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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Extreme Sound Distortion

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Hello All,

I recently bought VirtualDJv6. Its been giving me some problems which I did not experience with the last version.

The problem is the following:

I am experiencing mild to extreme sound distortion when loading a song onto a deck and (especially) when modifying it with with SYNC, Keylock, and with the Key-knob features.

Sometimes just loading the song onto the deck causes occasional, random, and small sound glitches, which of course shouldnt happen at all. Loading a second song onto the other deck while a song is playing on the first one also occasionally triggers this audio glitching. In the cases that it doesnt, then activating the SYNC funtion causes the glitching to start in some cases.

However, using the Keylock feature (as well as the Key-Changer knob) produces immediate and extreme sound distortion in 100% of the cases. The beat becomes irrecognizable and the song just overly distorted. As soon as the Keylock is disengaged the song continues to play normally (and by normally I mean sometimes with the occasional glitch).

As you can imagine this makes it virtually impossible to mix. These problems were not present during the time that I was running the last version of VirtualDJ. I have used the same setup since then, with following specifications:

HP 6910p Laptop, 2.2 GHz with 2 GB Ram running Windows Vista Business. I use a Numark TotalControl controller with a Numark DJIO soundcard. I have played around with the soundcard settings, but nothing seems to fix the problem.

My current soundcard settings in Virtual DJ are as follows:
Latency: Auto, with Safe Mode and Overclock unchecked
Scratch: Optimize for Quality, use Enhanced Algorithm with filter size 32 and filter smooth
48kHz <-> 44kHz: Lowpass Filter with 35 Filter Taps and Filter smooth
Master Tempo: Advanced with Complexity 3 and Spatialization 0

Ive also played around with the Ultra-High Latency option under the Sound Setup menu. That seems to allow the songs to play smoothly, but greatly hinders scratching (the sound disappears during the scratch time interval), as if using the scratch mechanism while the Keylock feature is turned on (this also gave me problems with the last version of VirtualDJ).


So, what can I do to fix this problem? I dont know whether its of any relevance, but Ive migrated my music library to an external hard drive, which obviously connects the to computer via USB. Is it possible that, given the fact that both the controller and the soundcard also connect via USB, that the USB "overloads" at certain times, which then produces the sound delays which are interpreted as glitches?

I would appreciate any comment to this problem. Is there anything I can do perhaps even with my computer (operating system settings, etc.) that would help VirtualDJ function better?

Thank you so much for your help and your patience for reading this far :)
 
Posted Wed 15 Jul 09 @ 5:23 am
Nescience wrote :
Hello All,


My current soundcard settings in Virtual DJ are as follows:
Latency: Auto, with Safe Mode and Overclock unchecked
Scratch: Optimize for Quality, use Enhanced Algorithm with filter size 32 and filter smooth
48kHz <-> 44kHz: Lowpass Filter with 35 Filter Taps and Filter smooth
Master Tempo: Advanced with Complexity 3 and Spatialization 0




It seems either your soundcard or your system cannot handle the Advance Master tempo. Why do you need it to set in advance complexity? Unless you need to use into extreme pitch adjustments.
Set the Preset: Fast, Latency: Auto, Safe Mode and Overclock: unchecked, Master Tempo:Fast.
Other than that do some tweeks on your system, e.g set windows on Best Performance, disable wireless, disable firewire (if not in use), any other network devices disable it, builtin disable.

Hope that helps.
 
Well, I have the Master Tempo set to the Advanced Algorithm because the alternative is just horrible. By that I mean that if I want to hold the key of a song constant but change the pitch (which as far as I know is a very basic technique in Djing), the song simply doesnt progress at a natural rate. It seems to randomly speed up and speed down for small intervals of time. That leads then to the effect, that the beats are spaced apart abnormally, which is noticeable to the ear.
 
And as said, Ive never changed the system or soundcard, and this problem didnt present itself with the last version of VirtualDJ. Is it possible however that the firmware/software from the soundcard needs to be updated?
 
Are you running your skin "maximized?" In other words, does the skin take up the whole screen, or can you still see the taskbar? Try running in "restore (a windows term) mode" where you can see the taskbar under the VDJ window and it will reduce your CPU load by a BUNCH!!

BTW, sometimes the advanced master tempo settings are a necessary victim for better performance. Try the "fastest" default setting on the performance slider and see if it helps, if only to test. Further, holding the key of a song while changing tempo is not "very basic..." In fact, it is not only very advanced, but also technologically challenging. Please do not interpret my comment as a personal attack - it is soooooooo not meant that way ;)
 
Thanks for the tip with the screen, i havent tried that so far.

What exactly do you mean with "restore mode"? Im not sure I quite understand (where do you activate it, etc.)

Advanced Master Tempo is in my opinion the second most useful tool of VDJ (the first being naturally the SYNC mechanism that works with great precision). Ive only been djing for like 2 maybe 3 years, but some of the mixes Ive recorded just wouldnt have been possible without holding the key of a song while changing the tempo. As you know, not all songs (because of their keys) go together nicely, so I started using this technique so that I basically dont have to start guessing as to which song might be appropriate to play next. Also, without this technique the fact that Virtual DJ tells you the key of the song is next to useless, in my opinion, because in this case it will also be greatly dependent on the pitch you choose to play it at.

As said, Ive played around with the VirtualDJ settings (e.g. tried the fastest default, which differs essentially in nothing in the practical sense from the other extreme except for the master tempo setting, as far as I can tell), but nothing seems to fix the problem completely. One of the advanced Ive made so far is to use the Ultra-latency ASIO setting in the Sound Setup menu. That actually worked rather well, up until I tried to shift the songs with the jog wheel. The sound would turn off and on every now and then, but I believe this also has something to do with the fact that my music library is on an external hard drive. Ive noticed that this makes a difference. For example: I loaded a song that was on my external hard drive on one deck, and a song that was on my internal hard drive on the other. I played both songs at different times (e.g. playing times didnt overlap). I noticed that the Scratch function only worked correctly with the song that was loaded from my internal hard drive. The other song could only be scratch in a forward direction with no errors (scratching it backwards would cause the sound to mute).

BTW, I didnt interpret your comment as a personal attack. Its actually very nice to hear from other people who have more experience in this field about key topics such as harmonic mixing (as some call it) :)
 
As I go through some threads, their are several users who upgraded to the latest version had experienced an obvious change in their audio response/quality/latency. As for me I can't fully understand why as I'm using only trial for testing, although I though observed there are a big changes with regards to the audio response/quality/latency. What I've said before is what I did to compensate those changes, and it works, thats for me.

On the other hand, harmonic mixing is not just an ordinary technique in djing but the advance side of it. Before it's quite difficult to do harmony blending due to the absence of the key display of the tracks. You need to be musically minded to actually know the key of the tracks and blend it to the next, but now with the additional key scanning/display features, it's already become so handy, though not all the time they are the correct key as far as the display is concern.

As for harmonic mixing is concern, I only know the very basic part of it.
Thus, -1/key/+1 on the base key (camilot) or +2/key/+7 for a little boost in key.
For any advance technique, if there's still any, please love to share.
Thanks
 


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