djay Pro + Yosemite / El Capitan = High Idle CPU + Energy Impact

Old Forum djay Pro for Mac
1

I’ve been having few issues with djay Pro for some time, and upgrading to El Capitan made it bad enough that I need to bring this up here.

First, here are my specs (and I doubt that my MacBook Pro is underpowered):
OS Version: 10.11
MacBook Pro (Retina 13-inch, Early 2015)
Processor: 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Audio device:
Fiio Alpen E17 (http://smile.amazon.com/E17-Alpen-Por…)

I use Fiio to output to the main speakers/headset, and the Built-in Output for prequeing.

After I shut almost all of the apps down, I start djay Pro, and here’s what I get:
Idle CPU: 20-30%
Idle Energy Impact: 400~

To give a comparison, djay’s info:
Idle CPU: < 9%
Idle Energy Impact: 15-20

Why is the djay Pro using that much resources when I’m doing nothing? What is it doing in the background that’s occupying that much CPU and Energy?

I had one major issue when I had djay Pro + Yosemite, where the audio would freeze/skip (as some other have noticed). That seemed to have been caused by me simply logging into Spotify, and keeping it enabled. I usually turn off my wi-fi, so I’m wondering if that issue was caused by Spotify integration (even though I was not using it!). I simply logged out of it (since I don’t use it anyway), and that problem seemed to have gone away.

Then I decided to upgrade my OS to El Capitan, and that seems to have been a mistake. I haven’t seen any major freeze/skip like what I used to see (presumably because I logged out of Spotify). However, I started to notice that very often (every 1-2 songs), the song would get a bit staticky. It’s not bad as the skipping issue, but it’s very noticeable, to the point where I’m not sure if I should even use djay Pro to DJ my next few gigs.

What is going on? Shouldn’t the idle CPU be pretty much close to 0? What is djay Pro doing that (even) djay is not doing?

2

my numark ns6 doesnt even connect or respond to DJAY 2 current version. I think i made a mistake upgrading to El Capitan. I hope there is a fix soon or some kind of compatibilty.

3

I had some issues like this with audio drop out and it had problems recognizing Numark Controller . Just restarting the app did not solve it. Unplug and plug in controller did not prevent it, But a reboot did. It kind of leads me to believe there is a memory leak in a usb driver or something. This is all speculation. It seems to only be a problem if I am in app for an extended period. Maybe it is the numark not Djay.

4

This person needs to be be banned for spamming

5

If you launch activity monitor where does it say your CPU is spending its time?

6

PLEASE BAN this PERSON!! Major abuse of the forum. Joined a few weeks ago. OFF TOPIC!

7

I personally Djay Pro use to make us play my inexperienced friends ’ cause much simple as software. For professional use Rekordbox DJ use with DVS.

8

Here’s some info about it, if you haven’t come across it yet: http://community.numark.com/numark/to…

9

I’ve been experimenting with different configurations, and the winning config is for me to use Apple’s native soundcard as my main output, and use the USB soundcard for prequeing. I’d rather not do that because my soundcard is quite a bit better in terms of what I can control. However, I’ll probably do that until djay Pro figures out how to not idle at 20%.

I’ve also tried my soundcard with Spotify (not from within djay Pro, but the Spotify app), and it works fine. Even when I do things within djay Pro (separately) that would normally cause issues, Spotify is outputting the sound fine.

My conclusion is that djay Pro is either incompatible with my soundcard and/or it’s not able to work well with it because djay Pro seems to be idling and wasting CPU power doing other stuff (which I still don’t know what it’s doing idling at 20%!).

10

Oh, also another observation. When I used my Fiio soundcard as my main output, the audio would get staticky when I’m loading a song into the other turntable. If the song is new where djay Pro hasn’t had the chance to analyze the BPM and the soundwave yet, the chance of the USB soundcard outputting a statickly sound increases quite a bit. It seems like djay Pro is just a CPU hog and is unable to do things well.

11

I had a short gig yesterday (2.5 hours), and regardless of all of the experiments that I’ve done, coming up with what I thought was a safe experiment, I hit an issue where the audio skips. Super disappointed.

I see that djay Pro released a minor update, claiming to have worked on stability issues. I have another gig tonight. I’m contemplating using the new update, but unsure about it. djay Pro still idles at 20%. I’ll try few things to see if it seems better, but I’m not looking forward to the results.

I have not received any responses (as far as I know) from Algoriddim, either. From the lack of response in the forums and via email, I feel like they don’t really care about the feedback that we are providing. Maybe they are busy. But if so, at least let me know that you’re looking into something.

I’m going to start looking around for another DJ app since djay Pro seems to not work well for me, and they seem to not care enough to respond to any of my questions/posts.

12

My last two gigs were too short to really tell, but I went back to use djay, and it worked out well. It’s not as full-featured as djay Pro, but at least it’s been reliable so far. I don’t recall having issues like what I’m having with djay Pro, so I’ll continue to use that for now.

However, I’ll be looking for another DJ app meanwhile. The biggest thing that I’m disappointed in is Algoriddim’s lack of responding to the community having issues.

13

Here’s a quick update.

I have the following setup:

  • OSX 10.11.1
  • djay Pro - the latest version
  • Griffin Tech’s audio split cable
  • DO NOT SHOW THE WAVEFORM (that goes from side to side for a song)

I did two 3-hour sets and the audio did not skip.
I did a 3-hour set again yesterday but I was showing the waveform as an experiment and the audio stopped coming out for about 10 seconds. I’m going to keep the waveform hidden. Maybe that’s the main issue.

14

Support has gotten better towards the end of my djay Pro usage, but since I’ve come to believe that the issues that I’ve been facing weren’t going to be resolved in the near future (especially because Algoriddim didn’t seem to consider my issues as well as what others are hitting as an urgent thing to address), I decided to stop using it.

Of what I’ve investigated, VirtualDJ is what I landed on. It’s free (for now, and tho it says that it’s ad-supported, I’ve never seen a single ad), and it works really well. Tho it does a lot more than what I will ever need, and the UI is nowhere as beautiful as djay Pro’s UI, I’ve used VirtualDJ for the past 4-5 months or so successfully without any audio issues. I’ve started to recommend VirtualDJ to my friends as well.

15

That’s a bummer that the problem still came up. I had great responses for a short while from a support guy named Adrian, but it didn’t solve the problem. I haven’t had a chance to investigate on my system the suggestions you’ve sent yet but will let you know the outcome. Good luck tonight! Hopefully we can find a solution or I too will be looking for a different app.

16

Hello,

I had the same issue with ultimate high CPU rates using day pro. Changing the resolution to 1280x800 improved battery life.

So does day pro has sync cap ? I seems it is trying to update screen as many times it can per second. Also i used the iPad / android version and that does a far better job with battery power.

17

Still frustrating that this issue is not resolved or even noticed by the developers. My suggestion is to limit the screen updates to 30 frames. Maybe to waveforms are generated each frame instead of being stored.

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18

+1

19

I’ve also had a few of these issues, especially the high loading CPU levels. Interesting that the waveform view is causing some problems. I’ve read in a couple of other threads that screen resolution was also having a impact on performance.

Maybe a current workaround is not to go full screen and not to have the waveform view.

As Koichi has stated, the current erratic product support is disappointing. With the amount of feedback here, it’s obvious that a lot of people enjoy (and have paid) for the software. Myself being one, but I can’t keep having my regular sets semi crashing.

That being said, I have developed a fairly thick skin for live drop outs and skipping. So, at least I’ve gotten over the dead air fear.

20

Hey Koichi, thanks for the reply. I’m doing regular and fairly long DJ sets as well (3 hours +) and pretty sure the issues that the software is having are related to the heavy CPU consumption.

I’ll go peep the Virtual DJ site. I really like the look and ease of use with Djay but the intermittent updates and support is becoming a bit of an issue. Kicker is I just grabbed a Mixtour controller about 3 weeks ago and it’s specific to Djay. Although I’m pretty sure it can be mapped to several software apps.

Haven’t totally given up on Djay but yea, while the issues are continuing, I may go with something a little more stable for the meantime.

Thanks again,
Rio