Traktor Sound Error

[Jerc]

I was DJing a club last night - place was packed.

I was using traktor 2 with audio4, timecodes on CDJ's and an allan and heath mixer.

All of a sudden. Music cuts out. Traktor still running, cdj's still controlling the decks, but no sound is going into the mixer.

Tried a CD and it worked fine so i know it was a connection between traktor and the mixer. My initial thought was the usb cable had maybe faulted. Everything was still connected etc, and i knew the USB couldn't have faulted since the timecodes were still responsive on traktor to me scratching the deck...

I had to restart traktor and when i did, it didn't recognise an input, so had to pull it out and put it back in.

Then everything was fine, played the rest of the night with no problems. Never had this happen before, and have been using traktor for 18 months.

Any ideas?

Pretty scary when it cut out in a packed club, i play 3 residencies every week and they all hit capacity..cant bear the thought of this happening again.

any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Jerc]

Forgot to say. running Traktor on a macbook pro 13". 4gb ram and 500gb hd.

[Karlos Santos]

All of a sudden. Music cuts out. Traktor still running, cdj's still controlling the decks, but no sound is going into the mixer.

This means that it was an issue outside Traktor.
If the USB cable failed then the Souncard would stop working and Traktor would grind to a compete halt but you mention that already.

I had to restart traktor and when i did, it didn't recognise an input, so had to pull it out and put it back in.

Do you use Multicores or normal RCA/cinch cables..?

Did you check the scopes for a warnings..?
Sounds like one of your cables is faulty or wasnt connected properly to the mixer. The one that you unplugged and plugged back in again.

If the USB cable fails then Traktor totally stops. If a phono cable fails Traktor will run on emergency mode or mono and you will get warning such as a straight line on your scope.

Id swap all your cables and stress test the system at home.

[Jerc]

thanks for the reply.

I use regular phono cables to connect my audio4 to the mixer.

Thing is, if it was a fault with the RCA's then surely both of them would not fault at once? as both decks weren't putting any signal into the mixer.

And if i could still control the tracks via timecodes then it couldnt have been the USB.

My only theory is that the audio4 had a bit of an output issue, as the input was working fine(cdj's controlling the decks on traktor)

Anyone else have any ideas?

[Karlos Santos]

Did you try a regular CD in the player before twiddling with the cables. Or did you fiddle with the cable then try the CD player?

Also might be worth checking how well the contacts are between your RCAs and the Audio 4 because there was an issue with the AUdio 8 that the Input on the soundcard were not very deep and normal RCAs either fell out with vibration or didnt make a great connection.

The fix was to cut back some of the RCA plastic sleeve.

Do you use Native Instruments RCAs or standard one from a store.

I still think its the cables but ... yeah the Audi6 may have flipped out BUT you did say that unplugging and replugging fixed it which sounds like a cabling fault.

Jus my hunch.

[brian_johnstone]

im not sure what the issue is but as a precaution i always have a 3.5mm to rca connected from hy headphone jack on laptop to a spare channel on the mixer, with the level all the way up, this way like karlos said, if your sound card fails, traktor will switch to internal mode and output from your onboard sound card, music will stop for less than a second, but it is a bit of a get out of jail free card.