9 hour S4 set - almost no problems.

[JSM]

Once a year I play a set on the beach here in Barcelona. I normally use vinyl but as you can imagine thats a lot of crates to take (as well as the kit to play them).

I recently bought an S4 from DJTT and I put it through its paces on Saturday.

Setting up was a breeze, I have a well rehersed routing to get the kit assembled and powered up in less than 15 mins, the S4 and the computer reduces this time to around 1 min !

The weather was HOT! but the S4 and the XPS17 had absolutley no problems, it was on the beach and the sand was blowing around - S4/XPS again no problems.

The XPS has a small problem with the reflections in the bright sunlight, but a pair of polorising sunglasses fixed that.

The Spec.

XPS17 L701x - 16GB DDR3, 2x500XT momentus hybrid HDD., i7 740Q, windows 7x64 (29 process installaion). USB3.

S4 / TSP 2.0.3 ...... 48Khz / 64 samples

2 x 1210 MK5 - TSP TCV (red - makes no difference except they look nice)


I have a lot of RAM, so 4 Gb was dedicated to TEMP/reports ... setup as if it was an SSD system. Also the music files were stored on 1 Tb USB WD passport as WAV or MP3-320, although a few times i did pick out a few older MP3's as requests and no-one even noticed that a 128bit MP3 was playing ..


In the 9 hours continuous spot (long tracks for toilet breaks) there were only two problems and it was exactly the same problem.

Unfortunetly i can't remember the exact button sequence, but whilst in browse mode and loading the next track in deck B, i managed to kill the sound completely and stop track A playing. No it's not being loaded into the wrong deck ... further investigation will be required and i thinks it's a workflow thing rather than a fault.

Due to my knowing the event organisers very well, i managed to blame the PA and the heat for the outage .... but i'll need to remember to avoid the same sequence again. It's something i noticed a few weeks back in the club, but fortunately the loop recorder and microphone were active at the time, so no deal breaker ...

If anyone else recognises the error/fault/bug described let me know, thanks.


So well done NI and DJTT ... the S4 outlived last years DJM800 in the sunshine and sands of Barcelona

[kooper1980]

Glad too hear it went well. Seems like an odd button sequence that makes the sound cut out. Not experienced that myself but i'll keep my eye out for it. Sounds like a sweet gig you've got!!

And that is A LOT of RAM!!

[JonathanBlake]

well done NI and DJTT ... the S4 outlived last years DJM800 in the sunshine and sands of Barcelona

I love the smell of burning Napalm on a Barcelona beach - great story.

[dj stifffy]

and theres me with my lil 2 gb of ram ha

[JSM]

I love the smell of burning Napalm on a Barcelona beach - great story.

I've had two DJM800's fail on me over the years, one due to heat on the beach, the other for no reason than it was a weekday gig, I guess it only likes weekends ...

[JSM]

Glad too hear it went well. Seems like an odd button sequence that makes the sound cut out. Not experienced that myself but i'll keep my eye out for it. Sounds like a sweet gig you've got!!

And that is A LOT of RAM!!

I think it's just a sequence i need to avoid, as I said I can't remember the exact sequence or I would post the sequence as a "bug" or a "gotcha" ..

As for the RAM, well it was cheap and the laptop has the capacity, so I thought why not ...but the question is ... has it made a difference ?

It allows me to to run a RAMDrive (which i did some testing with a TSP installation) .... it loads instantly, has almost no HD activity - but I didn't get a warm fuzzy feeling form it, so i put TSP back on the HD, which is fast enough anyway).

Yes it's a sweet gig, but beleive it or not it's the one gig i do for free !

Every year without fail, because I love the event so much and they let me play anything (within reason) I want to play. At the end of every gig i do for them, i have the same offer / refusal of payment ....it's like a game now ..:eek:

[Waterfree]

Have you checked with your keyboard mapping? i did a gig once and tried to search for a song starting on "s", and that is the stop and play for deck B... So i stoped deck B because i thought i had sellected the search field... I have disabled the keyboard when im using the s4 with tp2. never use the mapping for it anyways.

So W and S is play and stop for deck A and B. Guess this could be what you were pressing? Know few others done the same

[JSM]

Have you checked with your keyboard mapping? i did a gig once and tried to search for a song starting on "s", and that is the stop and play for deck B... So i stoped deck B because i thought i had sellected the search field... I have disabled the keyboard when im using the s4 with tp2. never use the mapping for it anyways.

So W and S is play and stop for deck A and B. Guess this could be what you were pressing? Know few others done the same

Now that does sound right .... good point about deleting the keyboard mapping, it's something i've done prevoiusly when using my own "toys" and their overlapping on certain control codes ..

I kept an eye on it yesterday during another daytime gig, and i couldn't replicate it ... perhaps becuase I was being very careful with button selections.

All in all it's a great controller (i would love to see a MK2 version) that has a few "gotchas" in the workflow ...well they got me anyway ..

Mark

[JSM]

Well I spoke too soon, not the issue I was describing. When i thought about it, i very rarely use the keyboard and when i stopped the tracks dead it was whilst "loading" the track into a stopped deck, then I normally delete the first cue point (they are almost always wrong), set a new cue, cue and play ... perhaps i hit another button inside "browse mode" that created this "effect" of stopping the playing deck ...

Obviously the workaround is to come out of browse mode when i have found the track, and load from deck mode.

I will report back if I ever get to the bottom of it ...

[Waterfree]

Check if your settings is set to load tracks even if its playing? My settings are now when i try to load a track it has to be stoped first. Or else there it has to be a bug i guess:/ Tell how it goes=)