1st time using Traktor Pro live & a crash. What happened?

Long time vinyl user who is transitioning to laptop djing after many years watching the developments form the sidelines.

Did my first set using Traktor Pro last night & within the first 15 minutes the tracks playing would spontaneously stop playing but could be restarted - then came the 'spinning beach ball of doom' as Traktor froze completely. Horror.

My biggest fear in going the laptop route was this exact scenario of a crash - to have this happen during the first run at it - its comical in some ways but is actually very disappointing and it does not inspire confidence at all.

During all the learning & practice phase with Traktor I never had any freeze or crashes.

I bought all NI hardware & software thinking this would be more stable than a mishmash.

My set up is:

2GHZ Intel Mac
Os X 10.6.8
Memory 8GB

Tracks on external G-Drive Mini FW drive
Traktor Pro
Kontrol X1
Audio 2 sound card


The ambient temperature was quite high in the club.

I am running 24bit AIFF's from an external drive (I refuse to play MP3's after all the work it took me to transfer the tracks from vinyl using a quality signal path).

No cables had become unplugged accidentally.

Can anyone help me to troubleshoot? I want the system to be absolutely rock solid and trustworthy.

Luckily it was a low-profile show which I chose on purpose to have a trial run using Traktor in a live setting.

Thanks people!
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Additionally: wifi was off & no other programs running, no virus scans etc. Other people ran Mac laptops (using Scratch & Live) in the same venue, same stage, same heat, same AC line with no problems.
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Latency was set at 512
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As well - it seemed that the program could not be relaunched and I had to unplug all the external devices in order to restart the entire computer - its hard to say exactly as I was quite rattled by that point.

 

What power surge protection were you utilising?

 

None - straight into the house power. Thanks for the reply!

What is a recommended surge protector for a Traktor set up?

Just been looking through some other Traktor crash issues discussed here and on the web. I see that my Bluetooth was on, weekly software updates active and screen saver set to 15 minutes - 15 minutes was right around the time my meltdown took place. Does anyone think this could have been the culprit?

It would be nice in the Traktor manual if there were a list of performance items to tweak in order to limit problems and increase stability such as turning off wifi, bluetooth, screensavers etc.

(Apologies if this is the case & this information is to be found in the manual somewhere!)

 

What kind of Traktor version do you use? Couldn't find it in your post (maybe I'm blind ) ?

Some things that you should disable / kill / didn't have on during playing with traktor are mentioned here , but only in german. Those things normally don't get traktor to freeze (in my opinion), they are more for some kind of optimization (latency).

 

I just use a standard power-surge power strip from an electrical store. I've seen & had power surges kill systems before (I played at a bar and every time they turned the lights down in the evening - power spike).

On Mac, I use a program called Caffeine which stops the Mac going to sleep/screensavers etc. I don't turn wifi or bluetooth off.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.

The version of Traktor Pro I'm using is 2.0.3

The above link to the German language system optimization tips - these are for Windows systems only.

What are the things that get Traktor to freeze? (things to avoid).

It would be great if NI would publish system optimization tips to avoid performance issues (such as crashes, freezing etc) in the furnished literature.

I like the idea of some kind of small APC / uninterruptable power supply, line conditioner, or power bar line filter/surge protector - this would indeed seem to be a must for using the laptop system in unpredictable situations such as in a music venue.

Many years ago I worked with a band using electronics, sequencers etc (non laptop) on concert tours and all of our chronic problems with reliability of the electronics (glitches, crashes etc) were solved by running them on a big APC - BackUPS battery/line stabilizer.
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Thanks for the tip on this: http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/
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I do have to wonder if my beachball moment was caused by going into screensaver mode as the setting was on 15 minutes & that was probably around time the problems occurred after booting up.

 

I've had traktor constantly freezing on me for the last month or two (I'm new to traktor as well, although not new to djing), but I've got it fixed now. My solution was to tweak out the audio settings such as the sample rate and refresh rate. I opened my audio 10's settings and did test runs until there were no more big red cuts coming in on the test drive. I also updated my drivers and it was at that point, along with the latency tweaking, that everything was done and I could actually dj with the gear.

So I suggest, make sure you have the most up to date drivers, and go into your soundcard's audio settings and test it by setting your refresh rate, etc. to the max values and the minimum values. Thats how I got that problem fixed.

 

Here's the latest - I spun last night at a private party using the aforementioned system & everything was going great for about an hour when the sound cut out & Traktor froze / beachballed. I had to reboot the computer. I kept going and had at least 5 or 6 crashes before we called it a night. I filled in the gaps during the crashes using my buddy's Virtual DJ set up on another Mac laptop (this was rock solid) which was sitting nearby (!). Even so, the abrupt silences & changes to the other laptop tracks were a total vibe killer.

So this was in another geographic location than the prior venue where I had problems & the temperature was cold.

The crash would usually go like this - suddenly stopping & losing audio playback, not playing the track, even when loading in a new track & then very shortly afterwards the beachball. I would have to completely reboot the computer everytime as relaunching Traktor would not solve the issue.

As well, I would have to unplug the NI hardware (X1 & Audio 2) otherwise the computer would not reboot, only 'spinning' in restart mode.

At one point after restarting no waveforms would appear when loading a track & then Traktor would just crash after several attempts to load/play.

I thought there may have been a link with using knobs or FX on the X1 with the crashes but a crash happened at one point when I was talking with someone & not doing anything at all.

I set the latency to about 1216 at a certain point. I had disabled all the 'usual suspects' like screen saver, sleep mode, updates etc. I was watching the CPU meter and it was hardly registering any load.

Very disappointed to be having these problems with what is supposed to be a professional system - I do not feel confident at all to use to use it in a professional context.

I am actually currently on an International club tour, having just had a few days off, hence the private party gig.

There is absolutely no way I am going to be using Traktor on any concert dates - I will be sticking with CDJ and the cds I burned before the tour. I hedged my bets before diving completely into laptop djing by doing this tour using CD (I've just switched from vinyl) & I am glad about that as it would have been terrible having these devastating crashes & issues before larger paying audiences (!), not to mention being career & reputation damaging.

Does anyone have any ideas on what to do because I am really at a loss here. Thank you!
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I'll be playing in Toronto tonight on a package tour with the Mad Professor at the Great Hall - not using Traktor (!).

http://www.sumantics.org/wp/2011/09...mad-professor-twilight-circus-sept-24th-2011/

 

Could this be your external hard drive who's acting funny with surounding bass?

Are you using an external PSU for your hard-drive?

How about your USB HUB? Powered or not?

 

Thanks for the reply!

I'm wondering about the external HD myself as a possible 'problem vector' & the next step is going to be transferring the tracks over & running from the MBP internal HD only and see if the crashes continue to manifest.

I was under the impression that the most stable way to laptop DJ was use an external HD for the audio tracks, but perhaps this is not the case anymore.

I am using a 500G G-Drive mini going directly in to the MBP FW 800 bus.

Interesting point about bass vibrations but I don't think this is an issue in this case as bass levels were not powerful, being situated at some distance from a small PA.

I am not using a USB hub for the NI hardware or anything - the X1 controller and the Audio 2 card each are plugged into their own dedicated USB port on the MBP.

I am amazed by the problems I have been experiencing - to me it is very shocking to buy one of the top professional dj software platforms (bundled with the X1) and find it to be unusable!

There must be a reason for this though & I am still committed to troubleshooting and trying to get things rock solid. Ok so the next step is to eliminate the external HD from the equation. We shall see!

 

I use an external drive myself and never got problem with vibration, but I always use a foam underneath.. i'm fussy

I think it may happen with some hdd, not on other. Mine use external power-supply and eSATA port.

Itisn't any specific MAC thingy working or could be affected by vibration? This Seems to remember me something I saw somewhere about some Motion Sensor... not sure of it.

Anyways, Keep us posted

 

Set up in the party space this afternoon, ran Traktor. Ran audio files from the external HD. Tweaked knobs and effects like mad with the X1. Raised latency up above 2000. Went well for about an hr or so whereupon the now 'usual' crash happened : audio drop out, then inability to play newly loaded tracks, then no waveforms at all, then the beachball & needing to restart the MBP, removing all externals. This actually happened while I was not doing anything & remarking to my buddy that all seemed to be going 'so far so good'. We could see the lights were active on the HD during the crash as if it were spinning / trying to read. So, now we are going to copy the audio files to the MBP and run them from the internal drive.
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So interestingly the audio file transfer from the external to the internal drive got hung up several times & I had to unplug the external G-Drive in order to dismount the drive. I moved the FW800 cable to the next FW port and the transfer worked with no issues.

Perhaps there is then some issue with this external HD and the problem does not lie with Traktor / NI.

To be continued!

 

Interesting...

 

while this is a long shot, it could be a variety of things not necessarily pertaining to traktor. I've recently had an issue with a MBP after upgrading ram, things would randomly crash, then it got to a point where I thought the HDD failed. turned out the ram went bad. Another thing, if it takes a while for this to occur, is your laptop heating up badly during? do you normally use that laptop for extended periods of time w/o using traktor?

 

be interested to know if your problems are resolved by not using the external hard drive.

As you are running a mac i believe you wouldnt suffer the usal favourites on a pc.

I play all my tunes on internal drive which is also an SSD drive and never had an issue.

Some had drives such as the WD have a sleep function which could cause issues.

Easy test though, try the internal drives.
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also is that g drive mini a desktop HDD because this will not have any vibration prevention like laptop hard drives.

 

Some very interesting news to report:

I ended up running the show last night on Traktor / the X1 / internal HD after all. This was due to some things encountered at the club & also after further reflection on what seemed to be the first serious clue as to what might be amiss (the external HD getting hung up during the file transfers). I dove in and took a calculated risk, but as a safety measure I had a track ready to go in the CDJ player.

Guess what - no problems at all!

Traktor (and the X1) performed flawlessly & it was a killer gig, one of those 'can't fail' nights, which is perfect to significantly reduce and reframe the memory of the prior nightmare experiences.

Btw - The bass frequencies were extreme at the gig as the set up was right by a line of subs. Rock solid. No issues of any kind. A whole long set of earthshaking bass.

So it would appear in this case that the issues were caused by the external HD - possibly a defective drive or FW port.

An interesting learning experience about troubleshooting as well, since I had tunnel vision in thinking the problem had to lie with the software and didn't consider the external HD in the equation.

So, sorry that I ever doubted you Traktor & NI !

Thanks to everyone who pitched in on this thread. Until further notice, it seems the case is closed on this one.

My thinking is now 'recalibrated' back to how it was before which is that laptop djing using Traktor & hardware interfaces / controllers is definitely the way forward for me & that things for djs are inevitably going to move further in this direction in the future with whatever platform people decide to use.

I wish you all the very best!

 

That's good news, glad you have it sorted now!

Welcome aboard captain

 

Good outcome. Well Done. Just goes to show that a little bit of fault finding can go a long way.

 

Ive been using Traktor pro along side the NS6 for a couple of months but when I first got it, it kept crashing on me. Thankfully only at home. I soon discovered it was the usb3 port in the HP dv7 laptop I'm using. From the moment I changed the port and reinstalled Traktor it's been as stable as a m...f...
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