More S4 disappointment...

[DJXpoZur]

Ok. I read a lot on the forums I don't want to start a platform war but I will address my personal disappointments. Let me start by saying that I am a PC tech person. A programmer on PC's for since early 80's. I started DJ'ing a couple years ago with PC/SL3/Mixer/CDJs but being from a computer background I really love the idea of controllers.

So earlier this year I decided to get an S4. It had already been out for some time, I heard all about the issues some people had on PC and thought I would not have an issue given my background. I was also fine with purchasing a Mac since I have wanted one of my own, my wife's primary computer has been Mac for years and she was getting tired of me borrowing hers to play with writing software for my iPod.

Upon receiving my S4 I had severe and consistent popping/audio glitches. I couldn't work them out right away so I got a Mac and everything was fine right out of the box. I didn't want to give up on the PC though given my background. New drivers eventually came out and I got my system working with no issues. Having bought the Mac though and feeling a little safer with it given it gave me no issues ever I transitioned all DJ'ing to the Mac for both SSL and S4 and today all my gigs are with my Mac. I consider my main setup to be Mac/SL3/Mixer/CDJs. and since purchasing the S4, the NS6 has also come out and I purchased one of those to try and generally use it for the smaller gigs that I don't want to setup the CDJ's. This left my S4 basically unused so I decided that I would built a little mini setup in my bedroom and leave it there with my PC laptop and just play with it.

I might add that the reason is even though I feel more comfortable playing gigs with Serato, I really love Traktor for effects and the functionality of the S4.

So where am I going with the little rant? Well after setting up my room for S4 I now get pops and audio glitches again. I haven't gone through and re-optimized the system yet, but honestly, I shouldn't have to. I didn't add any software. I did uninstall a bunch of stuff but I don't feel that should have changed Traktor. This is such a dissappointment and given the fact I don't need to do this, I am pretty much just giving up on it for now. I'll use my Mac and play once in a while, but Traktor with S4 is relegated to solely being a bedroom toy for me with no reliability.

And since I fully expect someone to not be able to resist the ever so popular comeback of selling it. I most certain will sell it with the NI hard case if you pay me close to what I paid for it. I live in South Dakota and accept U.S. cash only.

[LoveBass]

first dude, chek your latency

[Ross]

I don't optimize my laptop for DJing at all and I don't have a problem... Maybe it's literally just your laptop.

[VanGogo]

I noticed this too since the last update. I have turned of multi core support and changed to the slow computer settings for key lock, and still get a few pops and clicks. And yes I have tried higher latency settings, and already run dual boot stripped down W7 with smittten's script.
Didn't have this problem before the update. I hope it gets fixed in the next update, but not holding my breath. I might roll back to previous version.

[echo.ranger]

The clicks/pops problems are fixable in many cases, as my Core i3 laptop also ran into them with Traktor 2. It does take patience though as its a trial-and-error approach to determine what specifically causes the issue. The blog posts on DJTT and the latency troubleshooting guide at NI's support site give some great ways to go about solving the problem.

Honestly, if you're feeling the gumption to troubleshoot the issue (I'm a PC geek too and this was simply another problem to be solved) I would look at disabling/uninstalling unnecessary drivers, one by one, if the latency DPS latency checker starts showing spikes. Mine did that correlated with the audio drop-outs I was getting. Turns out that, at least in my case, Synaptics' touchpad driver doesn't play nicely with low-latency audio and is installed on nearly every PC laptop I've played around with. I uninstalled it, let Windows 7 use its default driver for the touchpad (lost some pad features, but nothing showstopping) and bingo, all latency issues resolved with Traktor running @ 10ms.

I feel your pain man, really, I had similar frustration right after setting-up my S4 to the point where I was about to throw it through a window. The thing is, its simply all the drivers on your PC that are fighting for attention. All it takes is one poorly-coded (in respect to latency) one to ruin your day. Relax about it for a bit, spend half a day and futz around with meticulously enabling/disabling components and drivers and then testing Traktor, and I'm reasonably sure you'll find a fix for it. If you've got a Synaptics touchpad driver installed, rip that MF out.

I can't help with the Mac side of things as I don't own one, but I suspect troubleshooting would take a similar route.

Nothing worth having is ever really easy And the S4 really is a joy to play with when the clicks stop.

[DJXpoZur]

Thanks everyone for the support and encouragement to not give up, like I said I really like playing with a Traktor for my own personal pleasure more due mainly to the effects and the S4 integration/layout/features.

Anyway, my son also likes Traktor and asked if he could have the setup. Which along with the positive responses (I really expected people to be negative for some reason) prompted me to fix it and honestly it probably took me less time to fix than writing my initial rant to begin with.

So I am once again able to use my S4 on my PC laptop. Samples set to 128 and 2 ms buffer which totals 8.5ms delay. No drop outs or crackling. Load monitor within tracktor shows extremely low even with lots effects and two tracks playing. My latency for the last 30 mins hasn't gone over 230 and that is with my wireless ON.

More than good enough stats for bedroom use... Heck, I may even let me son take it to parties to dj with.... Lol.

[padi_04]

That's the good thing about DJTT, we like fixing stuff Welcome to the forum

[windoz]

That's the good thing about DJTT, we like fixing stuff Welcome to the forum

[XplodeHD]

i used traktor 2.0.3 with s4 perfect in windows 7 and mac never had a problem with macbook 2.2 2gb ram (2009 model) and i am still on 2.0.3 couse the latest traktor is really bad just go for 2.0.3

[smiTTTen]

I have been breaking all my own rules of late. I have 3 boot partitions on my laptop but I am so lazy that I have ended up installing all kinds of crap on my S4 partition. After a while I did start to find that the Traktor slowed down a touch (no pops/glitches/drop outs) as well as the system in general. Earlier in the week I uninstalled a bunch of stuff, cleaned out some stuff in msconfig, turned a few services back off and am back to excellent performance (the system mind you, not me).