christianwheel
Hi all,
Booked a corporate gig for a major manufacturer of bluetooth headphones. Part of the deal is I have to use their flagship headphones while spinning. I must say, they are NICE (msrp ~$500 USD) and sound fantastic, but there's about a 1/4 second delay, clearly an issue for beatmixing. They are exclusively bluetooth and have no wired input.
Curious if anyone has any tips on how to decrease bluetooth latency. Would be willing to sacrifice audio quality to reduce the bandwidth required if that's a possibility. I'm using a Mac if that makes any difference.
Booked a corporate gig for a major manufacturer of bluetooth headphones. Part of the deal is I have to use their flagship headphones while spinning. I must say, they are NICE (msrp ~$500 USD) and sound fantastic, but there's about a 1/4 second delay, clearly an issue for beatmixing. They are exclusively bluetooth and have no wired input.
Curious if anyone has any tips on how to decrease bluetooth latency. Would be willing to sacrifice audio quality to reduce the bandwidth required if that's a possibility. I'm using a Mac if that makes any difference.
Posted Tue 05 Mar 24 @ 7:20 am
Adion
Personally I just cover both ears while beatmixing so that the delay doesn't matter too much.
A fader assigned to headphone_fader as on the DJM-S9 is quite convenient for that too, as it's easy to switch between mixed and individual tracks in headphones.
Alternatively headphone_mix can be used in a similar fashion to check your mix in the headphones. (Although I find headphone_fader easier as you can use it ahead of moving the actual fader)
A fader assigned to headphone_fader as on the DJM-S9 is quite convenient for that too, as it's easy to switch between mixed and individual tracks in headphones.
Alternatively headphone_mix can be used in a similar fashion to check your mix in the headphones. (Although I find headphone_fader easier as you can use it ahead of moving the actual fader)
Posted Tue 05 Mar 24 @ 8:08 am
klausmogensen
It's so crazy to me that they would push for the DJ to use their product that can't be used for DJing IRL
Posted Tue 05 Mar 24 @ 9:07 am
groovindj
Exactly Klaus. Sounds like the company (or someone who works there at least) doesn't understand the limitations of their own product.
I guess you could put the headphones on, but underneath wear some IEMs.
I guess you could put the headphones on, but underneath wear some IEMs.
Posted Tue 05 Mar 24 @ 9:41 am
Adion
I've been using bluetooth headphones for 2 years for DJ'ing, and it works quite well.
Imo you need to be able to handle latency anyway, since even before using bluetooth, I've been to several places without monitors where the delay simply came from the distance to the speakers.
Imo you need to be able to handle latency anyway, since even before using bluetooth, I've been to several places without monitors where the delay simply came from the distance to the speakers.
Posted Tue 05 Mar 24 @ 9:45 am
groovindj
If you just use them for cueing I guess it would be bearable.
Posted Tue 05 Mar 24 @ 10:01 am
Adion
As said, I do the beatmixing in the headphones as well, and then depending on the duration of the mix bring the track in while wearing the headphones, and remove to continue the mix.
Posted Tue 05 Mar 24 @ 11:14 am
christianwheel
Appreciate the replies everyone. Cheers.
Posted Wed 06 Mar 24 @ 8:08 am
djlibor
Simply put, it depends on the codec used. The best ones reach a latency of only around 50 ms (currently the best, commercially widespread, codec for low latency is aptX Adaptive, LDAC is perhaps still worth mentioning). Maybe you could mix with that. But it's just a theory, I haven't had a chance to try it. If you want to go in this direction, first check which codec the headphones support!
Another point of interest - in the future, the latency of bluetooth 5.4 with some codecs (also from Qualcomm) should approach the value of 20 ms, that would be really amazing!
Another point of interest - in the future, the latency of bluetooth 5.4 with some codecs (also from Qualcomm) should approach the value of 20 ms, that would be really amazing!
Posted Wed 06 Mar 24 @ 10:05 pm
christianwheel
New issue as I try to make these headphones work.
When I take off the headphones for more than 60 seconds, they go into standby mode, which disconnects them from Bluetooth. When they reconnect, VDJ does not automatically play to them again. I have to go into Audio Settings and select them as headphones again, then reapply the settings which causes an audible stutter in the master audio.
Any way around this?
When I take off the headphones for more than 60 seconds, they go into standby mode, which disconnects them from Bluetooth. When they reconnect, VDJ does not automatically play to them again. I have to go into Audio Settings and select them as headphones again, then reapply the settings which causes an audible stutter in the master audio.
Any way around this?
Posted Wed 13 Mar 24 @ 3:57 pm
DJ VinylTouch
AFAIK, automatic headphone standy/shutoff is not normally done unless the bluetooth connection is broken manually by the user or if its charge runs out.
Is there no way to switch that off (the headphone in activity triggering causing it to disconnect) from the headphone's settings itself?
Is there no way to switch that off (the headphone in activity triggering causing it to disconnect) from the headphone's settings itself?
Posted Wed 13 Mar 24 @ 4:39 pm
PANOSV
you can't do anything for the latency just try to mix with both headphones (cue mix option)
Posted Wed 13 Mar 24 @ 4:45 pm
christianwheel
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
AFAIK, automatic headphone standy/shutoff is not normally done unless the bluetooth connection is broken manually by the user or if its charge runs out.
Is there no way to switch that off (the headphone in activity triggering causing it to disconnect) from the headphone's settings itself?
Is there no way to switch that off (the headphone in activity triggering causing it to disconnect) from the headphone's settings itself?
The app to configure the headphones is currently Android only and I have iPhone. Unfortunately these are pre-release. Apparently the iPhone app is not ready yet.
It's wild, just adjusting the headphones on one ear sometimes triggers the head detection and mutes the headphones. You can NOT do the one-ear-on one-ear-off thing that we DJs love to do.
While the hardware on these headphones is really nice, the software isn't quite there yet.
Posted Wed 13 Mar 24 @ 6:54 pm
groovindj
You're not doing much to promote the brand (good job you didn't name them)!
I hope you're feeding all the negative experience back to them.
I hope you're feeding all the negative experience back to them.
Posted Wed 13 Mar 24 @ 7:24 pm
DJ VinylTouch
Honestly man, if the headphones switches itself off and you can't control that, that's a dealbreaker for me even wanting to try that product (besides the fact it's using latency laden Bluetooth as its protocol).
This product is in beta right? They can't possibly be providing this with the problems you described as an end user product with an actual price, or are they?
This product is in beta right? They can't possibly be providing this with the problems you described as an end user product with an actual price, or are they?
Posted Wed 13 Mar 24 @ 8:53 pm
christianwheel
I can't speak to how they will be upon release, but what I am DJing is the release party for them, hence the requirement that they be used.
Posted Wed 13 Mar 24 @ 8:55 pm
Adion
Normally if you turn on the headphones they should automatically reconnect to your laptop, and vdj should automatically reconnect them. (use that all the time with my sony wh1000 xm5)
Posted Thu 14 Mar 24 @ 7:15 am