Unwanted increase in speed when cueing in a track

It has nothing to do with the cue. It will do it at a random point in the music until you put the fader back to zero. It’s the motor speed going up, not anything on-screen or with analysis or engine on your laptop. I never bothered to try changing layers when it happens, though. Makes sense that it would stay with the layer change because pausing and playing makes no difference.

I got an M too.

You’re right, it does appear to be pretty random. However, I have a recording of it happening - https://soundcloud.com/option-d/denon-sc5000m-speeding-up - which may help support.

I’ve dropped them a mail. They need to get this fixed if they want to be taken seriously for live performances. This is the sort of thing that can make you look like a rank amateur when you’re playing out.

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Sorry if repeating myself a bit here. to be more clear on what I have experienced. Yep most of my tunes are MP3 format and quite a lot of them are Wav, thanks to Option-D and others, also Reticuli is correct in his observation that it can happen at any point but for me it does seem to happened as I first press play on the tune to cue it up (for the tunes that have done it to me that is) it has not happened on any pre set cue points & only when I have first pressed play on a tune I was about to cue up and as soon as I adjust the pitch, the track slows down to the pitch it should have been at, sometimes quite a considerable amount of bpm in the tune as when it has happened for me the tune was playing way too fast. Almost like playing a 33rpm record at the speed of a 45rpm. I personally have no idea why it happens? motor glitch, software error or whatever but I hope Denon do look into it more. No one wants this to happen in a live situation and luckily for me it has only happened a few times as I have cued a tune, only once has it happened as I pressed play with the tunes channel levels already audible(luckily I was not playing out) and I have not been able to duplicate it with the tunes it has happened on. In total it has happened to me 5 times now, (none captured on recording device or video…sorry). Owned my Ms since 1st day of release and I have grown to love them more then my previous sc3900s and just as much as my 1210`s. because it happens so rare and randomly I think Denon may struggle to find the root cause…hope I am wrong

You know what, we should try next time this happens to turn Vinyl off, then change layers, then move the pitch back to zero, then back to where it was, then back to the other layer. Might be a better way than speeding the track up even more temporarily.

So I’ve just listened to a 2 hour mix that I did a couple of days ago. There are slow downs as well as speed ups! I reckon about half a dozen in all, over a two hour mix. That’s pretty bad. I might as well stick to my 30 year old, never been serviced once, 1210s. They hold pitch better.

I’ve been in touch with Denon support. Nothing back yet, but I’m seriously thinking the unit needs to go back if they don’t have any plans to address the situation.

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Slow downs? I can’t recall noticing that.

It might be my ears playing tricks on me, but I’m certain I heard one slowdown over the course of the mix.

When I get a moment, I’m going to throw the mix AIFF file into Ableton Live. I kept a steady BPM throughout the mix, so Ableton should show up any changes in BPM quite easily.

I’ve had a few instances when cueing using the platter on the 5000M leave the track playing at a much higher BPM than the BPM set for the layer.

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With more of us reporting strange events like this Denon should be looking a bit deeper to find the reasons for these?

I am happy it is a rare occurrence but dread the day this glitch is going to catch me out live, I have had vinyl that did not jump last play catch me out so it will be the quip drop out, and crack on. this technology is why we advance but new technology includes new issues like all things.

Still love Denon but they can always improve and Inbrand own so much tech now they should improve customer care to equal research & development

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only the speed up issue for me too?

I’m gonna give mine a good rinsing and record on video and see what happens. I plan to take it out for the first time in 2 weeks so I gotta know the do’s and don’ts.

Any of you guys using sync/master when this is happening?

Is this happening using only one deck or between 2?

The Ms getting warm seemed to induce the issue.

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When I first bought mine I was playing with the layer feature and saw that the turntable stops, starts, changes speeds when bouncing between layers and thought this can’t be good for the motor. So I don’t have the platter running usually unless I’m scratching and I turn the motor off before changing layers.

I never thought to listen to hear if anything out of the ordinary was going on like speed ups or slow downs but some tracks that I played the audio would cut out after a few seconds from the beginning. This only seems to happen with mp3s for me.

One more thing. How are you guys setting your record on the platter?

Try this,

Load and play a track with motor on. Scratch and turn motor off. Now with motor off pitch bend with the platter. Now turn motor on and scratch. Then turn the motor of and pitch bend with the platter.

If you see what I’m seeing than think about what you are doing when you change layers.

It seems to me the software thinks we’re doing something when we want to do something else maybe.

I never turn the motor/vinyl-mode off except just to test how well it works. Sort of defeats the purpose of having the Ms. And the bend is twice as sensitive as it should be with it off, anyway. If they’d found some way to do a single unit that could be either touch or moving platter, that would have been cool.

Did you try what I posted to see what I’m saying?

I’m not sure what you are saying you’re experiencing when you turn motor on and off and pitch bend or change layers, though.

The procedure that I posted was pretty clear. It’s repeatable everytime for me.

  1. I load a track and I press play with the motor on and do a couple baby scratches. Everything normal.

  2. Turn the motor off and pitch bend the track back and forth. Works normally.

  3. While the track is still playing (and it should be still playing the whole time) turn the motor on. This is where I spot the first anomaly. When the motor tuns on the software thinks I want to pitch bend.

  4. While the motor is still on (with track still playing, no layer change) scratch. Works normally.

  5. Turn the motor off once more and pitch bend with the platter again. (Oh when I turn the motor off it thinks I want to pitch bend down) This is where I spot my second anomaly. The pitch bending on the platter does not respond.

Now the first anomaly might be linked to what the op and others are describing. I believe what they are saying so I’m testing to verify it and this is what I see so far.

Pretty sure this is a known issue. Laidback Luke did an “In My Mind” video using 3 SC5000M players and two of them had the random BPM fluctuation issue.

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It’s been discussed on this forum for two months prior to that.

His recent issues are possibly different from some of the others, as if in his case the platter were being dragged along the edge rather than speeding up dramatically as in mine. However, he had the pitch in the positive only slightly when it occurred, while I’ve experienced this exclusively (that I noticed) in substantial negative pitch. I do tend to go in the negative pitch a lot (partly because that’s a unique strength of Elastique v3), so this might just be a result of where the two of us are in the pitch rather than anything else.

His position of the players most vulnerable to this problem is consistent with my experience, though. The right side of the Ms might be more susceptible to heat than the left side of them, and if it’s a heat issue you’re obviously more likely to have issues with the players that are adjacent to the mixer that’s generating heat. Thus, the left deck closest to my hot Mackie mixer was also the most frequently doing weird speed things. He has his decks right up against the otherwise relatively cool X1800 with not much air gap.