VCI400 Soundcard is....
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  1. #1
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    Default VCI400 Soundcard is....

    Just writing to give a report of a tragic situation using my VCI400 over the weekend.

    I bought this unit for travel because I was booked to play an event in New Mexico.

    I own a Macbook Pro which is my dedicated DJ Laptop. I use this laptop normally with Traktor and it runs smooth as glass with my normal setup which includes a custom midi controller and a Babyface RME soundcard.
    But beings I was traveling so far for this gig, I decided to buy the Vci400 and use it solely for this gig (soundcard and EGE mapping).

    I tested the vci400 at home prior to the gig for short periods of time to make sure I was comfortable with the setup and everything seemed to be fine. I downloaded AND INSTALLED tHe most recent MAC drivers for the VCI400.

    I arrive at the gig and started to play......THEN.....after about an hour I noticed that the sound started to have momentary dropouts which would happen randomly and last for about a second. Then out of nowhere I noticed that the sound was studdering in a constant way (almost sounding as if gator was engaged) and no matter what I did it wouldnt stop. It sounded very distorted and choppy and this behavior was able to be heard thru my heasdphones and thru the main system. All my levels where fine and I wasnt in the red within Traktors main output or the individual channels. In a frantic attemp to remedy the situation I tryed changing the latency setting Real Time, which didnt do anything. My original Latency setting was 192 for the soundcard and 9.0 Traktor total output. I changed the latency setting to something ridiculous like 40ms and still no change to the studdering sound situation.

    Fortunately there was a mobile dj at the gig who happened to have a CD player on board so I switched over the that CD and rebooted my Macbook Pro. My hopes where that this was a latency issue that required a reboot to truely take effect. SO I rebooted, made sure the latency remained ridiculously high (40ms) and started to play again. And after about an hour, the same exact problems started to happen again !!!!!

    So I had to switch over to CD thruout the night when the studdering thing started to happen and reboot, which would give me another hour of playtime before the problem would start to happen again.

    I had another gig the next night and I used my normal setup (which includes RME Babyface soundcard) and I had no problems like I experienced with the VCI400.

    For the life of me, I cant understand how on earth Vestax can make a Soundcard that could have this kind of problem straight outta the box. This is a sneaky problem because it didnt happen untill an hour and a half after I started playing.

    This situation goes down as the biggest "WTF" moment in my entire DJ career !!!

  2. #2
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    Manufacturer defect? I'd exchange it for sure if it's right out of the box.

    This is also why I always carry a backup laptop and an Audio 2 sound card

  3. #3
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    this is not a defected unit.

    The Mac Soundcard drivers are crap.

    I tested the VCI400 Soundcard today on a pc and didnt run into the same problem, however I did have to set the latency to 40ms in order to not hear clicks and pops.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by thictool View Post
    this is not a defected unit.

    The Mac Soundcard drivers are crap.

    I tested the VCI400 Soundcard today on a pc and didnt run into the same problem, however I did have to set the latency to 40ms in order to not hear clicks and pops.
    That's not normal on a PC, either...

  5. #5
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    it kinda is a problem for PCs as any random google search "vci400 soundcard latency issue" will tell you....

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by thictool View Post
    this is not a defected unit.

    The Mac Soundcard drivers are crap.

    I tested the VCI400 Soundcard today on a pc and didnt run into the same problem, however I did have to set the latency to 40ms in order to not hear clicks and pops.

    i have a smoke-show new macbook pro and had the same issue using Traktor 2.1.2

    not sure why, but try increasing the sample rate to 48000 or even 88000. i have had nothing but success with it. your latency should drop with the higher sample rate and the CPU load spikes should go away..

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by thictool View Post
    this is not a defected unit.

    The Mac Soundcard drivers are crap.
    The Mac soundcard drivers has nothing to do with the VCI-400's soundcard, unless you have been accidentally using your macbooks soundcard during your gig
    VCI-400 EGE / Sennheiser HD-25-1 II / MF3D / iPad 2 running Lemur / Audio 6 DJ

  8. #8
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    Oh good lord....What I am saying is that the VCI400 Drivers (that interact with Mac) are crap.

    Also tested Mac using 48K on the VCI400 soundcard properties within Traktor.....still same behaviar....

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