Mac TPro 2 sec. audio glitch & sound quality

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06-22-2009, 02:22 AM
djerikt

Mac TPro 2 sec. audio glitch & sound quality

Hey DJTT group. Wanted to share this experience with everyone and see if there is any info.

I have an audio glitch that I can recreate. If I reboot the Mac, launch Traktor Pro, load & play 2 songs, then press the key switch button to enable the keylock...GLITCH. The audio will stop for about 2 seconds, and then resume. Seems that this only happens on a fresh boot, regardless of what sound card im using, (Fast Track Pro, internal sound). My setup is MacBook Pro 2.4, 2G ram, Traktor Pro 1.1.2, OS X 10.5.7 Leopard. The problem is recreate-able. This happened at a gig.

Which brings me to my next topic, sound quality. During my gig, the club mgr comes in and says it sounds too soft. I thought it was loud, but not punchy. So I thought, well maybe its the keylock, so I clicked on it, and ...GLITCH. So I went back to the CDJ-1000mk2s and finished the night.

Pretty frustrated with the setup, and looking for suggestions. I can't get to the creative stuff Traktor Pro can do if I can't get it stable and it doesn't sound as good as the CDJs. Ive got a ticket into NI, I've searched the forums here and NI, not finding the info I'm looking for. :confused:

Possible ideas, upgrade from the FastTrack Pro? put audio on external FW800 drive? more Mac optimizations? Mixing in external mixer mode and turning the auto gain and master limiter off? Creating my MP3 files outside of iTunes (PromoOnly, ERG NuDance, & CD Singles are my sources)... I'll try anything.

Thanks in advance, DJ Erik T / Dallas
06-22-2009, 05:07 AM
djmoonie

I have to say that after trialling traktor for a while, I took it out for a live gig last night, and had various issues as well.

With keylock set, which ever deck was not currently playing, would regularly refuse to play a track when you hit play. The button would light up on screen, but nothing, no error, nothing, only for it to work a few seconds (and alot of presses) later.

Without an external mixer, setting your audio levels consistently is virtually impossible. The VU meters inside the upfaders are just too inaccurate.

Not sure whats causing my final issue.. but when using my VCI-100, the gain knobs would only work if I dialled the gain down low first, then brought them back up. If I started at 12 o'clock and tried to increase gain (clockwise), the onscreen gain would not increase, unless I dialled backwards first. This could be something to do with the auto gain deck settings, I'm not sure.

Out of all of those, the not playing issue was clearly the biggest problem. However, I found that if I took keylock off on both decks, that problem largely went away.. but of course, made my mixing options much more limited.

Was using a pro sound card via asio, on a 2ghz laptop with 500gb HDD and 2gb ram, under windows xp (32bit)
06-22-2009, 05:40 AM
djmoonie

just a quick update.. setup my gig kit this morning, and can also recreate my 'cannot play' issues within 2 tracks when my sound card latency is set at 5.5ms. If I reduce the latency to 1.0 ms the problem has so far appeared to go away...

There needs to be some warning message when things like this happen, rather than users having to fumble around with various settings until it works...
06-23-2009, 07:45 PM
djerikt

Update , I did get a nice quick reply from NI, they basically confirmed that the keylock button has a few issues. I should hit the button once after launch, before I start playback. Anyone heard of this before?
It was also signed with a first name of "vangelis".... (couldn't be)
06-23-2009, 09:11 PM
lethal_pizzle

Quote:

Originally Posted by djmoonie

I have to say that after trialling traktor for a while, I took it out for a live gig last night, and had various issues as well.

With keylock set, which ever deck was not currently playing, would regularly refuse to play a track when you hit play. The button would light up on screen, but nothing, no error, nothing, only for it to work a few seconds (and alot of presses) later.

Without an external mixer, setting your audio levels consistently is virtually impossible. The VU meters inside the upfaders are just too inaccurate.

Not sure whats causing my final issue.. but when using my VCI-100, the gain knobs would only work if I dialled the gain down low first, then brought them back up. If I started at 12 o'clock and tried to increase gain (clockwise), the onscreen gain would not increase, unless I dialled backwards first. This could be something to do with the auto gain deck settings, I'm not sure.

Out of all of those, the not playing issue was clearly the biggest problem. However, I found that if I took keylock off on both decks, that problem largely went away.. but of course, made my mixing options much more limited.

Was using a pro sound card via asio, on a 2ghz laptop with 500gb HDD and 2gb ram, under windows xp (32bit)

Sounds like with the VCI you have the gain knobs set to 'soft takeover' and also in preferences: 'reset deck settings on load'. This means that the gain resets to a lower value every time you load it, and you therefore have to reduce the gain knob to hit the new setting before you can adjust it?
06-24-2009, 05:36 AM
djmoonie

Quote:

Originally Posted by lethal_pizzle

Sounds like with the VCI you have the gain knobs set to 'soft takeover' and also in preferences: 'reset deck settings on load'. This means that the gain resets to a lower value every time you load it, and you therefore have to reduce the gain knob to hit the new setting before you can adjust it?

Thats almost certainly it.

I have removed those options and the gains now work as expected.

So thats one issue down ;)