Poloralphloren
Okay, so I got new needles, studied up on how to adjust the tonearm, anti-skating, and height, calibrated everything so the decks work just fine with regular records, but I still get an unusually large number of skips using TCV.
It turns out that turning the software pre-amp OFF helps a lot with the skips, although it greatly reduces the timecode quality -- this works better, but it still skips (a digitized sort of skipping sound) when i step too strongly onto the floor. Mind you, still just stepping from one deck to the other, but slightly pressing into the floor more than the lightest tap possible... and it skips. My surface is a little bit wobbly, so no doubt a more stable surface would improve this problem, but the problem is that only the TCV's make this severe skipping sound, regular analog records do not make it, so I wonder if there is a way to make the software handle skipping better? I tried increasing the buffer to 1024, but this didn't help. Even higher? Or something else? Or what about an external pre-amp, would that help with the digitized skipping sounds?
The other problem is with regular analog vinyl... I setup a keyboard shortcut for "T" to activate "timecode bypass" -- in addition to this, the software pre-amp is turned off. When I play the record, it sounds horrendous -- almost no bass, and these scratchy clawing high-pitched sounds... the gain seems ultra-high, and turning it down to all the way off makes it still loud with the faders all the way up. Any idea how to improve the quality of the analog bypass signal? Again, would an external pre-amp help? Or would I be better off splitting the signal so one set goes to channels 2 and 3 for TCV mixing, and another to channels 1 and 4 for analog? Would splitting the cable reduce the quality of the signal?
It turns out that turning the software pre-amp OFF helps a lot with the skips, although it greatly reduces the timecode quality -- this works better, but it still skips (a digitized sort of skipping sound) when i step too strongly onto the floor. Mind you, still just stepping from one deck to the other, but slightly pressing into the floor more than the lightest tap possible... and it skips. My surface is a little bit wobbly, so no doubt a more stable surface would improve this problem, but the problem is that only the TCV's make this severe skipping sound, regular analog records do not make it, so I wonder if there is a way to make the software handle skipping better? I tried increasing the buffer to 1024, but this didn't help. Even higher? Or something else? Or what about an external pre-amp, would that help with the digitized skipping sounds?
The other problem is with regular analog vinyl... I setup a keyboard shortcut for "T" to activate "timecode bypass" -- in addition to this, the software pre-amp is turned off. When I play the record, it sounds horrendous -- almost no bass, and these scratchy clawing high-pitched sounds... the gain seems ultra-high, and turning it down to all the way off makes it still loud with the faders all the way up. Any idea how to improve the quality of the analog bypass signal? Again, would an external pre-amp help? Or would I be better off splitting the signal so one set goes to channels 2 and 3 for TCV mixing, and another to channels 1 and 4 for analog? Would splitting the cable reduce the quality of the signal?
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 1:34 am
Poloralphloren
Nobody? I'll simplifiy my question...
Would an external hardware pre-amp improve signal quality without exagerating skips the way the software pre-amp does?
Would an external hardware pre-amp improve signal quality without exagerating skips the way the software pre-amp does?
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 3:33 pm
djej
I can't really help with the bypass as I don't use that. Regarding your skip problesm, do you have anti-skip turned on?
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 3:43 pm
listen2
1st thing if you just got new needles they will need to be broken in, the only real trick to that is usage. You can put a little extra weight on the arm and grab a normal vinyl and put the needle in the last groove, so it not playing but stays on the vinyl. Give it some time to settle in.
As fo the bypass function, it's really not that great and you will do much better if you used Y-adapters, you will need 4. Split the right and left from the turntable, one set will go to your soundcard like it is now and the other to the mixer(phono) that way all you will have to do is flip the swith on the mixer and play a real vinyl.
Ma in the house
As fo the bypass function, it's really not that great and you will do much better if you used Y-adapters, you will need 4. Split the right and left from the turntable, one set will go to your soundcard like it is now and the other to the mixer(phono) that way all you will have to do is flip the swith on the mixer and play a real vinyl.
Ma in the house
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 3:49 pm
Poloralphloren
I've had anti-skip on this whole time -- would turning anti-skip OFF help get rid of the skipping? Seems pretty opposite to what it's intended to do! But could the anti-skip feature be screwing things up??
Breaking the needles in may indeed help eventually, but normal vinyl sounds much better, leading me to believe that the problem is fundamentally with VDJ -- will the version 4.0 improve TCV skipping problems? Meanwhile, I'd really like to know if anyone's tried an external pre-amp, and if that helps improve the TCV quality?? Sometimes I get skips just from loading another track on the other deck, or if I do anything with an application other than VDJ, making me wonder if there is a way to allocate memory better for TCV, but I don't know how to do that...
As for the bypass thing, yes, I've decided there's no reason to use the software bypass -- I looked at some old threads and the best idea I saw mentioned was using a *switch* rather than splitters, so the already-weak signal isn't further weakened by splitting it... Haven't gotten one yet, but I'm going to try getting a hardware external switch set up for each table, should make things nice and easy...
Breaking the needles in may indeed help eventually, but normal vinyl sounds much better, leading me to believe that the problem is fundamentally with VDJ -- will the version 4.0 improve TCV skipping problems? Meanwhile, I'd really like to know if anyone's tried an external pre-amp, and if that helps improve the TCV quality?? Sometimes I get skips just from loading another track on the other deck, or if I do anything with an application other than VDJ, making me wonder if there is a way to allocate memory better for TCV, but I don't know how to do that...
As for the bypass thing, yes, I've decided there's no reason to use the software bypass -- I looked at some old threads and the best idea I saw mentioned was using a *switch* rather than splitters, so the already-weak signal isn't further weakened by splitting it... Haven't gotten one yet, but I'm going to try getting a hardware external switch set up for each table, should make things nice and easy...
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 4:03 pm
Poloralphloren
Anyone ever try using one of these bad boys with TCV?
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ARTDJPREII
Looks pretty solid, I might give it a whirl... Please if anyone has tried using external preamps for TCV, report back on if it improved the sound quality or not, thanks!
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ARTDJPREII
Looks pretty solid, I might give it a whirl... Please if anyone has tried using external preamps for TCV, report back on if it improved the sound quality or not, thanks!
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 4:23 pm
listen2
not sure did you ever tell us what you have for a setup, pc specs, soundcard, etc. I do not have Y adapters myself but i think many have done so with no ill effects on signal, do you mean the needle physically skips on the TCV or the sound drops out? Sounds more like audio dropsouts... do you have max load on??
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 8:18 pm
Poloralphloren
The PC is almost as state-of-the-art as possible right now: AMD Athlon 4400+ dual-core processor, Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard, 2 gigs corsair memory... Soundcard: M-Audio Delta 44. Ecler Nuo4 mixer, with 2 Technics 1210 MKII TT's, with brand new Ortofon Pro cartridges on brand new VDJ TCV's.
Should work.
And it mostly does... But yes, I'm experiencing audio dropouts, NOT physical skips. Audio dropouts are slightly physical in nature, because it is light vibrations from the floor that seem to cause skipping, but the skips on regular vinyl are almost inaudible, whereas the skips in VDJ are amplified and very obvious. Also, a somewhat separate problem, is occasional LARGE skips to totally different parts of tracks, despite the needle not moving on the TCV, and sometimes complete pauses/audio dropouts when I do anything else on the PC, like load another program, or sometimes just load another track on the other virtual deck. Granted, this last problem only seems to happen when I try to use TCV's for large files, like 1-hour mixes, which is completely unnecessary as I wouldn't actually try to use mixed music to mix over on top of, but I'd still like to know if there's a way to tweak the program so it doesn't drop audio at all, cuz that's annoying...
Using the software preamp amplifies the signal enough to get 100% quality, but then the skips are FAR worse, which is somewhat unexpected -- you'd think 100% signal would decrease severity of skips, etc., but no, the reverse happens. So maybe it's the way the software preamp's code was written -- perhaps a hardware preamp would give the best of both worlds: 100% signal, with no amplified skips, yeah? But nobody's ventured to say if they've tried this or not, or even to give an opinion on whether it would work or not. I'm wondering if a hardware preamp would only amplify the noise along with the signal, the same way the software preamp does, but I think probably NOT, as it seems like it is the software code that is exagerating the skips, and nothing else... but on the other hand, I don't know if the signal integrity affects the skipping problem or not -- maybe an external preamp would just be a waste of money and not help at all. Has anyone tried this? Does anyone have an opinon on whether it would help or not?
And yes, I do have Norton anti-virus running in the background, could that cause audio dropouts?
Thanks for listening, you're a champ if you read through this entire message :)
Should work.
And it mostly does... But yes, I'm experiencing audio dropouts, NOT physical skips. Audio dropouts are slightly physical in nature, because it is light vibrations from the floor that seem to cause skipping, but the skips on regular vinyl are almost inaudible, whereas the skips in VDJ are amplified and very obvious. Also, a somewhat separate problem, is occasional LARGE skips to totally different parts of tracks, despite the needle not moving on the TCV, and sometimes complete pauses/audio dropouts when I do anything else on the PC, like load another program, or sometimes just load another track on the other virtual deck. Granted, this last problem only seems to happen when I try to use TCV's for large files, like 1-hour mixes, which is completely unnecessary as I wouldn't actually try to use mixed music to mix over on top of, but I'd still like to know if there's a way to tweak the program so it doesn't drop audio at all, cuz that's annoying...
Using the software preamp amplifies the signal enough to get 100% quality, but then the skips are FAR worse, which is somewhat unexpected -- you'd think 100% signal would decrease severity of skips, etc., but no, the reverse happens. So maybe it's the way the software preamp's code was written -- perhaps a hardware preamp would give the best of both worlds: 100% signal, with no amplified skips, yeah? But nobody's ventured to say if they've tried this or not, or even to give an opinion on whether it would work or not. I'm wondering if a hardware preamp would only amplify the noise along with the signal, the same way the software preamp does, but I think probably NOT, as it seems like it is the software code that is exagerating the skips, and nothing else... but on the other hand, I don't know if the signal integrity affects the skipping problem or not -- maybe an external preamp would just be a waste of money and not help at all. Has anyone tried this? Does anyone have an opinon on whether it would help or not?
And yes, I do have Norton anti-virus running in the background, could that cause audio dropouts?
Thanks for listening, you're a champ if you read through this entire message :)
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 8:38 pm
Poloralphloren
And what is "max load on"?
Posted Thu 29 Jun 06 @ 8:44 pm
Karloptimux
Hi,
Max load is in the fame or general tab, its the maximum lenght of a song you want to put in ram. I had skips too at first and was wondering. I got a Maya44 and I went into the config tool. Put the application priority to high and voila, no more skips. Try the asio configurator in the time coded config. You should have a similar menu to play with.
Hope this helps.
Karlo.
Max load is in the fame or general tab, its the maximum lenght of a song you want to put in ram. I had skips too at first and was wondering. I got a Maya44 and I went into the config tool. Put the application priority to high and voila, no more skips. Try the asio configurator in the time coded config. You should have a similar menu to play with.
Hope this helps.
Karlo.
Posted Fri 30 Jun 06 @ 12:35 pm
Poloralphloren
Hey Karlo, thanks for the max load tip! That took care of the very-large-files-skipping problem... But still, other problems persist. I think VDJ TCV is just not ready for primetime... can't *wait* for version 4.0!! Not in the mood to shell out $600 for Serato just yet...
Posted Sat 01 Jul 06 @ 12:30 am
JayKline
Did you ever figure out a way to keep the light bumps from making the tcv skip? I have the same problem when I walk or accidently tap the turntable the music in vdj skips. The tcv seems to not hold a groove very well. My bass can even make the needle skip too well not jump track just enough to lose about 40% of my time code signal wich makes the mp3 playing sound like it is skiping but it is just pausing and then catching back up with the tc on the record when it finds out what part of the record it is on. I think that needle drop is not as important as keeping the tune playing mabe we need a switch to turn off the needle drop option. Some other tcv programs when the song is playing you can actualy take the needle off the record and it just keeps playing. This would be good for those dj's who just like to beat match without their tunes skiping "or droping out then catching back up with time code" it still sounds like a skip to me.
So if anybody knows how to correct this problem with a setting in vdj please inform!
Thanks
So if anybody knows how to correct this problem with a setting in vdj please inform!
Thanks
Posted Wed 05 Jul 06 @ 7:20 pm
Poloralphloren
No, I haven't figured out how to get rid of this problem... Glad to hear someone else is having the problem too though, so I know I'm not the only one :) I've minimized the problem as much as I can, but the TCV's are still unusually sensitive to very light bumps, and skipping is much more dramatic than it is on normal vinyl... Not sure what to do. I got an external phono preamp thinking that increasing the signal might help prevent such sensitivity, but no, skips just as much, and actually the skips are a bit more noticeable -- however, the external preamp has improved the signal quality to 100% most of the time, without having to use the software preamp... but unfortunately this doesn't resolve the skipping-a-lot-due-to-light-bumps problem... It might be helping with the other more serious problem, however, of skipping to an entirely different part of the track for no apparent reason -- I've only tested it briefly with the external preamp, but it does seem to be slightly more stable... will update after I test the preamp some more... Let me know if you figure anything out! And if VDJ staff and/or moderators could tell us if version 4.0 is likely to resolve this problem or not I'd very much appreciate it!
Posted Wed 05 Jul 06 @ 7:38 pm
JayKline
Well I have found that if I take the weight off my sl-1200m3d and turn it the otherway around and get more weight on the needle it seem's to help but does not get rid of it completly. Also I found that if I make a keyboard shortcut for Activate/De-activate time code I will only have the time code active when I am mixing two songs together. After I mix I will turn off the time code and it does not matter if you pick up the needle or not it will not stop playing the tune. I also found that if you just stop the timecode record while the tune plays on and you want to use the time code again simply start the TC record again ( I did not remove the needle the hole time ) and then activate the timecode in vdj and the tune will not jump back to eariler in the song even though its position is on the tcv is eariler than the song real position. I do have my timecode set up in vdj as absloute.
Posted Wed 05 Jul 06 @ 11:22 pm
Poloralphloren
Oh yes, I was going to suggest the activate/deactivate command but forgot to mention it :) So you figured that out on your own... But, it's inconvenient, really shouldn't be necessary to worry about deactivating the TCV's while you're in the middle of everthing else... And for me the biggest problems are skips *while* I'm mixing in a new track -- causes automatic trainwreck! Not cool at all!
Posted Wed 05 Jul 06 @ 11:34 pm
JayKline
Yea the only thing is the pitch resets when you do that so it sucks, and your right it is too much to think about the software shuld make it easer not harder right? LOL well I hope 4.0 has work out these bugs. It is like vdj need to listen to the tc but not that closely, or deeper grooves on the vinyl because my regular vinyl (the whole 5 records) does not do this or atleast it is not as audiable!
oh yea I think the perfect way to see what is happing is to bring up the timecode config (advanced) then look for 100% signal then tap your turntable (lightly!!!!) and watch what the percentage does! I think this is what is happing when it skips. A peice of lint or spec of dirt in the groove ect is what causes this I have to clean my tc vinyl constently.
oh yea I think the perfect way to see what is happing is to bring up the timecode config (advanced) then look for 100% signal then tap your turntable (lightly!!!!) and watch what the percentage does! I think this is what is happing when it skips. A peice of lint or spec of dirt in the groove ect is what causes this I have to clean my tc vinyl constently.
Posted Thu 06 Jul 06 @ 12:25 am
Poloralphloren
Hmmm, pitch shouldn't reset when you deactivate the timecode... not sure how you have things set, but that shouldn't change -- that would be *really* annoying :) But yeah, it is bumps and lint and whatever that causes much of the problems, in a sense, but TCV seems to amplify skips and make them very obvious whereas normal vinyl only makes a tiny little barely noticeable skip...
And yes, observing the timecode config advanced setting, you can see when things get dicey, but they shouldn't be getting that way in the first place! :) And I still get these other types of "skips" that don't seem to be related to the timecode signal -- everything will seem to be going fine when it'll just skip a beat entirely, or go to another part of the track! I don't understand that at all... gonna try out this external preamp tonight and see if that problem keeps coming up or not with that...
And yes, observing the timecode config advanced setting, you can see when things get dicey, but they shouldn't be getting that way in the first place! :) And I still get these other types of "skips" that don't seem to be related to the timecode signal -- everything will seem to be going fine when it'll just skip a beat entirely, or go to another part of the track! I don't understand that at all... gonna try out this external preamp tonight and see if that problem keeps coming up or not with that...
Posted Thu 06 Jul 06 @ 1:03 am
JayKline
yea I had that happen when it goes to another part of the song I think changing the timecode setting to absoloute from smart made the difference, at least that is what I think helped I have changed so many things it is hard to keep track of what helped what! LOL There is something else I am having trouble with too is if you have both decks playing (vdj+tcv) and you try to load another song on one of the decks it will make a high pitched digitized sound before it loads or some times vdj's recover program comes up and I hit recover then vdj crashes and then closes. I have to remember to stop the song remove needle from tc and then load new song. Then it does not crash.
oh yea about the pitch thing when deactivating tc in vdj. If you have ptched up or down on the turntable before you de-activate it the pitch will go back to what ever you had it set at in vdj. At least that is what I found.
oh yea about the pitch thing when deactivating tc in vdj. If you have ptched up or down on the turntable before you de-activate it the pitch will go back to what ever you had it set at in vdj. At least that is what I found.
Posted Thu 06 Jul 06 @ 1:12 am
Poloralphloren
Hey thanks for the tip about absolute mode! I was using smart mode, and come to think of it, that probably was partially responsible for the big skips to other parts of the track! That might just solve that problem, fantastic :)
As for the high-pitched sound, that is weird, but sounds like the computer's memory might be overloaded when it's trying to load too many tracks... Not sure why, is your computer slow or low in memory? Do you have max load set to a high enough value? Crashing completely like that is not a good thing... Maybe start a thread in the software section if you can't figure that out, sounds extremely annoying!
As for the high-pitched sound, that is weird, but sounds like the computer's memory might be overloaded when it's trying to load too many tracks... Not sure why, is your computer slow or low in memory? Do you have max load set to a high enough value? Crashing completely like that is not a good thing... Maybe start a thread in the software section if you can't figure that out, sounds extremely annoying!
Posted Thu 06 Jul 06 @ 1:56 am
JayKline
No problem I hope it helps!
But yea the crashing is not cool.
My specs are
amd 2300+
1 gig of ram
M-audio Delta 44 sound device
2x technics sl-1200m3d
2x Ortofon dj-s cartrige and needle
vextax pmc 002xl
2x Jbl Eon 15" Speakers
1 MTX 12" home audio sub
2x VDJ TCV
But yea the crashing is not cool.
My specs are
amd 2300+
1 gig of ram
M-audio Delta 44 sound device
2x technics sl-1200m3d
2x Ortofon dj-s cartrige and needle
vextax pmc 002xl
2x Jbl Eon 15" Speakers
1 MTX 12" home audio sub
2x VDJ TCV
Posted Thu 06 Jul 06 @ 2:10 am
