Stuttering and Hesitating audio when any fader or control is used

New out of the box today and will not work correctly with VDJ-8. Stutters and audio is hesitating when a control/slider is moved. VDJ works fine when controller is not connected. Help.!!!

I’d start tests by raising the audio latency.

As a test, slidecthe laceny wothib thrc DJ Software up to about 50-64ms just for a few minutes, to see if the stuttering stops.

If the stuttering stops then try going down 10ms

Check in the internet for DPC latency checker software to see which background processes your lappy is thinking of (it should only be thinking of DJing, not virus killing, or the Internet or emails etc)

Check the internet for “how to optimise your lappy for DJing” - such info will be specific to whichever operating system you’re using.

Done it.,. Earlier. Thanks for quick response.was ok for a few hours. Did a show for 2 hours no problem then this happened all of a sudden as is denon went faulty. Also certain functions not working. Think it’s faulty.

Well the good news is, I don’t think anything you have is faulty.

Another test for you- at home, start by switching the laptop off completely for a full two hours to let the laptop cool down full… set it all up, laptop, controller etc , set up a long playlist - like 5 hours worth and see if you can repeat the problem.

If it occurs after a couple of hours - then leave the controller ON but switch the laptop off for two hours again to cool fully - try the playlist again… still goes for 2 hours then stutters?

There’s something call hot latency versus cold latency.

When lappys processors get hot they deliberately protect themselves by slowing down their processors. When this happens, the computer can’t “think” as fast as it can when it’s cold or cool or warm-ish… so the laptops ability to run programs quickly is reduced and the latency will suffer.

You could try getting the lappy really hot and then set your latency setting to a non-stuttering level maybe 64ms or 128ms for testing. See what works for you and your lappy while it’s hot. Also consider cooling solutions e.g.: cooling pads But nothing that runs off of the lappy USB circuit (the extra current can add heat to the internals, which is defeating some of the benefit of a cooling pad.

Thanks for all your advice. I spoke to Denon UK customer/technical support. Only advice they would give me was my laptop Processor (AMD) was not supported By Denon or Serato and Denon do not support VDJ even though their advertising says it will natively support it and theres operating instructions for VDJ on their website.?????. Could or wouldnt help me due to AMD in Laptop incompatible with Denon Equipment. Anyway sent back to WHY BUY NEW.COM after 15 minutes of technical help… Which… i was expecting from DENON to be honest. Optimised Laptop, processor minimum speed up to 100%, switched off USB hub sleep option after a set time.power management set to Max… screensaver switched off etc… as advised to by WBN.com. New one came… Still the same. did the only thing i didnt try and that was unplug it from my USB External powered hub… Bingo… problem gone… Thanks everyone for your help, and WBN.COM for all the advice. Thanks DENON for, well… in my eyes extremely poor customer support. Quality product by the way… Love it.

And that’s the problem with USB … USB is just theee little letters after all - so every support department in the land should know every single thing about every single USB product from every single supplier of USB product … coz it’s only USB isn’t it, just threelittle letters.

( Sarcasm mode off now - but the message is still there ) I don’t think that any customer support team can be grumbled about when the issue turned out to be something which could have been made by anyone other than the manufacturer.

I bought atall thing CD rack for my house once… know the type? Holds 100 CDs, stands about 1.5 metres but only 12cms by 12cms foot print … when I loaded it with CDs it kept falling over … when I put it on my thick deep pile carpet with extra thick bouncy underlay… a fault of the CD rack ??? No, of course not. Same with USB.

More specifically USB hubs … a picture that I’ve built up after talking to lots of DJ’s over lots of year … unpowered hubs - worth avoiding at all costs for DJ use… powered hubs: avoid if at all possible. Even some of the good makes eg: Belkin have some models that work well for DJing and some that don’t.

Notice above, in places, I’ve added the term “…for DJing”

If I wanted to connect 20 printers to my home PC - sure I’d pop down to PC twice-the-price World and buy four of their Seasame Street or Pixar movie character shaped 5 port hubs and plug them all into their 4 port Budget USB hub that you get free with any overprice ink cartridge etc (58 colours available). The printers won’t care if there’s regular pauses and breaks in data transmission while the USB hub pops offline every so often to run a stick check on its ports, DJ usage will.

DJing on/from a lappy is like pulling the arm/pushing “go!” On a 8 reel fruit machine and the midi controller is only one of the reels.

There’s many other quirks out there, which can affect DJs and I suspect other high dependency applications and my word they are well hidden… how about a) some laptops USB ports only give full performance IF you buy the manufacturers heavy duty power supply, rather than the ultra lightweight one that came with the lappy in the original “gottamake it look as light as possible to purchasers” power supply… some USB ports on some macs are full powered USB ports on one side of the Mac, but only unpowered hub type ports on the other side of the Mac - some windows lappys are like that to, causing the need to offer suggestions if "number your USB ports and when you find that everything works if you plug the controller in USB port 3 and the hard drive in USB port 1… only every plug it in that way and never plug anything new into ports 2 or 4 etc

USB and DJ ? I wish there was a different way !

Perhaps Denon should start making lappys and memory thumb drives and hard drives … and their very own connectors so that USB never gets close…

Anyway, glad you’re sorted

Thanks for the sarcasm DJ Boothe. Something the British do well. Enjoyed reading your reply. Had a giggle. My understanding was unpowered hubs were no good for anything other than mice dongles etc and low power devices up to 500ma. Powered hubs are what’s needed by anything else. So have a powered hub with 2 amp power supply. Again my understanding was the spec of usb would handle 128 devices so one mouse dongle and the controller into the hub i thought would have been fine. The bandwidth of the usb system was something i was blissfully unaware of as other friends I’ve spoken to use theirs through hubs and AMD laptops with NO problems. I did mention to Denon and wbn.com my complete set up. The only advice that i feel had any impact was the optimisation of the laptop which yourself and wbn.com said to do. I did not mention here i was using a hub . Maybe i should have then you could’ve said that was the problem other than as i do often jump in at the deep end and try and fix the big things other than look at the little things which are the bleeding obvious. Nobody knows it all. I am aware of that completely, that’s why i came here for some advice. Didn’t expect that reply, funny as it is. Anyhow. Thank you for your advice. Take care. Owen.

Nor be expected to. :slight_smile:

Within a manufacturers own range, its perfectly valid, I believe for the manufacturer to be asked about that range eg: what fuse is in the back, what current will it pull, how much does it weigh? Etc.

But outside of the unit eg: items purchased from elsewhere?.. made by other companies? I wouldn’t start calling a company or their staff poor or bad for not knowing the performance quirks of all/any 3rd party items.

Sadly the hubs thing doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon thanks to some lappy manufacturers getting really errrrrm conservative about how many USB ports they’re putting on devices. Well, until lappys are no longer in the DJ equipment list… and that’s picking up speed.

Thanks for your reply Kradcliffe. I told denon and wbn.com my complete set up. All Denon would say was Denon don’t support AMD. Don’t support Vdj. So didn’t offer me any support. Which I was asking for. Colleagues use denon with AMD laptops and VDJ without any problems. I was asking for help.but nothing was forthcoming. In contrast i told wbn.com my complete set up and was given nearly i think 15 minutes of advice of how the tweak and optimise my system. Not once was the hub highlighted to me that that’s where my problem was. Maybe i should have mentioned it here and saved myself​ DJBoothe’s barrage of sarcasm…Lol… Anyway if i have anymore problems i know where to come for a bit of banter and some condescending comments from DJ Boothe. Ha ha. Seriously thank you both for you expeditious response and advice. Take care. Owen.

Yup. Accept that, Dj Boothe. Was up til 7am trawling the net. Not once was there mention anywhere i looked about the failings of using USB hubs until i said here and then all the advice was flowing my way. We All live on learn. Regards.

Yup. Cannot disagree with you Boothe. But i stand by my comment on nil advice from Denon other than we do not support AMD or VDJ. Finally enough there is no mention of the above in any of their advertising. On the contrary on their product page it says natively supports vdj and it came with a 28 day demo of vdj. Anyhow. It works now. Definitely need a new laptop though as that is maxing out still on CPU at times. Regards. Owen .

Don’t worry , almost without fail, if there’s something USB in a set up … that’s a great place to start suspecting issues …

As another example - a few years ago some USB flash/thumb drives cane out with a headphone socket and a tiny play/pause button … as well as (supposedly) being a normal memory device … utter rubbish for media players and DJ use … you can perhaps imagine what happened when the tiny play button was accidently pushed while a track on the stick was being played by the DJ media player it was plugged into…

Other USB minefields include…

USB powered hard drives which needed more current than s single USB socket could give - fail - see USB Y adaptor on google for details

External hard drives with push button backup … activating during a DJ set …

External hard drives made by companies who weren’t making actual hard drives themselves eg: LaCie / buffalo etc - it could be anyone’s hard drive inside with all the different characteristics

External hard drives with more than one interface on the back eg: usb2 usb3 FireWire esata etc

USB sticks with data encryption- with only windows and OS X decryption drivers onboard … tsk!

USB storage with bloatware and hidden partitions

USB - Usually Some Bother

I’ve had 2 Iomega drives fail on me. Never buy them again. Had 2 different drives in them . Yup i have a powered desktop drive. Seagate… Hasn’t failed on me. And have it backed up to aNAS drive. Again Seagate. Portable use i have it backed up to 2 unpowered drives .One Seagate slim the other a touro drive. Well impressed with touro drive. Fast. Very fast compared to Seagate. I can assure you my denon is now plugged into the usb 2 socket on laptop. The other 2 usb 3 sockets are used for powered desktop drive and touro unpowered. Something Denon also said to me was never plug controller into Usb 3 sockets on laptop or PC. There are comparability issues with the 6000 mk2 and USB3… again something i would not have thought due to usb 3 being back compatible… Regards Owen.

Add that line to the book of “Three men walk into a bar…” :wink:

It would seem so Kradcliffe. I will be purchasing a lenovo T530p soon. That will be more than up to the job. 3k display. i7 processor. Top spec. That should do the job for a few years. Used but still within manufacturers warranty. Yes DJ Boothe… Add that to the list too. Ha ha. Regards. Owen