The first above post have no specifics which I say the same as other repliers have too said.
The giant big firmware release two day ago did. Ring me back to the forum , after many week away of just me to read only the posts. Maybe some trolls and haters and other not-owning Prime DJs did the same in that they were prompted to post by the new firmwares.
Pioneer last firmware out had only three features in it . It is not difficult to think how jealous they owning pioneer or Allen heath would be of denon prime when more over 50 features are born in one release day together
Please elaborate a little, a rant like this isn’t really helping anyone to understand your frustration.
What is it that you cannot do that you assumed/wished you could with your setup?
Is this related to the 1.3.1 firmware update?
What the biggest issue with your setup?
I’m perfectly happy with my setup now that the firmware update is here and seems pretty solid. But my workflow is as a follows:
Library management in Rekordbox (cues, loops, comments/tags)
DeCU (haven’t given the new import function a shot yet in Prime)
All music on one drive, Denon & Pioneer compatible
SC5000 hooked to an A&H DB:2 (via digital)
Mainly long blends, some sharp cuts, no need for stutter fx or loop chopping. If loops, then playing on top of another track mostly for long intros or outros.
Personally, I have:
No need for HID support
No need for sync, quantize or phrase sync
A lot of use for A & B layers.
a lot of love for the new search function
I miss a few things but those can be addressed by library management.
So, if we could understand your context better, we might be able to help you out or understand you better. Your mileage may vary, as they say.
Curious timing. If this had been posted six months ago I might have understood. Did you have hardware issues? InMusic will work to resolve it. Don’t jump ship yet, bra, things are just getting good. Literally just now they’re getting good. Major firmware updates. More coming. Much more.
Keep hope alive. Keep the faith. Stick to it. Don’t be a wuss.
I think some people prefer to poop post on forums than to just like go poop in the bathroom. This post has no specifics and zero credibility. Mods should remove it. Jus sayin.
He probably just needs to run Engine Prime in compatibility mode or ensure that the drive he has his collection stored on is connected before launching Engine Prime.
ok, to make it clear. I’m not just any hater who mates around here for no reason.
It’s just the many little things that make me say so.
I agree with @Kade: the hardware is good. The feel, the workmanship. Everything is very good. But on the software side, it’s a disaster.
Starting with the X1800:
Send / Return in combination with a Boss RV5. If you send out a signal on the effect unit and then turns off the incoming signal is cut off directly. Great with a reverb, echo, delay.
No tail !!!
Why do I use external effects devices? Because the internals are just bad. There are so many and none, really no one is good. The Sweep FX unit is nice but not more.
SC5000:
The start / stop button is inaccurate, even if in “Stop Time” button is set to “fast”. and no, I’m not the only one who says that.
Then I ask myself why you have the white “master beatgrid” (or whatever that means), if the only moves if you use the sync? WHAT FOR? It makes no sense! Apart from that, I expect a product that costs so much money that the beat does not run away. If you work with 4 decks, without sync, it should not be that the beat at 125.3 is slower than on an other player / layer that has 125.3. For example, Pionner: here the problem is not so massive. Then to the firmware update. It’s okay that you take it offline again when you discover errors. But it’s just embarrassing. Why has Denon been working on it for so long? If you rolled it out as beta. OK … but then publicly announce it as a “big” spring update on all sorts of platforms and then take it offline again 24h later. NOPE.
Engine Prime / Softeware Stuff:
At “Reticuli” That was before.
Meanwhile it works but it does not make it any better. It’s just not fun to work with. it is uninovative, complicated and confusing.
I think “Rekordbox” not really better but it makes a lot of little things better. why, for example, you can not remove tracks from a playlist with “Del”, but rather cumbersome with the mouse.
Or why is there no solution to search for duplicate titles?
And another problem: why is still no tractor 3 HDI support offered? Ok I can imagine that it is not only Denon but also the guys from Berlin. But it would be a good and proper step.
First internal effect is YOUR opinion man, I don’t have a X1800 I have a A&H DB4 but a friend does and I find all the effects pretty good and sometime better than a 900Nexus 2, easy to use too
Because you have two layers, it’s impossible to use a phase meter with this and which one is the “master” who decide when you have 2 track simultaneously? But I’m the same boat as you and I ask this firmware update since last year
Start button don’t even hear this problem, do you have any other example?
For the firmware apparently it’s a problem with Serato users and one channel missing, ■■■■ happen dude it’s not a big deal
Yes agree Rekordbox is a looot better but now Denon can focus on EP and some great improvements
For Traktor it’s not a problem from Denon but Traktor like you say maybe an exclusivity for Pioneer or maybe it’s cost too much money
Anyway Traktor 3 is not really that good and it’s better with USB key
Hey @Lotzo, thank you for more detail, this gives us a better understanding of where you are at and why you are feeling frustrated.
I don’t agree with ‘disaster’, I do however agree that there is more scope on the software side, a feeling that is echoed within the company to a point that we’ve hired 22 software developers in NZ who are solely working on DJ products. It won’t happen over night, but it is happening.
A personal option that you are of course more than entitled to, but there are many happy FX users on the X1800. If you have any specific suggestions on each individual effect please do let me know and I’ll be happy to pass them onto the dev team for consideration.
Would you be able to record a video of this, please?
I’d like to clarify here, are you saying you don’t use the beatgrids and would like the option to switch them off? A beatgrid is an essential roadmap not just for sync but also for effects, beat jump and other creative tools for DJs.
Agreed, this could have been done better and we’ve learned valuable info here, will have an update on this firmware very shortly.
Engine Prime will be getting more features, fixes and enhancements and we welcome any feedback to assist with this development. The more specific you can be, the better.
I’m afraid this has been out of our hands for a long time now and we’re hoping Native Instruments will have an update for this soon within Traktor.
I hope this has helped, please do let me know your thoughts and comments
I think a lot of users in the forum have expressed the sentiment of not having a delay/echo effect with a long, sustained tail.
I believe that effects such as flanger, transformer, etc are nice to have, but IMHO the really two important effects are reverbs and delays. Most DJs use these to blend two layers together, setting a delay with a long tail to one track, and creating some kind of pad from it that blends into the other track impregnating it with its harmonics… I can’t explain it very well in English, but I think that most DJs (at least techno and “trippy” music djs) can agree that reverbs and delays with long tails are maybe the most important FX in the unit.
The echoes and reverbs in the X1800 don’t serve to this purpose; their echoes are very short. It’s impossible (at least with my knowledge and skills) to create this “pad” I’m describing out of them.
As said, this has been pointed out by several users more than once in the forum.
Apart from this, I’d like to express that I have felt a bit disappointed that no new FXs or enhancements in these have been added in two years (other than the hallecho, that again, probably to my lack of understanding, I personally find useless in my sets). My expectations when I bought the system were that new FXs might have been added from time to time - maybe this is seen as a wrong expectation I had, but I recall videos by Laidback Luke and DJ tech tips suggesting this - that the X1800 had a flexible software layer and that we could expect more FXs with time. I understand it’s naive to expect updates adding new FXs every so often, but I’d find reasonable the addition of a long tailed echo due to its importance.
Yeah u are rigth. it’s not a disaster. But please put yourself in the situation of an end user. You spend a lot of money on a new system, hoping for great support and then comes for a long time nothing and then it’s rather a weak performance.
That’s why I’m really disappointed and had to let my frustration out.
Apart from that I think it’s good as you communicate here as a community manager at the moment
Thank you, I do understand what you mean and will be sure to pass this info on. Personally, I use the WASH OUT effect a fair bit as that does have a nice long tail effect.
New FX are on a list but we have to manage these with improvements, fixes etc. I hope there will be some in the next few updates. On a positive note, if you’d bought any other mixer you’d be stuck with the same hardware FX for life
As much as I love to complain about the shortcomings of Engine Prime (and there are many), I’m well aware there are a bunch of DJs in certain categories that probably don’t care about the features I want. If I had to guess, they’re Drum & Bass/4 on the floor style/EDM DJs. But as an open-format DJ, the software really kills the experience, and unfortunately I still can’t get onboard with the Prime system as a whole unless Engine Prime caught up to the competition for the following reasons:
No flexible beat grids. Warping a song to a BPM is not the same.
No smart crates/playlists. HUGE for me since it makes it easier to sort Clean edits.
Can’t organize crates.
Organized playlists don’t retain their order once exported to external drives.
No auto sync to external drives.
Sometimes changing the color of a cue point causes the GUI to stop working (on Windows). Hitting ESC fixes this.
Sorting playlists is a PITA. Sometimes playlists move in one click. Sometimes it takes five minutes.
GUI needs improvements. Subtle things like not losing my place in a large crate when I open it to show the sub-crates would be beneficial.
RGB waveforms to make it easier to visualize the frequencies in a song. Idk why Denon DJ hasn’t done this when literally, and I do mean literally, everyone else does.
Crates are sorted incorrectly in numerical order. 100 doesn’t come before 60, so why are my 100+bpm crates above my 60+ crates?
BPM detection is consistently wrong for songs at 102bpm. Engine Prime more often than not reads them at 68bpm. Thank God DJ pools put the BPM in the metadata.
Considering the initial marketing pitch was “change your rider”, the current popular choice for people’s riders has NONE of these issues whatsoever.
The first thing a denon should do is to improve the analysis of bpm files. and switching between the BPM Range is a failure.
The song can be recorded live, it can have bpm variables. Music RNB, RocknRoll, Rock, is totally totally wrongly analyzed. The analysis of the song should change in flight.
If you analyze bpm incorrectly, then using effects, quantize and perfect loops does not work.
I have a question. I made a loop manually with quantization off. Loop came out wrong and wants to improve it, shorten it. How to do it ???
X1800. The Echo effect is too short. In the pioneer I used the spiral effect every moment. When I made acapella or made a transition between songs. There is no spiral effect in Denon and the echo that is there is hopeless.
X1800. Timbre. I have problems with it because the music sounds bad although I have files in flac quality and a good sound system. I wrote this in this post Bad Sound in X1800 HELP
I play badly when it does not work as it should.
On the pioneer I could play with my eyes closed, without headphones.
Summarizing. If the basics are badly done, all super-functions are not useful.
Just like in the sound system - Just one faulty cable and nothing works right away. The same applies to the quality of files. Even if we had an Adamson or L’acustic sound system and they played with mp3 128kbps, it will still be bad
