without shifting something a semitone or two, and its quite rare. So, could I have dug a bit deeper, or, spend 3 days performing my own battery of tests with an oscilloscope, maybe, someone had done that before and I could, just ask! which is what I did. When there are helpful folks like yourself to help illuminate the path forward, its easy to become just a little bit lazy.

So, thanks? lol. cheers

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I came across this video recently. A great explanation of why the stair-step model of digital audio is incorrect, and as such, higher samples rates for playback do not improve anything within the human hearing range.

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Indeed. Higher does not equal better. In fact, sample rates above 60kHz actually compromise accuracy. Lavry has a paper about that: https://www.lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-white-paper-the_optimal_sample_rate_for_quality_audio.pdf

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