Final Solution To Audio Drop Outs Crackles Etc Using Traktor S4

it's the drivers!it's the drivers!it's the drivers!

 

My system is a Medion Akoya P6613 with a Pentium T4200 (dual core 2GHz) with 4GB RAM, a 256MB Nvidia Geforce G105M GPU, and a standard hard disk, so reasonably high spec but not as high as some here experiencing problems, and my system is now working with the S4 perfectly. ACPI, wi-fi, DVD, network, etc enabled, Windows pared down, free MS anti-virus or avast. Check drivers, DirectX, errant processes, buffering, etc.

 

dell xps m1210
t7600 processor
4gb ram
SSD

windows stripped down as much as humanly possible, everything disabled, spent ages and ages configuring it

running my s2 absolutely fine, was running 2 decks, all samples, loops and multiple fx last night and not 1 single problem

latencymon showing all green with the odd spike, but the spike is still green

 

You shouldn't have to do this. The reality is Apple are stringent on independantly testing software and drivers, the money must have run out in the budget and a decision was made in terms of Windows drivers. "Some Windows PCs will be affected but not all, a big part of our business is Apple computers, we have to go to market" is a decision I imagaine happened.

We all know it's possible to make hardware and drivers that work with Windows 7, no problem without turning processes off. Luckily I got an email about the future of Traktor, I imagine other customers did, that involved mostly flashing lights. Working drivers? Maybe Serato.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGxd1Cm2_Sc"]Sneak Peek At The Future Of TRAKTOR - YouTube[/ame]

 

I think a lot of people have huge misconceptions about Apple's market share. Some facts:

So I think it's a lot more interesting to develop decent drivers for Windows than for OSX, as about 80% of all customers will be running Windows, taking into account the fact that producers and digital DJ's (in other words: computer techn00bs) will choose to run on a Mac more often.

 

Pretty unimpressed with NI. Wrote a large message explaining my problems in great detail and they won't post it. It's been under review for over 3 days now.

 

Dude. It's not an NI problem. The problem is that your post needs to be reviewed by a moderator. We moderators don't work for NI. We have jobs to go to. I have a "normal" job plus I DJ every week. Moderating gets done in our spare time and depending on how much time we have to spare sometimes things take a little longer. I have approved your post now.

 

Ah my bad, didn't realize that the mods weren't working NI but I'm still unimpressed because the driver problem is from NI. Thanks for approving the post though!

 

Sold it.

Feel like a weight has been lifted off my back.

Don't regret it at all

Do what I did. This will be my final post. I bid you all a fair well


Focker..... out!

 

Thanks for sparing us the trouble.

 

This guy spent a grand with NI ... waded patiently through all the 'hypothetical fix theories', waited patiently for an NI 'fix' (that never happened) .... and now someone is taking the piss because finally, his only resort is to sell it.

A year after release, S4 fails to impress as a PC user. If it's working for you on PC, great ... many others have not been so lucky.

 

Sure it works great for you, doesn't it?

 

Wow. This thread is STILL alive? That in itself is impressive.

I'm one of the few who fixed his audio latency problems on Windows that were caused by drivers. Optimization can be done - and agreeing with scamo - it appears that NI has moved on.

I'll say it again because apparently peeps haven't read the first 10-15 pages of info that identified the "final solution" to the latency issues. The problem lies in drivers that most vendors won't optimize. This problem usually lies with newer hardware as older hardware tends to have revised drivers created.

Although it appears that way, this is NOT a NI problem or even a Microsoft problem. FWIW, Apple has the same problems when new systems (with new chipsets) appear.

So where does that leave everyone with problems? Look for revised drivers of video interfaces, chipset, and network interfaces. If revised and optimized drivers don't exist, there won't be a solution for you with the hardware you have.

One more thing. B*tching at mods is stupid. They are (AFAIK) volunteers who work hard to make the community positive and enable feedback to NI. Count Zero, I'd buy you a beer if I could.

-KLH

 

Who's bitching at mods? A lot of people here are bitching at NI and that's their right, after paying a shitload of money for a product that isn't working correctly for them (not anyone else; them).

And although I didn't see any bitching at mods, you're right: they're not the ones to blame. But on the other hand: that mistake is easily made ofcourse. The first one that appears to be working at the company to blame is going to take the punches; always works like that.

 

Of course ... despite the fact most users can run any other soundcard with no problems at all (same system, same drivers). Nothing to do with NI, obviously.

 

The final solution for this problem is to go with a company that cares about their end users.
the S2 is supposed to be a mid range controller for novice to advanced users that want to get into digital djing on a budget if you will...$600 is not really that cheap so you expect things to work.
I run ableton live with komplete using an axiom 49 on the same laptop i run traktor on and had no problems at all.
Now i have tried everything in this thread and even more on multiple systems and the problem is persistent.
N.I. doesnt seem to care, they moved on to traktor 2.5 more features and more bugs for US the end user to work out. And to ad insult to injury they drop the price on the S2 and have now sent me a voucher for $150 to purchase another controller for my S2 "soon to be announced".....

Get a grip i will not give them another cent of my money and what am i gonna do with another controller if the main unit i run doesn't work properly?
Sorry N.I. but if i am gonna buy an add on controller for my S2 it will be a midi fighter.

 

I'd be very, very interested to see how many S4's and S2's were actually sold, then compare it to the number of people complaining here and then you'll find that this problem can only be found rarely. On top of that, as i stated before, these problems appear throughout the scale on every piece of hardware you can imagine, from soundcars to gpu's and even freaking ram modules can cause you trouble, cause like KLH saids, nobody keeps their drivers up to date anymore, and i mean the hardware manufactures. This may or may not include NI, but asking them to fix an issue like this is like asking them to search for a needle in a freaking haystack.

And yes, again, it works great for me on 4-5 performances every week up to 4 or 5 hours each. Why ? I don't have a clue, but it seems my system is simply able to handle it or the drivers are just right. It also works as my sound interface in Ableton btw and on a fairly decent latency at that.

Paying a lot of money for a piece of hardware and adding it to what could essentially be a random pile of other hardware means you ALWAYS take a risk, no matter what that hardware is. NI can try to help fix obvious problems and they can try to fix the drivers, but i honestly don't think you can even imagine what kind of task that is. Now i don't think the pressure should be released from NI, as they need to keep on developing their drivers, but still don't act like the S4 is any less great then it actually is just because it does not work on your computer. Either by a new computer or sell the S4 and buy a different controller, there's lots of great ones out there that work with Traktor and most of the good ones are in the same price range.

All said, what you're doing here is bitching at users and yes i got pissy at someone telling everyone to sell their S4 because that's plainly stupid, nothing else. Try a big manufacturer like nviedia or ati that produces products just as costy as NI's if you want a good laugh. Their products, while costing the same, cause ALL kinds of weird malfunctions, up to the point were your entire system is not functional anymore period and sure as hell you have the same threads there, yet .... they still make great products.
---

Ah yes, DJ Tech tools, i love them. I even ordered my S4 there. But while i agree with the midifighter being an awesome controller, i'm still pretty pissed at them for delaying my order for two damn weeks(!) without telling me (yay, missed two gigs.) only to then tell me that their stupid bag was out of order. Not the kind of service i would have expected for giving them more then a thousand bucks, either.

 

+1

Same system, same machine: S4 soundcard: 20ms latency and still getting some buffer under rounds, M-audio delta (a soundcard with more than 10 years) 6.5ms of latency working perfectly.

 

[1] This is not a problem isolated to a few users moaning on a message board. It's not reliable with windows 7 drivers. End of story. This is an audio card driver issue, nothing to do with the rest of the controller.

[2] There's no excuses for not having this working going to market. Other manufacturers have done it. I've been in a position of trying various cards when I changed from Vista to Win 7. Some manufacturers are ALWAYS reliable, some aren't.

[3] Outrageous. Buy a new computer? Buy another controller? All this takes time and money, and besides is not a solution at all. The S4 is not cheap and to find out after you buy it you have to go and buy a Mac to ensure it works is a joke.

The way some defenders of NI say it on here, it's a great peice of kit which we should give lots of slack that it has 'niggles'. These niggles prevent it from working for a lot of people. Not so much niggles. It's not exactly a rocket science type of kit, it's an audio card essentially that they have failed to make work with Win7. I've said it before, they shouldn't be allowed to claim this works with windows 7. If this was an issue with Mac drivers, it'd never be approved.

I'm keeping an eye on here as I am eternally hopeful NI get their act together and issue working win7 drivers. I presently use the controller with a seperate focusrite audio card, that has never, ever, ever clicked or popped even without doing any of the so called fixes on here. [4] The price I pay for looking at the board is people popping up now again for whom the kit worked straight off (good for you) and telling people for whom the kit didn't work to stop moaning.

I won't be posting again. I won't be buying an NI controller again.

 

A solution that worked for me

Hey guys

So, the following solution worked for me. I've had drop-outs for almost a year and now, after having tested this solution extensively, I'm pretty sure that the problem is over. I hope it solves your problems too. But follow the steps at your own risk, I am not a computer specialist and will not take any responsibility for any damage your system takes or any problems it can cause.

So, my computer is an alienware m11x first generation (core 2 duo, 4gb, pretty standard old-fashion), and my controller is the S4. I'm using the latest Traktor driver and Windows 7 Home Premium (fully... uh... windows-updated, if you like).

Step 1: Open the System Configuration (Control Panel, click to see icons as opposed to categories, Administrative Tools and then System Configuration). I actually keep it pinned on my taskbar.

Step 2: On the general tab, click on "Selective startup" and then uncheck "Load system services" and "Load startup items".

Step 3: Select the "Boot" tab. There, click on "Advanced options" and then in "PCI Lock".

Step 4: Click on the "Services" tab. Almost everything or everything should be unchecked. Check "Application Virtualization Client", "Application Virtualization Service", "NIHardwareService" and "Power". I also check the antivirus stuff because I get nervous without it, but it's up to you. Performance wise I think it's better to leave the antivirus services unchecked.

Step 5: Click "Ok". It will take some 20 seconds to process it all and will ask you to reboot the computer. Do it (but take a picture of this otherwise you won't have the next steps when the computer is rebooting, of course).

Step 6: When the computer is starting, in the summary screen, click F2 or whatever is your key to enter in the bios configuration.

Step 7: It will vary from computer to computer, but you have to find on these screens where you can disable parts of the hardware. I disable: "Intel Speed Step", "Wired Network", "Wireless Network", "Bluetooth Receiver", "High Definition Sound" and "USB Emulation". Don't (do NOT) disable the AHCI if you have and the IEEE 1394. Also disable any discrete graphics cards you have on your computer.

Step 8: Save and exit (F10 in my computer, might be different in yours).

Step 9: Your computer will start in a very basic mode, very quickly. Launch LatencyMon (search it up on google and install it, it's free), click on the play button and leave it running for 1-2 minutes. Don't ask me why, but when I run LatencyMon I get no dropouts, if I don't I get dropouts.

Step 10: Stop the LatencyMon. Close it. Done. Plug your Kontrol S4 and launch Traktor.

I don't know why it works or if it will work for you, but for me it completely got rid of dropouts. And I have tried everything (really) before, except for buying a Mac.

When you are done, if your computer is not dedicated to Traktor, click on System Configuration again, click on "Normal Startup" and restart. Go to the bios and re-enable everything you disabled.

Honestly, I know it's a long list of steps, but after you do that 5 times, you will be done before I can have a beer. If your computer is dedicated, just leave it like that and remember to launch LatencyMon every time you turn it on. But don't forget to update all your stuff from time to time, if you want.

These dropouts of half a second once every 10-20 minutes have haunted me for a long time. I'm glad they are over now. I hope this solution helps you too.

Cheers
Alessandro