First Experience Syncing Up 2 S4's..

[schaap]

Hey Guys

Last night me and my friend synced up our 2 S4's by Midi. We followed the Traktor Pro Bible tutorial to do this (http://bit.ly/hnX2g7) and got the whole thing kind of working. Unfortunately we stumbled upon a couple of strange things. I wrote down these things during the process of setting up and playing, and I really hope you guys can help me out. Excuse me if some of my questions are already somewhere in this forum..

Question 1:
While setting up the S4 Slave, the tutorial tells you to select 'Traktor Kontrol S4 MIDI Input Port 0' at the in-port field in the Device Setup. This option didn't show up in our Traktor’s and instead we choose 'Traktor Virtual Input' as the In-port section (this seemed the best option). What does this Virtual Input mean, and was this the right choice? And why doesn’t ‘Traktor Kontrol S4 Midi Input’ show up like the tutorials says?

Question 2:
After setting up all the preferences and the Midi-clock the S4's where connected. But for some strange reason when I (the master) changed my tempo and clicked on sync, the tempo of the Slave didn't automatically change too. We had to do this by hand and then it worked... What's going on here? I red this should work automatically.

Question 3:
When trying to get the master and slave in sync we used the 'tick' function in Traktor to get beats matching. To get our two 'ticks' in sync we tried to use the 'sending offset' function on the Master. But for some reason it seems this doesn’t make any sense, and doesn’t speed up the 'tick' of the master track. I seriously have no clue here.. Why does this ‘sending offset’ doesn’t seem to work?

Question 4:
Finally after manually setting the ticks of the S4's and pushing sync at the midi-clock section it all worked fine and we spinned tracks in sync for like 1 hour. All tracks in sync and we had no problems. But out of nowhere the S4's were not in Sync anymore and we could start all over again. I kept pushing sync button next to the midi-clock for like 10 times, but it didn’t sync anymore? When preforming live you off course don't want this to happen..

All our tracks were gritted correctly btw..

Thanx in advance guys,


Nick

[photojojo]

Are you both using the latest 1.0.1 version of the software? Other than that I have no idea, but would like to know as well.

[schaap]

yes we did, already checked..

[djchriswoods.co.uk]

my video might help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxRNQUswbMw

Q1. Try selecting you midi in ports as 'All Ports'

Q2. Wait until you have Q3 sorted out properly before returning to this part.

Q3. You have to strike a balance between your midi send offset and audio latency, it will take a while to get it perfect, but be patient.

Q4. Are you sure all the decks had 'Sync' selected?

[schaap]

thanx for the help Chris. Today we tried again and still no result. The strange thing is the clock doesn't fluctuate like in your movie. This means the slave isn't able to sync to the master. When we try to match our tick's by changing the offset this doesnt effect anything..

I also think it is strange everytime we set up our preferences in the controller mananger screen and re-open this, Traktor switched the device back to 'Generic Keyboard EN' or is this normal?

[djchriswoods.co.uk]

yeah thats normal.

are you sure that the midi cable is plugged into the right sockets?

[schaap]

We did it exactly as written in this tutorial: Master > Midi Out, Slave > Midi In (http://bit.ly/hnX2g7). Do you have any idea why the midi-clock of the slave doesnt sync up with the tempo of the master / fluctuates?

[schaap]

207 views and no one has an idea what's the problem here? Would it help if I made screenshots of the master and slave settings we used?

[photojojo]

I just fear there's not a whole slew of people trying to sync up two S4's yet. Have you tried a different cable or confirmed the cable you're using is good? It sounds like you may not be getting the signal from one to the other and that could be a potential cause.

[schaap]

thanx jojo. The cable is working, that's for sure. I think I am missing something in my preferences. I think the whole problem would be solved if the midi-clock of the slave starts fluctuating / gives a sign of life.