First of all, i am a bedroom DJ, not going to parties or club gigs, i just have few followers on social media. A month ago, i decided to go from Pioneer DDJ SB2 to Denon Prime 2, a huge step if you ask me. Waited 2 weeks for the new toy to arrive, and then …
First thing that bothered me was lack of FX, or let me put it in another way - the lack of essential FX - like noise for example. And the list could continue.
Second and most annoying is that f…ing out of sync that continues even after 2.0.2. Yes it does. I have to permanently beatmatch and croosing between songs tends to become an almost imposible job. Studied almost everything posted here and hoped that with 2.0.2 everything is OK, but it is not. I even downgraded to 1.6.0, same crap.
Anyways, as the title of this topic says, i am starting to regret the money and wasted time. Yet, two questions:
Will Denon REALLY fix the “out-of-sync” issue still present ?
Will Denon try to implement new effects, usefull ones actually, or the hardware does not allow this ?
Partially it is my fault, because i was so excited that i should have read the forums first and take a closer look at the competition’s offer, but i got carried away by the fact that DENON is one of my favs when it comes to music and sound.
PS. Perhaps it would be the time to move to the next level ???
Im using Prime 2 for two years now and I love it. Progress since initial firmware (OS 1.5) is outstanding. I use sync only to pre mix my mixtapes to see and hear how the track feel next to each other but I can asure you, that if the beatgrids and BPM are correct then you can leave two track for 3-4 minutes and they don’t move out of sync in 95 at 100 times (this 5 out of 100 times they will drift slightly after 2-3 minutes, this is normal. Pioneer gear does the same).
Hello, and thanks for your input.
Reading about leaving the controller beatmatched, synced and so on for 3 or 4 minutes sounds unreal. Even if i use autosync, after 30 or 40 sec or so, the songs go out of sync and i have to manually correct this. Tried this also , though i am not a fan of autosync.
I play a song and then in the background i sync the other one and sometimes i need to do a long crossing over between the 1st and 2nd song (1.30 or 2.00 minutes), and then it gets frustrating.
Did only 25 sets, but it would be almost impossible that all the beatgrids or BPM to be incorrect, but i will try and accept that. Is there a guide or some tricks to get the beatgrids correctly ?
Here is just one set, you can see that i am constantly having my fingers on jogwheel trying to compensate the drift.
PS. Feel free to laugh at me, i am not a professional DJ.
Firstly, nobody is here to laugh… we are mainly amateur DJs here.
I’ve only watched the first couple of mins and it looks like you have a loop set on the track, unless the gridding and your loop are set right, there could be an issue where the loop is either a tiny bit short or long. This is something that happens to loops a lot and will cause the track to drift out each time is goes back to the start point.
I can’t speak for using sync but often when manually mixing I’ll have to adjust the pitch to compensate or just redo the loop manually until it’s in the right place.
The downside, I’ve been looping tracks on CDJs etc for 20 years and the only way to perfect it is practise practise practise.
Just to add, I watched a couple of mins more, as soon as you disengaged the loop you hardly touched the jog wheel. I’m convinced it’s that.
@STU-C that is right, i am using a loop to make the transitions. But i dont think it is normal that a loop will go out of sync when playing again and again (on my old SB2 i got into this problem few times only, same on my old Numark Platinum and Hercules). The Prime 2 is the king, when it comes to this.
Until 2019, i was an programming engineer. I am very curious how loops where implemented … just a thought … did they use buffers ? What i am trying to say is that going from the end of the loop to the start of the loop is not a time consumer process if the source of the loop is buffered first, and refered to after, instead of placing virtual marks in memory and reading the loop from the source over and over again. Just a thought.
Anyways, so far i think i have to live with this … but how about FX ? Rhumors ?
Im saying that if you select say an 8 beat auto loop, unless your track is 100% perfectly beat gridded the auto loop may be 0.01 seconds out of place, this can impact the timing of 2 tracks significantly, and after each ‘loop’ it will go slightly more out of time, it also requires practise to get the auto loop in the right place.
I can assure you the same will happen on Pioneer equipment, ive seen it countless times on both CDJ2000s and on a DDJ-SX2, I play breakbeats, disco and hip hop etc as well as house and some of the auto loops are way out of time.
As I said you should be using your pitch fader to just for the loop if its not keeping in time, you seemed to be adjusting the platter in the same direction for the whole transition but not once did you make an adjustment to the pitch.
He speaks the truth. Nudging the track forward implies that it’s running too slowly. Nudging will help it catch up, but it won’t stay there.
Imagine two cars on the motorway. Car #1 is travelling at 70, and car #2 is at 69 and falling behind. If car #2 accelerates (nudge the jog forward) he can catch up, but then if he goes back to 69 (jog wheel not being nudged) he will fall behind again.
I got your point guys, Thank you for your input. I will try using the pitch fader in the future. But how about auto-sync, where things get messed up also ? Let’s say i am lazy, and i prefer using auto-sync, but even that is not doing a good job also … the software matches everything in the begining, but ends up messing all up. And that is telling me that something is wrong. Or i might be wrong …
Point taken, will play with the pitch fader.
The sync relies totally on the beat grid being correct - i.e. the anchors/markers have to be aligned to the beats of the waveform all the way through the track. If the beat grid is not aligned then the sync will not stay in time.
The looping has a quantise option. If quantise is on, the loop will lock to the beat grid, so if the grid is wrong, the loop will be wrong.
I cant help you there as ive literally never used sync outside of Serato on my laptop when messing about on the sofa, even then I found it flaky and needing to be adjusted ,I don’t want to sound like one of those old skool miserable old men but honestly I just prefer mixing.
P.S. keep at it cos you have some nice prog tracks playing there, you will have that Prime 2 bossed in no time.
I mix progressive house almost exclusively. I love long transitions. My typical transition length is 1 minute. For example listen to my newest mixtape: Mixcloud from 5:11 to 6:14. I didn’t use sync and never had to nudge platter (or use pitch bend) for entire transition. The key is to always have correct BPM and beatgrid (if you are using sync or loops).
Firstly nobody is gonna laugh. We are all learning here. Secondly how did you record that and get the music so loud. Love to know more about your set up, your mixing is great, tracks too. Doing fab!
I went back to the 1.6 firmware as tracks kept skipping on the beat grid. Not sure if fixed but was driving me nuts.
Where do you get your music, it could be if not the extended mix the bpm move a tiny bit as not really designed for dj ing etc.
I have to beatgrid most my tunes although I have one or two that are not the extended mix and they sometimes chnage the grid throughout the song therefore throwing of the loops
Recording level is that low for a reason: to avoid clipping and give the producer room for EQ and other stuff. Remember that recordings are digital (Wave) so You can do whatever You want with them. My mixtape routine is like:
Records mix on Prime 2.
Open WAV file with Audacity (open source audio software).
Done some editing (trim ect., cut mistakes, ect).
Amplify audio by 11.5 dB (Effects → Amplify) to get some decent hot signal.
Use LoadMax with -6dB threshold (this is plugin that makes sound load and punchy its basically maximizer with limiter.). There are more competent people in this area than me in this forum, and they can explain how this plugin works better.
Enjoy new mixtape
My mixtapes actually sounds better than the ones on Mixcloud, because of encoding done by service.
Thanks for your input. I use 2 webcams (until a week ago were 3), but my laptop only has 3 USB ports, so i had to quit one cam to install and SoundBlaster USB sound card, to record directly the audio. Initially, i used the laptop’s built-in mic, and used the JBL speaker only to sync afterwards. The software i use is XSplit Broadcaster, pretty basic and straight forward, suits my needs. Not that expesive, and does a decent job. I only record in 720p, as the laptop cannot handle FHD (4K is out of the question), and i do that because some friends requested.
Anyways, about the volume, i think the external sound-card does the trick and amplifies the sound, as the set i record on SDCard or other USB drive is definately more quiet. I apply (using Audacity) at least 12 or 13 dB.
In the last 3 years, about 90% of my sets were created using only Audacity and Mixed-in-Key (another great piece of software). Speaking of Mixed-in-Key, it can analyze BPM pretty accurate (can tell if its 122.00 or 122.15). The set i prepared for tonight’s session is between 120 and 122. Straight.
My music source is either YouTube or BeatPort.
PS. As inspiration, whiskey, tequilla or wine (whatever comes at hand)
Yep - check your beat grids are right, enable quantise, click the auto loop button and you should have no need to nudge the jog.
It’s not a problem with the Prime gear - Engine doesn’t drift (it is extremely stable, tempo-wise), but it will quant to the beat grid, so the beat grid must be right before everything else.
However, sometimes you can encounter a track you expected to be gridded right but wasn’t - especially when streaming straight to the deck without preparation, so…
If your beatgrid happens to be messed up when playing live (i.e. the BPM is just plain wrong), disable quant and revert to manual loop in, loop out to work around the problem, old school style. You can adjust the loop end point too.
Last thing - mixing Progressive for several minutes even without auto sync is pretty easy on the Primes. Check my twitch streams - It needs only minimal input on tempo and jogs for very long blends. I use SC6000s myself.
100% Agree, I play progressive house myself and Prime’s are great. ± 4% pitch range is perfect. I do a lot of long blends on looped stuff and they don’t have abnormal drifting at all.
Its just me, Prime 2 and Sennhiser HD 25 
