Just got my SC5000 up and running, and man, am I excited. I bought a Master Sounds Radius 2 over the summer, and have been playing vinyl only at home, but as a result was playing way less. My friend has had a couple SC5000s the last few years, and I’ve always enjoyed playing on them, way better than CDJ-2000s.
Did a little playing last night, and I’m thinking about getting set up with v1.4 firmware this morning.
One question I didn’t find much reference to is: does anyone have experience using external DACs? Running an analog mixer, I don’t have options for digital outs on my player, but haven’t been able to find specs on the internal DACs.
Anyways, here’s a picture of my setup. For those that haven’t used a Radius, I have to say, I really love the little guy.
AKM inside throughout Prime. There’s a thread on the topic on Denon DJ’s FB.
DACs have less influence on DJ player sound, however, than the audio digital signal processing going on before that, though. In your case, I suspect the less revealing Mastersounds is going to be a good match for covering up some of the current faults of the Prime playback processing that I find digital mixers can’t hide.
The baseline DSP quality on players with just the fader at zero can be ranked…
1)Pioneer (perfect)
2)Old Denon (nearly perfect)
3)Hanpin & Gemini
4)Prime
If you try to compare them with keylock away from zero, things start to get a lot more complicated… for instance, Pioneer is pretty non-destructive to the midrange but can sound broken-up in the bass and high transients at very low pitches with master tempo. Some brands even produce a little pre-echo staccato effect that makes manual beatmatching a little weird. Prime’s keylock is slightly gritty and the mids are phasey, but tends to minimize staccato and overt break-up. So there’s always plus and minuses to keylock.
Again, though, most of the signature of the players is not Elastique but the baseline processing. Thankfully it’s software and it’s already been changed slightly so far on Prime.
I would not bother putting a different DAC on the Prime digital out prior to your Mastersounds. I don’t think we even know yet if there’s any sample rate or bit depth conversion going on prior to the SPDIF on it in addition to what the Prime DACs see direct.
Looking at photos of someone who took one apart to service it, I see the AK4413EQ as the 4-channel DAC and the AK4103A as the SPDIF transmitters. Great hardware.
I disagree, and here’s why… Putting the pitch at zero is a demonstration of the baseline audio processing quality of the players… literally its easiest task. It’s also the most foolproof method of measuring a player’s processing minus keylock because the expected signal outputted from the players is a 100% known quantity – what it should output is exactly the same signal data. Having keylock off and moving the pitch around is another measure of that quality where, for instance, Pioneers have distortion harmonics tens of dB lower than Prime playback does. Keylock processing degradation is in addition-to or on-top-of that baseline degradation.
It is true, though, that once you’re doing like -20% pitch or more with keylock On, then the differences start to diminish or become a sort of difference in taste. Then you’re looking at the overall processing quality when doing really challenging tasks. The processing differences with keylock Off and zero pitch, however, translates to real world sound differences between players with keylock On when not doing wild pitch changes, say at within -6% or even larger positive %. And obviously they’re valid comparisons with keylock Off at any %. And this isn’t even getting into the fact there is still roll-off on Prime even at 32bit/96khz. IMO, the roll-off is less important than the other processing issues, though.
How do you know where and when I DJ to real people? You clearly don’t understand how tests translate to the real world. Quite a few people have run these sorts of tests after hearing that there seemed to be problems with the players’ sound. The qualitative real people perception motivated them to do quantitative tests to understand what might be happening in a way that could be replicated, compared, and used to make a case for improvements and to demonstrate (or not) those changes. I’m perfectly willing to accept that some people can’t tell the difference or that no one can tell the difference in extreme use situations between the players, but that still leaves a lot of other people and a lot of other situations where it makes a difference.
Big words do never make a big argument point. And pretty test graphs he can be weighted and biased to twist and warp any sound to show any point anyone has agenda to make appear
My opinion is that you want to make equipments look bad by playing a “I know much” joker card
I would think a non-native speaker of English who often sounds like Borat on this forum would show a little more humility when thinking to criticize the words of a native speaker of the language. What I said made perfect sense in that sentence. You may agree or not with my opinions on the importance of sound quality, but what I said is certainly not nonsense. Furthermore, my claims about what motivated people to do tests is factual. As for my motivations for pressing this issue when people try to disregard it… I’m trying to motivate improvements. Making something “look bad” is completely incidental and not my problem. If I pretend there is nothing inferior about the players’ software, then potentially little gets changed.
And let’s not forget starting the early warm up playlist and when the DJ called in sick that time lol
It may or may not be the case but it’s how you come across Reti and that’s my opinion too. You are all about “my little test program says this” and “my special readings say that” and “look what my metering measurements show here”
People in clubs are there to have a good time. End of story. They’re not going to go to club B instead of club A because of some nought point nought nought nought nought five oh two slippy offset doodle-Smosh decimal micro poodle pushy pish-pash.
Today’s micro-nano imbalances in the pseudo kibble-cobble transdensional warp core stabiliser flux is yesteryears DJ playing out with a 6 month old stylus instead of a one month old stylus - and the audience didn’t notice then or now.
RMAA is not my program. It’s the most widely-used free audio analysis program in the world. Soundforge spectrum analyzer mode and TrueRTA are also not mine.
I also think you come off sounding like one of the people in the future in the movie Idiocracy talking like that.
It doesn’t matter who’s little test program you’re using. You’re repeatedly talking about the color of the bare floor not quite matching the drapes, when everyone’s already been told that the new carpet arrives next week.
And when even those members of the forum who seem to have to try really hard to communicate in English/American seem to have seen through your (not so well hidden) agendas of “your equipment is crap and I know coz I’m a self proclaimed brainiac with dozens of test programs”, then it really may have become very very obvious to the masses.
Really? The general audio processing quality on Prime is going to be drastically improved? Where did you get that information? If you have some source for that, please share. I will certainly lay off the topic for the time being if you have an official source for what you just implied.
@Reticuli the frequency graph is recent mate? I’m with you for this time, we need more test like audio science review forum, a good sounding product have
low distortion THD 0.000
high signal noise ratio like RME ADI 2 Topping DX7, D30 MATRIX dac
high dynamic range more like - 110db
Jitter USB test
I see lot of audiophile DJ with good sound system buy the SC5000 it’s a good thing
Yes, it’s recent and with a 32bit/96khz test track which is giving the players the easiest chance. 16/44.1 is worse. Agree with the other stuff you say. The IMD and nonlinear harmonic distortion worries me a lot more than the roll off, though. You can see the youtube video of the harmonics being generated on just a simple tone. The harmonics are tens of dB louder than on Pioneers when sweeping the pitch fader with keylock off. That is consistent with all the extra garbage being generated on complex content you can see on a realtime spectrum analysis with original and player SPDIF overlapped. And IMD is 100X worse on Prime, which may or may not be related to the additional distortion harmonics being generated. If you go to the player audio feature request on this topic, you can see posts and links on all this. Roll-off was slightly improved way back. IMD was slightly improved on 24/96 content slightly, too. I have hope in Prime. I am two mixers and 5 players invested in it.
