SATA drive bay - supported sizes?

So to be clear, what phill from ddjt says in the full review is incorrect? To sync library changes into the main engine programme in the laptop. At this moment…

I am thinking to save my core library of music files to a 1TB drive in the inside of the prime 4 and then I am to have external usb drives to have my music files which are newer obtains.

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As your “newer obtains” library starts to grow, you will find yourself back here again trying to decide what to do once more. I would suggest you keep what you would use on the Prime’s internal drive and have a external backup with you as well. Just my friendly advise.

Yep, good point - I’m at 2TB of music so far on a 2.5" external drive, already needing to upgrade the drive to 3TB or higher. Though I understand the recommendation of a 1TB internal drive, I will definitely be testing a larger drive inside the P4 - and it will be a regular spinning drive too, not SSD. I’m not worried about SSD performance for playing back tracks or writing metadata - my 5400rpm 2TB drive connected via USB 3.0 to my Traktor rig has been just fine for years. SSD would be ideal but there are no 3TB+ SSD’s yet and when they come out I’m sure they’ll be close to a grand like they always are when they hit the market for the first time.

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With the SC5000, you can put the player into computer/controller mode. Then you can plug the player into the computer via USB and export to connected drives using Engine Prime.

I imagine the same will be possible with the Prime 4, so you could just export direct to the internal sata drive.

Samsung has 4tb ssd’s

Thanks . I would always to keep a external usb copy drive of why is on the inside says drive in my prime 4 and I would to know that the external copy drive is only ever 1TB

I mean that as my library on external usb grows , I would always have a copy drive of that too. So I am to carry -

Sata drive inside prime 4 with a core library Usb copy of sata drive Usb newer library drive Usb copy of newer library drive

So there is be 3 loose drives to carry along with prime 4. A wood flight casing big for carry prime 4 will easy have spaces for 3 usb drives for carry

I stand corrected - thanks! Only a paltry $661 of course…

Someone is going to ask for a firmware upgrade to make the 15mm space bigger. :scream:

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That would require a hardware update.

Yes of course. You know that, I know that … however… someone will probably still expect firmware to sort it :hugs:

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Can’t see why you want a 5gb I am preparing a 1tb and have 11k songs on it and haven’t used a quarter yet. That will give you a base track list for any event then requests on the night such as bride and groom selection you can throw on to flash drive.

Because many peoples’ music collections are larger than 1TB, and having to split up your collection across multiple drives is inconvenient. If you can have it all on one drive then why not?

Well like many others I’m switching to the P4 so that I don’t need to continue using a laptop. I don’t mind plugging in my portable drive to a USB port if that’s what it takes - that’s what I’m doing now with my Traktor rig and it’s fine. I was just hoping to be able to put this drive inside the P4 so as to eliminate one less thing from the setup.

Also does Engine work the same way as Traktor in the sense that you can have it not scan you entire music folder, but you can scan folders as needed on demand? In which case I would definitely not index the entire music drive, just the folders I want to as I’m working on DJ sets.

Hi @JWiLL,

we know the recommended drive for the Prime4 is 1TB SSD, but at the same time Denon recommends a maximum of 10K songs in the library for the SC5000, which is waaaay less that you can copy to 1TB drive:

From https://www.denondj.com/kb/2236/:

We recommend limiting the total track count to under 10,000 songs on a media source. Larger track counts may affect load/search/sort times. We recommend that you only add songs to a drive that you need for the show/night/tour.

Does this max 10K songs recommendation (and problem observed when been exceeded) apply only for the SC5000, or is it still valid for the Prime4?

If the Prime4 works better in that regard, do you think we can expect it to get eventually bettered in the SC5000?

Thank you.

PS: Related post explaining my problems when using more that 10k songs: Sluggish library browsing with huge library

1TB holds about 57,870 minutes of music in 24 bit 48Khz .wav format. That’s about 10,000-11,500 songs.

That’s in WAV though and frankly if you’re playing WAV or FLAC at gigs then that’s a little dumb as I guarantee no one in the audience will be able to tell the difference between that and a high quality MP3 file (320kpbs for example).

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Correct and mostly irrelevant, as most people don’t store their music in that format.

Until you play on PK and Function One. Trust me, you do hear the difference.

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Having field tested this premise with sound engineers and DJs in both professional clubs and outdoor high end PA’s, I have to side with those that claim nobody in the audience will hear the difference between lossless audio and 320kbps MP3, provided the latter is truly encoded directly from a lossless original, in full stereo (not joint) and at the highest quality settings.

That said, going for FLAC (which still provides a pretty hefty compression rate) gives you lossless audio and the ability to store quite a collection on a portable device.

I do believe too much emphasis is being placed these days on being able to carry the music of the world with you on disks, sticks and what have you, on the off-chance it will be requested.

An old DJ creed back in the day that maybe holds true even more today, is that you should know any track you (might) play in a set intimately. Back in the vinyl days, the tracks I had in my collection, I knew what intro and outro they had, where the breaks were and mostly the full lyrics by heart.

The thing is, the most important DJ factor, “Knowing what to play next”, is something that works in your head. And your head will pick based on the information it has. The best gigs I played in my life, were like on autopilot, every track I played in my head gave me 3,4 or 5 options for the next one. And depending on the way the crowd went I could easily keep leading them. And this is when I had the choice of less than 1.000 tracks.

I sympathize with large collections for mobile DJs. We do get requests and it’s fun to be able to play them, especially if they fit in your gig. But even with 40k+ tracks I get requests that I don’t have. Sure you can download and/or stream a track on the fly. But that would break another cardinal DJ rule, imho, the one that says "don’t play tracks you haven’t listened to or that come from unknown sources - like a guests memory-stick or phone, or CDs in days gone by).

My advice to young DJs that I coach is now to have a true core collection that you know inside out, refresh but only with tracks that are so good that you are willing to toss a lesser track from your collection (preventing your tight core collection to grow out of control in a few years again).

Just and old DJ-hand talking and sharing his 3 cents as usual.

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