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Why this Sound Distortion?

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  • November 10, 2014 at 6:48 am #2086271
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    All things being equal (I had the same problem with my Denon SC2900s and Mixvibes a while ago), the only thing that really could cause distortion like that, without a hardware cause, is latency really. My Denons would play nicely for 5 minutes or half an hour and then one or both would start distorting like crazy (awful sound). I ended up setting a higher latency factor and the problem was solved. So it pays to experiment with that.

    Question: did the tracks sound distorted in your headphones in cue mode? If that is the case, you can discount anything happening post-fader (like the PA).

    November 10, 2014 at 6:50 am #2086281
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Something else to test, when you experience distortion, hook up your iPhone or iPod or any other mp3 player to the aux/line input of the controller and run some music through the standalone side of things. This too will help pinpoint the source of the distortion. If it’s the PA it will sound distorted too, if it’s the controller (hardware) it wil sound distorted too (you can try it on one of the channels that you use for the Serato decks normally too, just to exclude them), if it’s the PC/Serato, it will sound fine.

    November 10, 2014 at 1:30 pm #2086551
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    2 things you should check:

    IS the master in the software set to high?
    Is the software gain set too high? (check the software VU meter at the top of the Serato window)
    Also there is a red dot beside the software VU meter, if this is in the red then your software gain is too high.

    Additionally what could be the problem is the input of the house mixer or pre-amp of the PA system. Those usually have a switch from Line to phono (record decks) and are mostly on phono (record decks) as most CDJs also can output at phono level.
    Also some PA systems cannot handle to high of an input so you might have to throttle down the master out of your SX and compensate on the PA.

    November 10, 2014 at 5:06 pm #2086641
    Ricky Figueroa
    Participant

    Terry and Vintage, these are great suggestions and at the same time very useful tips for me and everyone else reading this thread.

    I thought about connecting my iPhone or iPad (the latter I always bring as backup together with the iDJ Pro), but for the first time ever I forgot to bring along an RCA “Y” cable.

    I will check the settings in Serato that Terry suggested.

    I must say that the music did <not> sound distorted on my headphones, only on the speakers. For this event the sound guy had to set up a pair of mains+subs in the main room, and a third speaker in a room next door. I went to check both and the music sounded very distorted in both rooms.

    I have another event with this sound guy coming up in a few weeks (time still TBA), so I will make sure we do a better sound check. We <did> do a sound check in the afternoon and the sound was fine even at high volume on my SX.

    Actually, now that I remember, the sound was fine at the beginning of the event. It got distorted only in the second half, after the speeches. Before the speeches I had to play chill out\lounge\jazz, and in the second half it was House, Disco and Funk, so it was in the second half when I had to pump up the volume and discovered this issue.

    So, could another possibility be that, say, the SX got “hot” and began distorting the sound? That would be weird because, like I said, I’ve used it before in many events since last winter with no problems at all, and those gigs lasted like six hours.

    Finally, I haven’t had a chance to do this yet, but tonight I’m going to re-connect the SX to my Rokit monitors at home and check it there in the afternoon before the neighbors come back from work so I can pump up the volume more than usual and will play for a couple of hours to see what happens. I’ll report the results later on.

    Thanks again for your great veterans’ feedback in this forum.

    November 11, 2014 at 8:47 am #2086761
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    My guess would be more in the line of: He did something to the mix when he brought in the Mics for the speeches and never reverted the settings that influenced your settings. PA and mixing PA sounds together is a delicate thing and different channel settings can do stuff. For example he could have cranked the master in some way and re-did some gain settings that overcompressed your channels -> distortion.
    So my guess after telling me this is that your signal path was fine.
    The SX getting hot is VERY unlikely unless it is a faulty unit and that should actually sound distorted all the time.
    I played for 2 hours with an SX with a 2000W stage light aimed at the SX and it did fine for 2 hours straight (I had to get my laptop out of range though hehe).

    November 14, 2014 at 8:27 am #2089421
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Any update?

    November 25, 2014 at 12:15 am #2097461
    dannyboyex@gmail.com
    Participant

    This a great trouble shooting thread

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