First of all, let me be clear - I love the P4 its an amazing hardware and i recommend anyone to have it. but i cant believe Denon released it while knowing all these fuckups listed below.
After 1 week of hardcore use, I noticed very annoying things Denon needs to fix, soon, not in the near future, not next quarter, but NOW:
Hot Cue
when I load any hot cue and press CUE/Stop the track goes back to the start - Hot cue resets. this is just annoying. Also, in the preferences, I set the track to be loaded on the hot cue, but still, it loads from the start. am i missing something here?
Beat Jump
Denon you are ā ā ā ā ā ā ā kidding me. the first beat jump, the controller can take it without a hiccup, the 2nd is not seamless at ALL. technically you cannot beat jump with the P4 it pauses for a fraction of a second. thats Controller basics 101
I can confidently say my $1,700 P4 cannot beat jump without noticing it (quantize on yes)
Sync
If i turn on sync it means I want to use it. I expect the SW to understand what toggle means. I dont need to keep pressing sync all the time. whats the point in that?
Sync should always stay on if turned on
BPM analysis
I dont know what to do here, some tracks arenāt analysed correctly (within my analysis range), and I cannot know what is the real BPM. so if my solution is to load them in traktor and then engine prime, then I dont need the engine prime or its HW. again this is basic.
there is no gain leveling
there is no option to level the gain of each channel, sometimes you are mixing another track and realise it is so much louder than the other. all of the SW today supports volume matching, why cant you?
I believe that the whole track is loaded into memory, the deck does not read from the drive directly when playingā¦ this is how the āSD card accidentally unpluggedā safety measure works.
I have never experienced this issue in the SC5000s - beat jump works fine in those.
Yes, it is. But if I start beat jumping around during that initial load period , then jumping to a point in the track that hasnāt loaded yet, causes a very brief pause in audio play.
Like if I select a track and 4 second later I try a 32 beat jump forward, it will leave a tiny gap in playback.
But, if i test it all by switch off the player, on again, load the same track but wait a full 10 seconds to allow enough time for almost any track to load fully, I can beat jump any length of jump in either direction without any gap in play audio
Autogain would be nice, but until that happens, you can use the eyes an see the output of each track on the VU meter, and match it before turning up the level fader.
Just simple question guys!
If you have a song, edited, normalized for true peaks (taking transients into account) and well prepared in a dedicated audio editing software, what need do you want for auto gain?
Some of us also have a day job and dont have the time to run a 70k library through some editing software to even out sound-levels.
Tracks come in different levels, and thats just the way it is. Whether you buy, get promo or rip some of your old CDās.
Autogain is a sweet feature from the controllers, but I dont miss it on my SC5000/ X1800 setup.
I also have a so called day job, but, in fact, it is a 24 hour a day job and itās purpose is āto serve and to protectā by working undercover, which in my opinion is a very good cover in fact. Despite of this, I choose to make time for myself to prepare and plan my music sets so I donāt have to worry about levels going into the red zone. Preparing and planning my music sets requires a good amount of time, but the reward is in the fact that I can focus on transmitting the music feeling on the dancefloor. If I have to use the autogain features, this means that the audio file I am working with is not mastered properly. I choose to carefully select all of my music, workings only with uncompressed audio material. Using an autogain feature may not take into account true peaks in analog domain. Ultimately it is a personal choice we have to make, choosing to work with audio material on the fly or prepared for.
Anyway, I would still say that theres only 24 hours a day, I am selfemployed and a father to a 6 year old daughter every 2. week.
So I get up 6 in the morning, work until 1800, do other chors, visiting Family, Friends, shop, prepare music etc, go to bed around 01 and up again 06ā¦
Thats my week from monday to friday, then the gigs in the weekend startsā¦ (except the weeks with my daughter - thats sacret time for me and investet 100% in her.(still working though, but no gigs))
So yes its all about preperation etc, butā¦ Still only 24 hours a day.
But I think its great that you find the time.
Guess you are not a open format dj like some others.
No, I am not an open format DJ, because, in my opinion, it takes some selected ingredients to make a good salad. Music is diverse, with different instrumentation, different rhythms and a specific message and mood. I am very careful in choosing and preparing the songs to be mixed together. Maybe because it is a professional habit.
Well as a open format dj, I would say that it also takes a great deal of expertise to create a great evening for everyone attending.
As a ānon open formatā dj, you get booked because of that ālimitedā musicgenre/ event.
As a open format dj you get booked because of the skills to entertain across most ages and genrens.
Donāt get me wrong my friend. I am not mixing a single music genre, but I do not mix them together just because it can be done in some way. I mix disco, trance or house music with the same pleasure, but I donāt try to make a Mediterranean salad with the music just because it can be done, more or less.
Thank you for your comments @zyi83, please see my response below:
The Cue button will go to where ever the temporary (White marker) is set, this is not memorized like hotcues and can be changed to be any part of the track. If you want to go to a specific part of the track repeatedly then itās best to save a Hot Cue there.
Can you show a video please of this happening as Iāve not seen this before - thank you
As long as Sync is enabled on both players it will stay on when you load a new song, again would be good to show this problem you are having to find out what the source of this is. In regard to TOGGLE are you setting this up in preferences to TOGGLE or SHIFT DISABLE?
Weāre working on the BPM analysis for both hardware and Engine Prime and will have updates very soon to help keep improving it.
There is a MASTER LIMITER option in the utility settings which will help with overall levels but itās always advisable to adjust each songs gain control by ear/VU meters to get the initial level close.
Didnāt we have another user/ member that mentioned this before?
Think it was if the files had not been through EPā¦ But maybe my memory is off on this oneā¦