Final Solution To Audio Drop Outs Crackles Etc Using Traktor S4

True. Just bought a S4, flightcase and external volumecontroller for boothcontrol for a shitload of money and now they come up with this. Doesn't change the fact that the S4 is still an awesome device, but looking at the fact that the S4 doesn't even work properly for a very large number of people, I have serious doubts about NI's priorities...

 

Oh shut up. If you got ****ed over so much give your gear back and be done with it. Can't hear this stupid whining anymore. Besides you already stated that NI does not care for this thread so why bother ? Bombard the spport with mails or phone the company, but spare us this.

If the S4 was half as bad as you guys make it look here, nobody would have bought it. And it really isn't. Some computers have problems with it BIG ****ING DEAL. You try to code a stable drivers for all the billions of PC hardware configurations out there, i want to see that, cause **** like this happens absolutely everywhere.

Hell my freaking grafic card cost almsost as much as the S4 and still only 50% of all games work decently with it. Drivers, yes, the big downside of PCs, that has existed for as long as ****ing pcs existed. Sure it works better on Macs who have a completely homogenous layout ! You weren't aware of that ? Really ?

 

Hahaha, well said! My feelings excatly.

Hey guys, I've found a GUARANTEED 3-step solution to this ongoing problem!

1. Sell your nasty Windows PC
2. Buy a Mac and install Traktor
3. Stop whinging and live happily ever after!

Peace!

 

So? The fact that you're practically burning your money or that the company that produces your graphics card doesn't take care of it's aftersales doesn't mean that NI shouldn't produce proper drivers.

That would be a pretty lame excuse, wouldn't it? If NI didn't want to invest that much time into analysing the PC-market and developing proper drivers for it, they shouldn't have accepted the money from it's PC-customers.

So why DID they do that you ask? Well, because Apple's market share is simply laughable in comparison to the market share of Windows based PC's, so they would've sold about ten percent of the S4's that they've sold now, PC-market included.

So you want to hear what I've had enough of? Hardware builders that have absolutely no problem with accepting hard earned cash off of customers, but haven't got the common decency to solve problems that may arise AFTER they've accepted that money. No: NI isn't alone in this, but that's just no excuse.

And another thing I've had enough of: Mac-douches who keep shouting all the time "You should've bought a Mac! Told you so!". I've seen tons of Macs in my lifetime, worked with them, serviced them and I wouldn't want one if I got it for free: they plain suck IMHO. The workflow sucks, the support sucks and most of all the crowd of arrogant, selfcentered douches surrounding it sucks. Apple: just a shiny pile of ****.

Now I'm not saying NI sucks, absolutely not. But I think they'd best listen to their customers, otherwise those customers start disappearing quite quickly, in a matter of mere years.

 

Hey lets not get off track here. I don't want this thread to get locked because a couple monkeys decided to stir up trouble. They really have no reason to post in this thread other than boredom. This thread has helped people with their driver issues and more importantly raised awareness to those looking to buy. Lets keep this going, but in the right direction.

 

I posted twice about the steps i did to try to remedy this issue so others could read it but it got moderated and hasnt showed yet...i suppose all these useless comments like "buy a mac" are far greater value than what to actually do to fix the problem.

If you dont have a problem with your S2/S4 great but dont say there isn't a problem and it has been going on since the release of the S4.
N.I. released a beta driver but it fixed nothing.

My point is i have a hardware unit made by N.I. that doesnt play nice with windows, so sound quality is sub par. The solution for most is disable wifi/multicore support
These 2 steps remove base functions of the software do they not?
Its like buying a car to be told you have to remove the seatbelt/airbags before you can actually drive the car.
I stopped submitting tickets because it goes nowhere....

 

First of all you don't know anything about what NI is trying to do. Secondly, you are ignoring the fact that drivers have dependancies, that they have a base to work with which may or may not be faulty to start with on a pc.

And no, people do not disappear cause, you know, other then in this thread you really don't find a lot of bad news about the S4 or S2, just a lot of seemingly happy people on youtube and a lot of really good reviews for it.

Now, i'm pretty sure that NI like any other company has priorities. As long as there aren't enough people complaining about this the priority is still low, now matter how much you try to raise awareness or not. This is mainly because all the people that have no problems with the S4 have no reason to tell anyone anything but that the S4 is a great piece of hardware.

But something else altogether:

Something actually constructive to do would be to start comparing systems, for heaven sakes !

Instead of ranting against people who say that it works for them the first thing you guys should have done is ask them for their configuration. Whining won't get you anywhere as long as most people can simply use the damn thing.

But hell, how about you all just whine some more and yell at NI i'm sure that'll get you somewhere.

 

This thread seems to have derailed somewhat. I don't want to enter the debate but I did post about problems a while back.

Turns out it was my nVidia drivers or DirectX. They were causing audio glitches when I scrolled through a playlist, or when I switched off full screen mode. I installed new driver and DirectX and those problems disappeared, but my laptop started shutting down instantaneously mid-mix. What I think was happening is the new nVidia drivers run my GPU much hotter and my laptop chassis wasn't designed for them. NI support were pretty good helping me.

As a footnote, I found that disabling ACPI Battery did something permanent to my Win7 that re-enabling didn't bring back - the power control reappeared in my system tray but it no longer warns or hibernates at critical battery level, (as it is set up to do). (This is not the cause of the shutdowns as I was plugged in, but might be implicated in cooling - no idea.)

 

not everybody has endless amount of cash flowing out ther arse,mate..

 

My specs:

Case: Lian Li PC-A71F
PSU: Nexus RK-1K 1000Watt
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5
CPU: Intel Core i7 860
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Memory: 4x 2GB OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666 Platinum Edition
Graphics card: Galaxy GeForce GTX 275
Soundcard: E-MU 1212M PCI
Keyboard: Logitech Wave Keyboard
Mouse 1: Mionix NAOS 5000
Mouse 2: Logitech LS1 Laser Mouse
MIDI keyboard: Novation ReMote SL 61
HDD1: 1x Intel Postville X25-M X25-M SSDSA2MH080G2C 80GB SSD
HDD2: 1x Hitachi DeskStar T7K HDT725050VLA360 500GB 7200RPM
HDD3: 1x Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200RPM
HDD4+5: 2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200RPM (RAID1)
HDD6+7: 2x Samsung EcoGreen F3EG HD203WI 2TB 5400RPM (RAID1)
OS: Windows 7 X64 Ultimate (US) + SP1

No WIFI, unused hardware disabled, powerscheduling maxed out for top performance, antivirus (MS Security Essentials) disabled while running Traktor, no background programs except Windows services and drivers running, 6GB RAM free while idling and tried the S4 on every USB-port on my system. Results of DPC Latency Checker and LatencyMon show no problems at all. Experimented with audio latency in Traktor: no change.

So briefly: Traktor's running on a machine here, that outranks lots of servers spec wise, but still glitches every now and then.

 

..... or better still, sell your nasty NI interface. Buy something that actually works on a PC. (like most other cheap and nasty soundcards can).

I still consider NI responsible for their product not working rather than looking for something else to blame because they can't fix it.

 

This is my Desktop workstation:

http://www.sysprofile.de/id144362

Running glitch free. Newest drivers for bios, chipset, sound, grafics installed. I might like to add that it runs glitch free even with running visualiser in the background that max out my gpu and tear into the cpu or complex video software in the background.

The s4 runs 512 sample process buffer, when running heavy load apps in the background, 256 normally.
---

Of course it's up to them but it will NEVER work on all systems. Claiming that there is a single piece of hardware out there that runs glitch free on all systems is a lie. Nothing else. It's in the nature of PC systems to have these problems, since every single one of them is completely different.

Stop spreading these lies.

 

first off, let me say bassantix ... you said it quite proper

and secondly there is a bit of confusion here

alot of you have garbage laptops and it doesnt help at all... thats why you get scratchy sound and stuff...

that happens with any controller/soundcard under traktor if the cpu is redlining.....

but my asus G74SX-3DE i7 2630 laptop the cpu is low like u see a little tick when its running

but it still cuts out and the fact is the drivers/sound card in this device is junk

you cant tell me with 12GB of ram and a SSD that its my computer

I hook my mixvibes umix up and it doesnt skip a beat...

these crooks wont aknowledge that there is a major issue with the hardware/software here

buddy hooking up a USB sound card proves there is something wrong...

we paid 1000$ for this unit, I expect it to work properly

all it does its skip and cut out randomly, it is a giant hunk of **** and its embarrassing

I like the traktor software, but im not a apple fanboy... I will be going back to timecoded vinyl this is rediculas and makes me look like a fkn noob.

they make decent phones and thats about it, im not going to get a macbook for $3000

NI is screwing us and its time they do something about it.

yes I have wifi off
yes I have even turned off multicore

and all you mac peeps, Ive heard it skip on mac as well....

its not as bad, its once in a while...

but the fact is the drivers for the chipset there pushing out is crap, they need to fire somebody

I for one will be getting a different product.... the VCI 400 is a way way better unit.

 

owen420 and others complaining in such a generalized way, I think you are only partially right, and believe me I've been through problems with my setup and equal blinding fury!

The things that can cause problems are not just the number of instructions your CPU can handle per second or your RAM or HDD. USB contention is unrelated to any of this, and places high demands on your laptop's fundamental architecture, which means Windows and all its drivers have to be exactly right. ACPI interrupt contention too, and so on. The graphics are more demanding of your GPU than some games are, (given they can't take advantage of 3D, transparency, physics, movement, etc GPU acceleration), so again the myriad of settings involved need to be spot on.

Traktor and especially the S4 is extremely demanding of your laptop in all sorts of ways. I have finally got it working fine, and I have wi-fi, ACPI, multicore, etc on - they were all red herrings and make no difference. My laptop also does lots of non-audio-related heavy stuff with lots of non-audio software and settings.

You are right to say that Traktor is extremely and intimately sensitive to your laptop and every aspect of its architecture and setup, but you are wrong to say this is a bug. That the on-board sound cards are so demanding is poor, but not a bug. If you have paid for Traktor, contact support and together you will be able to get it working, eventually. The flip side of this, where I agree with you and why I think most of the anger arises, is that if you just want a straightforward DJ rig that is up and running without needing to spend serious time getting everything set up precisely right, (or alternatively, getting a sound engineer to do it for you), Traktor isn't for you. It is aimed at the top of the market.

Had I realized this I would probably have gone elsewhere, as I don't need the sophistication, but having put in the effort, (took me 4 months), I'm very happy.

 

Most of these (problematic) systems run fine once you remove the NI audio hardware from the equation. Traktor software runs like a charm even through crappy onboard laptop soundcards.

... 4 months?... and you're happy? Good for you.

 

I said that the sound cards lean on the CPUs, however removing them didn't solve my problem because it was more complex. To solve the problem you need to go beyond CPU GHz and get specific. In my case I think the demanding soundcards increased the temperature which aggravated an over-heating GPU due to updated nVidia drivers. Only when I sussed this did I crack the problem.

This seems sarcastic, apologies if I'm reading it wrong, but you'll get nowhere using this forum as a soapbox. I'm not saying sound cards should demand so much from the CPU, but Traktor is moving fast, currently being redeveloped to be more Ableton-like. The S4 works if you get it set up OK, it would be lovely if they streamlined the soundcard drivers, but Traktor's success depends on keeping ahead of the lower budget competition, by focussing on advanced functionality for people with sound engineers, high spec laptops, or plenty of patience. No amount of anger can shift that logic. I do think that they might reduce piracy if they got the S2 working better on low spec machines, but that's an easy call for me to make, as I'm not the one facing limited development resources, an incredibly competitive budget-level market - budget DJ software is incredibly sophisticated - and rampant piracy in that market.

 

NI technical support have always been happy to help me work through my problems, (several), and they have persisted until I'm satisfied, so I'm not sure this is fair on NI. (They would have to refund if the product is fundamentally unfit for its purpose.)

This 5-7% should contact technical support.

 

yes I understand what your saying, my point was most of the people complaining have junk systems and thats why there is alot of confusion

I myself have a 2000$ Asus G74-3DE

it has a 1080P 120HZ 3D monitor (w/ nvidia 3D glasses), i7 2630M @ 2ghz, nVidia GTX 560, 12GB Kingston ram, intel 510 series 120GB SSD and I still experance these issues..

I also have a Intel Q9450 2.6Ghz Desktop w/ ASUS P5Q Turbo Motherboard, 8GB kingston ram, same SSD and get the same results

this also occurs on my friends Asus G73SX and my other friends HP which are both i7...

like I personally dont think there is a windows PC out there that will do it...

it seems its all fanboyism for mac peeps... NI seems to take care of them even thow they sell the product as fully Windows supported


I have tried different settings with support... it is a joke! they say its something to do with my system... even with a clean legit install of windows and nothing on it but traktor.

its funny how my mixvibes umix (which was like 300$ and has a simaler cirris logic sound chipset) never skips a beat ever... yet the S4 I cant go through one session without some type of glitch..

its embarrasing, enough said

if you run windows like the rest of the world, don't buy this product, wait for the next version/revision

traktor is a good piece of software... S4 not so good....

maybe the S2 is proper... have yet to try it

ill stick to the audio 8

take care folks!