My gig last night - need ideas

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

My gig last night - need ideas

Hey people

So… long story short, last night I learned I can still manually beatmatch on CDs.

The long story is I showed up to a big gig, one of the first in front of more than my usual crew. I brought out the laptop, Audio8 and VCI-100. Simple set up I’ve been putting together.

Well, my VCI-100 stayed working for about 15 minutes at a time, if I was lucky to begin with. Kept unplugging and plugging back in. Traded out cables. When I started spinning I was getting tons of visual drop outs (Traktor’s screen would freeze). Then about 20 minutes into my set it just froze up. I still had audio (thank god) but this just kept happening. I switched over to CDs.

My second set, I couldn’t even get it to work for longer than 30 seconds.

I tried four different USB cables, and every open USB port on my computer. Do you think the USB port could be fucked? My hard drive and audio-interface worked like a charm.

Any ideas?

Also, are there any environmental issues that could cause this (ie: high bass frequencies, shaking rig, etc.)

2

Oh no! Dude that sucks. One thing that may have happened is you accidentally hit the usb cord to hard and messed up the solder contacts for the the VCI and thus the cut outs. Only one way to figure that out though. Open it up and see if there are any physical damage that you can see. Then I hope you are good at soldering. This is the thing that kept happening to my conectiv. Not fun. Good luck dude.

3

This happened to me on my Numark Total Control. what it boiled down to was, the USB port was busted on the pc so now i have a very specific port that my controller will work with and only that one. kinda lame ya

4

Dewd, very shitty on your USB, but cool runnings on your CD act bruuuuuu!

5

See, it’s working fine right now. No blips, no glitches. I tried multiple cables and multiple ports.

I think it was either the way I had it set up or the placement. shrug I dunno. If it was still giving me an issue now I’d have a different opinion.

6

I forgot to ask. Before your second set did you restart you comp? I know that sounds like an insult. But when I’m drunk I forget shit like that.

7

Dude, I restarted the machine so many times.

No worries on the q, I ask it all the time :wink:

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Well the fact that its working now is weird but good. It may have been a one time thing. But as you asked before, I do see people complaining about bass and their VCIs. So were you playing hardstyle? lol.

9

haha nah… the weird thing is as the night went on it just started working for less and less time, progressively. But, as I said, it’s been working today. shrug

I didn’t have a chance to get to the hardstyle cause it locked up first :wink:

10

Thats a mega bummer, my guess would have been the port itself as well, but if you cant recreate it that rules out mechanical damage.

Do you use USB cables with ferrites?

11

nah, I don’t. Can you point me at a good brand?

12

Find a clip on ferrite on an old cable lieing around the house and put that on your cable

13

I was also discussing these types of issues with someone else recently.

It turns out that the USB on the VCI is NOT grounded.

What you say!

Yes, the VCI-100 is not grounded. You could have very possibly had a grounding issue! I’d recommend grounding the VCI-100 to your AC-DC adapter’s ground plug on the IEC cable, or on the inhouse mixer.

again, not a guarantee. Anyone else’s suggestion is probably just as likely. Just something to keep in mind!

14

Next to grounding, could it also be the resonance of the surface on which the laptop and VCI were placed?

15

So the grounding pin on the back is there to ground the unit ? i thought it was there to ground turntables onto :\ wtf

16

could u explain that? r u talking about something u could ground from on your power strip or something?

i’ll probably just ground mine to a mixer; but, at some point, i may not have one to ground to.

17

Hey Devil, Ive had the same problem in the past, with the traktor screen locking up. Did you still have audio? If yes, the problem is with the electricity in the club you were play & as Moniker mentioned the VCI not being ground could have spiked the laptop. What I have do is your a surge protector/conditioner, and the next this is see how the f@ck we ground the VCI.

18

The grounding issue is tricky as the USB standard specifies that the peripheral device shield (or chassis in this case) is not to be connected to the ground.

Connecting the chassis to an ground or separate earth could actually make the problem worse as it will increase the common mode noise.

I’m really not sure why the Vestax engineers included the gnd screw.

19

So it wouldnt be a good idea to hook up the VCI to the GND on the Audio 8, would it?

20

That’s what I was thinking…

It might have been a combination of problems. It just doesn’t happen in my other gigs, so in my mind it has to be something about the environment. I was running my power strip out of a power conditioner, and then my laptop and my external hard drive were plugged into there. Could this have been an issue? I am not that knowledgeable on the power issues.

So, yeah, does anyone know the best way to ground it, then? If I could ground it to the audio8 I think that would be best.