Firmware update thoughts

You guys wanna see more measurements or are you satiated?

More data never hurt anyone but I’m quite satisfied :smiley:

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I meant satisfied regarding the amount of measurements not specifically the roll-off thing, by the way.

i think you need to man up a bit mate and stop trying your best to be offended, this is a forum for debate where men talk about dj gear not their feelings…

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i got 2 sc5000 yesterday, they arrived with old firmware and i did not detect a problem with this roll off issue. this forum is toxic towards its own gear and is the worst form of marketing ive ever seen. denon should make this a closed forum.

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I’m glad we don’t have to discuss this any more, as the issue is resolved.

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A lot of users didn’t detect the problem, but then a lot of people in general cannot hear all the way to 20Khz. The measurements posted by users though don’t lie so it was an issue. Thankfully it has now been mostly resolved.

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Yep! While its ok to have a general area for “let’s all talk rubbish about x product” where anyone can join, there should be a real users only section of the forum for each product where access is only given to bona-fide, confirmed, genuine owners… not just trolls, renters, repair guys and “I set up stuff for a local club so get to play on the buttons a bit if I want” incendiaries. Denon would need to check serial numbers and receipts for eligibility as a one off per member, but it would mean a far more helpful section with less of the random equipment guesses, speculation and unnecessary “what ifs”

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Hey guys I have a sneaking suspicion that the guys wanna know when we have problems and need things fixed. We get to be the basis for lighting fires under the right people. We are the creatives and talents for these products and are the people that need to be happy with these products or we don’t buy them any more. Shutting us/this forum down doesn’t help Denon/InMusic. As a community we find problems that need to be fixed. Ask for upgrades/updates we need/want to do our jobs better or are on comparable (or way less expensive) equipment. The Denon team that wants their company to be a horse in this race and actually care about its users and just DJ culture in general wanna be able to point to this forum and show the suits that hey, these are the things we need to be doing! Let’s throw some money at it and get it done! So no, this forum is just fine. It’s takes all kinds in this world and yeah it stinks that sometimes people don’t really have good intentions when they join this forum but it needs to exist - gotta take the good with the bad. And honestly we have a lot of good posters here that contribute excellent views and content. Oooooook, moving on. :slight_smile:

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An evaluation of the state of the industry other than Denon Prime. I ran some RMAA tests of the Hanpins, Pioneer CDJ-900, and Gemini MDJ-1000 playing off a flash drive. All done using SPDIF out.

For MP3s, 320 was a significant but not alarming reduction in specs for all three brands… I don’t believe that’s shown, but take my word for it. VBR was substantially worse (red line with wild high frequency swings), and they pretty much decoded MP3s of varying types similarly as far as their own respective fidelity – i.e. their traces looked similar and their respective numeric results were different mostly with respect to the same differences seen in the wav performance. In other words, none of the brands decoded MP3s substantially different (let alone worse) than the other, and fidelity differences were independent of their methods of MP3 decoding.

For wav files:

Hanpins are always slightly processed, probably due to their complicated effects section. Keylock On at zero pitch is no different than keylock Off at zero pitch.

CDJ-900 is bit perfect at zero pitch regardless of whether keylock is On or Off

Gemini MDJ-1000 with keylock Off, while not quite bit perfect like the CDJ-900, is closer to bit perfect than the Hanpins. Interestingly, keylock On with zero pitch is significantly processed in the MDJ, with about a 2dB swing in varying, squiggly frequency response, early multi-tone high frequency roll-off (yellow line), and a reduction in most specs closer to the Hanpins.

Now, this is un-pitched, so there’s no telling how the actual key lock algorithms compare on each of these. I have some ideas about how I might test key lock fidelity among the brands. On the Hanpins and Pioneers, if you return the track to zero pitch after transitioning, there’s no point in turning Off the keylock if you were using it for the blend. On the Gemini, there is currently very much a utility in turning keylock Off when not using it.


Now for the Prime players, again all SPDIF output…

Here’s the current players’ impulse response, pretty clean and possibly indicative of using non-windowed FIR SRC filters, but there’s a little amplitude oscillation:

Here’s how Elastique mutilates a test waveform with too much negative pitch and keylock ON… it currently eventually causes a glitch until you toggle keylock. Test waveforms usually look a lot better than this on the Primes even with Elastique ON, so this is just a particular anomaly:

Here is the oldest firmware I tested in RMAA, keylock off and on:

Here is RMAA with Elastique OFF, 16/44.1 v1.22, 24/96 v1.22, 16/44.1 v1.3.1, 24/96 v1.3.1:

Here is RMAA with Elastique ON, 16/44.1 v1.22, 24/96 v1.22, 16/44.1 v1.3.1, 24/96 v1.3.1:

Response trace keylock OFF 16/44.1 v1.22 white overlapped with green in graph, 24/96 v1.22 obvious green, 16/44.1 v1.3.1 blue, 24/96 v1.3.1 violet:

Response trace keylock ON 16/44.1 v1.22 white, 24/96 v1.22 green, 16/44.1 v1.3.1 blue, 24/96 v1.3.1 violet:

SC5000M motor off key off 10khz tone doubled at +100% pitch range slowly dropped down to -100%. The distortion harmonics shown on a spectrum analyzer that are being generated with a single tone swept down. For reference, the spot at which the distortion harmonics all briefly line up with the fundamental and seemingly hide was about 8.88% on the fader. You can see it briefly pause after that at the zero on the fader when the fundamental passes the 10000 area on the graph, which is difficult to read. From right to left the graph is labeled 25000, 20000, 15000, 10000, with the line for 10000 not actually visible at this resolution. The fundamental is -15dB down and the largest additional harmonic is reading -45dB.:


I think some of this stuff might be sample rate conversion related, so here’s a thread more on that topic without reposting:

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You generally don’t see me saying bad stuff about other manufacturers gear, but I can’t let this one go. It is a statement so based on ignorance. I challenge you to talk to three rental companies that have been renting out Pioneer gear for a few years and ask them how indestructible that gear is.

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You are so right on this.

One possible remedy to the poor sample rate conversion on the players would be to keep the sampling rate of the processing on each layer the same as the loaded track. Ditto with the SPDIF output for that layer – rather than it being fixed at 96khz, it would vary with the track. If for some reason that’s not possible, then I’d suggest they investigate the SRC method the DN-X1700 used, because it was magnificent. Heck, I’d suggest they investigate that for the X1800 regardless.

Hey guys! I’m new here and I just switched over to Denon. I sold my Pioneer Gear to try something new. Been using Pioneer for years. Just a few questions and I’m sure they have been answered but there is a lot to go through here and I’m hoping someone will just give me the quick and dirty.

  1. The Phase Meter only is active when Sync is enabled? Is there an option to turn this on without using sync?

phase

  1. The Quantize button seems to be turned off every time I start my Players. Is this happening to other people or is it not saving my setting?quantize

  2. The Cue button, Does it have to continuously flash or can I have it in a solid state. The constant flashing bugs me. Can this be changed? cue

I appreciate the quick help and I’m sorry if I’m being a pain. I’m just trying to get used to these new players. Thanks again.

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Yes, and currently not.

This is happening within the new v1.3.1 firmware (this issue was working well with the last firmware v1.2.2), and DenonDJ is aware of this (there is a thread in this forum), they say that they passed this issue to the development team, I hope it will be resolved quickly.

No, as far as I know.

Cheers, ElTitoFranki

Cue button should flash on bpm speed. That one was my idea, I understand it’s annoying. :woozy_face:

Oh no, more visual distractions. If at all, please only optional.

does it flash on BPM speed currently?

I don’t even notice its flashing lol

Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate it. So far I’m loving them. But I also know these are a work in process.

Test it. Faster track, faster flash. Although it seems it is not always perfectly on beat.