Having recently taken the plunge and paid way too much for a casual bedroom DJ to justify (according to the Mrs) A Denon SC Live 4. I’m really happy with it so far however on all the reviews I have seen everyone has horizontal wave forms and I have vertical and I can’t find how to change them. Does anyone know how to get the horizontal wave forms on please? Thanks in advance
Hi Dave
its Shift + View.
Also see the latest user manual that can be downloaded here, there are tonnes of features and this is the best place to find out what they do.
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The Live 4 is great for its price, really. Many people call it the ‘ultimate bedroom device’ you can get for around 1 grand, but hey, at least you won’t feel limited in near to mid future either, so it was a good investment, since you can save the money of upgrading and instead take your Mrs to a nice weekend trip, maybe? 
Shift + View as Stu-C said. You can also change in the settings if you want to see 2 or 4 waveforms at once. Because the screen is only 7" I would recommend going with 2. You can regard the other 2 channels as backup. Rather having and not needing them, than the other way round.
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I wish it had an internal drive slot Solaris… i keep looking at gear that can replace my Prime 2 should the unfortunate happen and mine breaks or gets damaged at a gig, and the obvious choice is the Live 4, but that lack of SSD drive kills me :(. Its otherwise a great looking choice.
They really castrated the Live 2 imho, it’s not a proper replacement for the Prime 2.
Live 4 vs Prime 2 is a far more tough choice. No SSD bay, no Ethernet, external power brick, worse pads and build quality (still decent, but metal feels better). In return you get a better mixer with Sweep FX and 4 channels, dedicated buttons for menu/view/lighting, BPM/time info in jog screens, Serato support, the speakers - which sound really good.
At least you can keep a SD card inside, and it is more convenient to add tracks, since you don’t need to connect the whole device to your laptop. But yeah, a SSD is faster and a bit more robust.
All in all I would say: Prime 4/+ > Prime 2 ≈ Live 4 > Prime Go ≈ Live 2 > Mixstream
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You put the SSD on the USB slot as well as the ethernet, it’s not the best but it works well
My main issue, the SATA drive speed gives a huge advantage over a USB hard drive. I can literally format and re-install my whole library on the SATA drive in 15 mins.
SD is a good option as Solaris says though, I’m currently using my SD slot for recordings but can work around it
The difference between Sata and USB 3 shouldn’t really make a noticeable difference.
It absolutely does, you try loading 130gb of music onto a USB 3 stick and see how long it takes.
SanDisk Extreme Pro external SSDs are capping USB 3.0 easily.
Dunno about SC Live but on SC5000/Prime4 only the blue rear USB ports are 3.0. Front/Top are USB 2.0 only
I do not trust the SanDisk Pro SSDs, since last year reports came in that some of Western Digital’s SanDisk Extreme Pro 4TB SSDs suffered from sudden data loss. The reason appears to be that components used in these devices were somehow too big for the circuit board and their connections became prone to breaking. The 2TB and 3TB models also suffer from the same issue. The Verge wrote about it:
“Months after our inquiries, Western Digital continues to sell these drives […]”
“I won’t be buying a Western Digital or SanDisk product anytime soon.”
But I’m talking about the overall transfer speed of a library export. I’ve been using good quality USB 3.0 drives for years with Rekordbox and Engine, the results are the SATA drive inside the Prime 2 performs the sync at least 10x faster than doing it over USB on your computer, it’s not even close.
In fact with Rekordbox I used to leave it running overnight to complete.
I haven’t tried with an external hard drive but there are countless threads on here complaining about the speed of sync and why it takes so long.
For me it’s the other way around. I can put the Extrem Pro SSD on USB-C on my PC and it’s faster then Sata can even handle. Not the full 1.200mb but around 650mb most times while the internal drive with USB 3.0 connected howers around 300-350mb.
@Parysatis I’ve got 2 1TB drives and no problems at all. Anyway there are other external USB SSDs with 1.000mb/sec and more that are (plugged in USB-C) faster then Sata can offer.
And I don’t like to bring up my Prime4 to my computer from storage room.
There are too many variables to say conclusivley how fast an SSD drive performs over any given USB 3.0 drive or SD Card. From the SATA interface of the unit to the device used to write to the storage. The performance of the storage itself will vary wildly also. I use a Sandisk Extreme Pro SD card 200MB/s on my SC Live 4. This suits me and is lightening fast when performing the incremental drive syncs from Engine DJ. However I’m under no illusion that I’m actually reaching 200MB/s, far from it I would imagine. My three year old Mac, the card reader, sequential vs random writes and read/write cycles will all have an impact on the write speeds. Similarly I’m doubtful the card reader in the SC Live 4 would be capable of realising the potential of SDXC.
The only way to be sure in my opinion is to test it for yourself with your own storage and hardware. In Stu’s case the SSD wins out for others maybe the USB drive. Like I say the SD card suits my use case.
One thing I would like to see is the ability to sync to an Engine DJ device/attached storage over wifi. 1st world problem I know but it would be really convenient just shooting an update across without any faff.
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I’d have to respectfully disagree that the Prime Go is better than the Mixstream Pro Go. Well, maybe you were just talking about the vanilla Mixstream, but the Pro Go is better than the Prime Go. Better jogs, speakers, Amazon Unlimited (which is great if you give it a try). I was in a position to buy a Prime Go OR Mixstream Pro Go and after doing the research went with the Pro Go. I’ve been happy with my purchase so far except I need to figure out how to re-calibrate the crossfader on the Pro Go as it’s having a slight issue on the right hand side. I fixed it for now by moving the curve adjust slightly to the left a bit, but other than that it’s been golden. I take it to work whenever I go into the office and mix on my lunch break in the car or at the cafe patio. I love the jogs for scratching in songs. Even with the crossfader at its best, you can’t do more complex scratches that require a tight cut, but some babys, chirps, military, stabs, etc, are all doable on the Pro Go.
Prime Go is still around 300 bucks more expensive, and that has to be for a reason. Build quality for example, or Booth TRS out, Aux-In, AutoLoop Encoders, RGB pads, Dual Mics. That’s why I ranked it higher in the tier list.
However:
Personally, I would also pick a Mixstream Pro Go over the Prime Go anyday, because the layout, Jogs, and EFX (paddle) control is much more fun and the price value is just better. The new color style is also better than the OG Mixstream. Having a backup Aux-In, longer Pitch faders, 4 RGB pads and maybe a tilted screen would had been nice though, but you can’t get everything. Let’s see if a Prime Go Mk2 is in the work and what it will bring.
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