Problems with the SC5000M

Hey guys,

First let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of the Denon SC5000M’s. I have built a Disco Bus which I travel to different festivals around Holland with. My setup is the following: 2x technics 1200, 2x Denon SC5000M and a Rane Mp2015 Rotary mixer. I use Soundswitch to control all my movingheads and led fixtures that are in and around the bus. Works great! The only problems I am having are with the SC5000M. During a festival day there are several different DJ’s that come play in my bus and almost always they just have a usb with rekordbox files. Shouldn’t be a problem right? Well almost half of the time the DJ’s can’t normally acces their playlist and almost with every dj some songs don’t get loaded or no waveform is available. Or they can only acces their files by browsing in the content file? So only in folders song by song filtered by artist name or title? And last weekend I was djing for 4 hours in a club with SC5000M’s and one of the players started tripping: I had to reset it 4 times during the gig, it stopped loading tracks from a linked usb and then stopped loading tracks from a usb plugged in the player aswell… So during the gig this happend 4 times. And my final complaint is the beatgridding but that has obviously been mentioned alot around the forum. My main problem is the following: I really like Denon and the stuff they are doing but I am having a hard time convincing other DJ’s and I am getting stressed out for the gigs because the gear isn’t reliable and I am afraid the other dj’s can’t load their stuff normally… What are your experiences with the SC5000M’s on this part? Btw I use the latest version of the firmware.

You’re using the 1.3.1 firmware and name brand drives?

I am using the 1.3.1 firmware and the brand drives I don’t know, there have been several dj’s with several usb sticks. The problem is; some are working fine, importing fine, playlists with cue points and some don’t show playlists at all, some show playlist but no cue point, some show everything but then just some regular files don’t load ( that do work on cdj’s ).

There are supposedly various playlist problems. There are also problems with existing databases somehow getting corrupted by the RB importing.

So I’d suggest you 1) make sure people are using name brand drives and/or make a note of the drive brands that are having problems, and 2) for the next few times you do this party bus have everyone NOT import RB databases & playlists on the units. Have them all just say NO when it pops up and just find their tracks browsing through the normal folder tree. See if that improves anything.

You could also set up a laptop and have each of them create a database in Engine Prime (optionally without even doing analysis if they have a lot of tracks) and then they’ll at least be able to search for tracks easier. You could even tell them ahead of time to download EP at home and scan their files first.

I don’t even bother with pre-analysis (only create database with analysis off in EP) and am not doing RB database importing. The SC5000Ms are not having significant drive reading problems anymore. So I’m concerned you might have defective units, and I think you should try to rule that out first.

I will write down the brand drives next time and stop importing the whole database. The problem is that I cannot get all these dj’s to load their stuff into engine prime. They have to much gigs, only come play for an hour or so and usually they won’t download Engine Prime (most dj’s are just lazy), if they all would I wouldn’t have any problems ofcourse…

I have had my SC5000M’s since 19-10-2018, but I don’t think my units are defective because the ones that don’t have playlists still have music files that can be read from the content folder (which is created by rekordbox I believe) and the files that don’t load are only a couple on each usb.

The fact that one player has had some crashes during my last gig still concerns me. I will do some more testing and let you guys now. But I usually don’t have problems since I use engine prime and good usb sticks.

Thanks for the help Reticuli!

Sound advice. You obviously have a laptop on hand for the Soundswitch.

Plug in guest DJs USB drive into it.

If EP Rekordbox database import is not efficient enough eg playlists missing etc you can drag and drop the tracks by opening Rekordbox and EP side by side. This should be doable…I hope. With the drag and drop I will guess the cue points and loops wont be transferred but at least they will have easy access to their tracks.

Or you can just use the native Rekordbox import function in EP and hope for the best.

An hour guest set isn’t loads of songs.

  • Plug in Guest USB stick to laptop.

  • Open Rekordbox and Engine Prime

  • Create playlist/crate in Engine Prime (similar title to what the playlist is named in Rekordbox). Create it on the device tab (so the playlist is on the guest stick and not in your internal HD)

  • CMD + A the tracks in the playlist window in Rekordbox

  • Drag to the playlist window in EP. It will not make copies of the files itself.

  • Analyse

  • Unplug

  • Stick the USB in the players

  • Profit

Obviously djs will have to arrive early enough to give you time to sort this. They cant just walk in 1 min to set time.

Hello friends and please I have problems with sc5000m And Serato DJ 1.- when motor start difficult to keep same bmp and song not permanent beat maching 2.- then turn off motor and beat maching perfect and work great

The problem beat maching it’s only when motor it’s on This is big problem

Thanks hope you can help me soon

Att: Edwin Altamirano

Why have you posted this twice?