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Forum: VirtualDJ Technical Support

Topic: Pitch drifting with DVS - Page: 1
Is this normal when using DVS? i need to constantly nudge the platters or hit sync to keep a mix in time.

Or is something else wrong, like my turntables not working properly?

i use 1200s and keep them on quartz lock, only adjusting the software with sync; but tracks do not stay synced for very long.

Are there settings to compensate for this?

i don't want to mess with the 1200s unnecessarily.
 
Posted Fri 04 Jul 25 @ 12:17 pm
DVS implementation aside, pitch fluctuation are expected for motorized turntables because of their mechanics (wow and flutter), so having to make adjustments will always be a thing. Quality of the needles would also cause issues as well.

Once a mix is "locked" however from from a physical pitch adjustment and DVS processing + speed determination perspective (which could take longer due to settings), I've been able to leave a mix for about 40 seconds or a little more without having to intervene before.

What's the value of timecodePitchSliderIgnoreBend? That is a setting that that could delay speed processing, and I now normally leave that off, but unfortunately that does result in slightly more busy BPM readouts. Try on and off for the setting and see what works better for you.
If you are using Phase in DVS mode and its calibrated correctly/all goes well with phase behaving properly, it does perform pretty well as the needle + tonearm is out of the problem causing equation too.

Please note, other than that setting I mentioned before, there isn't the equivalent "antidrift" setting as people from Serato are accustomed to.

IMO it's not a major loss given DVS reaction time and processing quality is good enough to approach behaviour when playing a real record (which also doesn't have "antidrift"). However if you still have issues and can provide a video where you show the problem explaining where you think things could be better then the devs can look at it and see what can be done.
 
Appreciate that reply bro!

i understand the wow and flutter is unavoidable; 40 secs sounds good enough for me to keep it synced up.

i don't touch the pitch control on the turntables at all.

not using phase, i have ortofon Concorde MKII MIX they work for my scratching pretty well

timecodePitchSliderIgnoreBend is set to off, i will experiment with it.

Maybe we need anti drift in vdj lol


I accept dvs will not be rock solid, but i somehow think it could be a little better that what i currently experience in terms of the drifting .......everything else is great.
 
I'm with you on the potential for improvement here. Let us know if that setting helps though 🍺
 
yeah i got same issue pitch drifting and cue points , and still no help and no answer from virtual dj
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
I'm with you on the potential for improvement here. Let us know if that setting helps though 🍺


Just thought i would update you....

I really tried playing with all relevant settings, but gave up......no improvements.

I will just use it as is......shame tho, i really wish this could be sorted to become a non issue....
 
No defense on my end - things can be improved.

I'm not really a long blender and I've gotten accustomed to occasionally using my hands/ears for adjustment, but I could see where blenders/pitch riders would find it a bit harder to use.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
No defense on my end - things can be improved.

I'm not really a long blender and I've gotten accustomed to occasionally using my hands/ears for adjustment, but I could see where blenders/pitch riders would find it a bit harder to use.



yep
 
I would like to have anti-drift on VDJ in the options, to enable or disable it as desired....
 
I honestly think that setting does more harm that good (playing real vinyl has no such feature to help).

A lot of people misunderstand what that feature is supposed to do -
Pri Yon Joni has a very good explanation about that, although I don't like his use of the term cue drift.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iNdpHl5HCV4

Hotcues/POI are purely a software thing - and they are always located in the same place in the track. (Physical Record) Sticker drift, i.e. a Physical reference position on the timecode record being played by the turntable, is what drifts.

The summary of his video:

Ant-Drift attempts to help with stabilizing the playback of the song by doing little adjustments to the playback speed, in the software, but your physical turntable always spins at the speed you set the pitch at, and this naturally leads to the turntable physical sticker position being out-of-sync with the software's playback position.

So while it may help to keep the software playback more stable (and long blenders appreciate that), it pretty much can mess up any physical manipulation you are doing on the turntable, including pitch riding.

All turntablists actually keep that setting off, because it can mess with scratch/juggle movements.

Serato is probably smarter with application of it (e.g. disengage when it thinks you are doing scratching) but still, that's a heuristic that may not always be reliable, especially for movement speeds close to playback speed.

I think what people actually want is the DVS behaviour to match controller behavior, but unfortunately that's not possible. There is always room for improvement though - especially the software BPM readout.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
I honestly think that setting does more harm that good (playing real vinyl has no such feature to help).

A lot of people misunderstand what that feature is supposed to do -
Pri Yon Joni has a very good explanation about that, although I don't like his use of the term cue drift.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iNdpHl5HCV4

Hotcues/POI are purely a software thing - and they are always located in the same place in the track. (Physical Record) Sticker drift, i.e. a Physical reference position on the timecode record being played by the turntable, is what drifts.

The summary of his video:

Ant-Drift attempts to help with stabilizing the playback of the song by doing little adjustments to the playback speed, in the software, but your physical turntable always spins at the speed you set the pitch at, and this naturally leads to the turntable physical sticker position being out-of-sync with the software's playback position.

So while it may help to keep the software playback more stable (and long blenders appreciate that), it pretty much can mess up any physical manipulation you are doing on the turntable, including pitch riding.

All turntablists actually keep that setting off, because it can mess with scratch/juggle movements.

Serato is probably smarter with application of it (e.g. disengage when it thinks you are doing scratching) but still, that's a heuristic that may not always be reliable, especially for movement speeds close to playback speed.

I think what people actually want is the DVS behaviour to match controller behavior, but unfortunately that's not possible. There is always room for improvement though - especially the software BPM readout.


This is reasonable; and I think everybody would agree; there is definitely plenty room for improvement with VDJ, regardless.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
DVS implementation aside, pitch fluctuation are expected for motorized turntables because of their mechanics (wow and flutter), so having to make adjustments will always be a thing. Quality of the needles would also cause issues as well.

Once a mix is "locked" however from from a physical pitch adjustment and DVS processing + speed determination perspective (which could take longer due to settings), I've been able to leave a mix for about 40 seconds or a little more without having to intervene before.

What's the value of timecodePitchSliderIgnoreBend? That is a setting that that could delay speed processing, and I now normally leave that off, but unfortunately that does result in slightly more busy BPM readouts. Try on and off for the setting and see what works better for you.
If you are using Phase in DVS mode and its calibrated correctly/all goes well with phase behaving properly, it does perform pretty well as the needle + tonearm is out of the problem causing equation too.

Please note, other than that setting I mentioned before, there isn't the equivalent "antidrift" setting as people from Serato are accustomed to.

IMO it's not a major loss given DVS reaction time and processing quality is good enough to approach behaviour when playing a real record (which also doesn't have "antidrift"). However if you still have issues and can provide a video where you show the problem explaining where you think things could be better then the devs can look at it and see what can be done.


Serato only had the anti drift feature since version 1.9.6 which was released back in 2017. Long time Serato user since Scratch Live and use Virtual DJ for mixing music videos with a controller.

Serato even without the feature turned on is still far more stable than Virtual DJ DVS. And I have used Traktor DVS, Rekordbox DJ in performance mode. and messed around with DJay Pro and still far more stable than Virtual DJ DVS. Now if Virtual DJ can get this corrected they can definitely be in the conversation of who has the best DVS. Until then it’s Serato for DVS and Virtual DJ for everything else.
 
I've used Serato since the Scratch Live days and into the DJ Pro days (and even now), Traktor for a few years, Rekordbox for a few years so I know what you mean.
To me, the readout has improved a bit since I came over in 2020 (might be just me getting accustomed to it though), but I honestly don't depend on the readout that much anymore...I depend on what I actually hear more.
All DVS systems have their nuances, but I can work with them. VirtualDJ's DVS isn't necessarily the best I've tried, but it isn't terrible...I've not found a situation where it just is completely unusable.
 
For me this leads to the question of how much benefit DVS users see with the new fluid beatgrid and bpm stabilizer features. When testing with an EA release, it was hard to tell if these features were actually working with my DVS (Pioneer S11 and Reloop RP7s) setup. For instance, using the bpm stabilizer didn't seem to stabilize the bpm in my case, at least when looking at the bpm readout. I don't expect it to be perfectly stable using DVS, but I genuinely couldn't tell if the stabilizer was doing anything. Im willing to admit that maybe I don't understand how these features are supposed to work or maybe my DVS settings could be improved, but I'm curious how well the new features are expected to work with DVS.
 
In the previous fluid system, VDJ actually showed the BPM changing on each deck (in the jogwheel BPM display) so it was easy to see when the track was fluid - it fed the info back to you.

If you engaged the lock, the difference was obvious because then the displayed BPM would be steady.

Now we have a steady BPM displayed regardless of whether stabilizing is on or off, so you don't get that feedback. 😵‍💫
 
Just to add t persist @groovindj's notes:

The BPM stabilizer does work with DVS, but it's not a DVS only thing like anti-drift, it's meant to "straighten out" fluid BPM tracks. It doesn't make sense to try to use it with a stable BPM track (it probably does nothing there). Please note that the deck info area still shows the fluctuations, but the Jogs themselves do not.

Where it helps is mixing two songs together and keeping it sounding good. If you enable it for a fluid track at a certain point, you wouldn't have to nudge/slowdown manually outside of Wow/flutter fluctuations, because the track itself will be a steady BPM. If you hit sync + beatlock, then give the other track is stable, it will stay in sync and sound good, instead of sounding wabbly due to potentially another variable BPM track trying to act as the BPM master guide for an already variable BPM track - that is the real goldmine for the feature to me.
 
Klaus as usual brings us a video explaining fluid vs stable (and more).
 
Thanks @groovindj and @VinylTouch. My testing was with variable/fluid bpm tracks. Your explanations are how I expected the features to work, but I still ended up having to do a fair amount of nudging. This may simply be a byproduct of using 7" platters. I wonder if I'll get more "hands off" results with 12" decks. My hope was to not have to use beatlock and sync and that the stabilizer would reduce the amount of nudging I'm doing since the bpms would be more stable. I haven't seen that in my testing, but I'll give it another whirl tonight.
 
Just to add, I prefer not to use beatlock and sync because, at times, the grid analysis can be slightly off and I'd like to retain control over lining up transients.
 
With the stabilizer on, the BPM will be steady at whatever it was when you engaged it. As shown in the video, you can also set the stabilizer to auto, which should engage it during a mix.
 
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