Erratic pitch behaviour with DVS

Bug Reports
1
  • Device model (e.g. 2020 iPad Air 4th Gen): P17 Gen2
  • Version of operating system (e.g. macOS 14.4.1): Win 10 22H2
  • Version of djay (e.g. 5.1.2): The “about” section doesn’t show the build - 5-something! Perhaps I should file a separate bug for this lol
  • Hardware/controllers used (e.g. Reloop Mixon 8 Pro): Xone:4D with DVS using SL-DZ1200 and Serato Gen1 Timecode CDs. I know, none of this old stuff is supported but this is essentially an analogue setup and any DVS setup would face similar problem.

Summary of the issue:

The software pitch doesn’t honour the DVS pitch.
Upon loading a new track, the deck will always synch the BPM, even when SYNC is disabled. In my case, I can’t even toggle SYNC when DVS is active.
Once the track is loaded, the pitch will move to synch with the other side. Moving the pitch fader in the DVS device will not override the current setting, instead it will act as if the current setting is the centre.

Example:

A track is playing at 120 BPM.
A 100 BPM track is loaded on the other deck
The pitch will automatically set to +20%
The “zero point” of the DVS is now +20% - centering it will play at 120 BPM and not at the track’s original 100 BPM.

This happens even if the DVS mode is in absolute, which defeats the concept of having the DVS as a “hard” transport control.

Most other DVS applications will either honour the DVS pitch setting at all times, or, if it detects a movement, “latch” the physical fader with the software fader, with a common zero point (zero is 0% pitch in both locations).

To aggravate, currently the software pitch fader doesn’t move when the hardware fader moves on the DVS device, though the playing BPM window right above the fader will indicate the playing BPM correctly.

Thank you for your attention.

2

One more detail here:

When one deck is playing in relative mode at 0% pitch and a new track is loaded on the opposite, non playing deck, the playing deck will suddenly change the pitch to pickup the new song’s tempo. Wild!

3

If I’m allowed a suggestion here:

-fix the “SYNC” button behaviour first, it currently won’t latch or highlight in DVS mode, but it does “hold” even though it won’t highlight. Should be toggle or one-time push-to-sync-once as usual

-if not in sync, simply follow the hardware pitch setting (abstracted from the DVS signal), just like a normal record would play

-if in sync, match the BPM upon load, but if a change in pitch comes from the DVS signal, set the software pitch to that ABSOLUTE value, not relative (as it is now)

4

Hi @palestina, thanks for the detailed explanation of the issue. Can you please try to capture a video of this, upload it to your Google Drive/Dropbox, enable sharing permissions, and share a link to the video here? This will help to communicate the issue to the engineering team so they can try to replicate it. Thanks!

6

I’ll give it a shot over the weekend, thanks!

1 Like
7

Alright, so turns out we don’t even need anything complicated to reproduce this.

The problem seems simple - when a deck is in DVS mode, the SYNC won’t highlight, but the button still works in a latching (toggle) way.

So, I have a MIDI button mapped for synch function, when I push it, I can still enable/disable sync on DVS mode, but the GUI will not change the button appearance regardless of the sync mode state.

Simple! Just use DVS on a deck and try switching sync on and off.

So what happened with the pitch is sync was on, despite the button showing it as off, so, of course, the deck tried to match the time with the other deck that was the sync master at the time.

8

Thanks for the additional info @palestina. As I don’t have a DVS setup to test this on, I’ll have to forward this to the engineering team for review. Again, a video of this would be helpful if possible. Thanks!

10

Hi again @palestina, I spoke with the engineering team:

  1. Please note the software pitch fader and the pitch fader on the turntable are separate.
  2. As you correctly identified, the BPM number correctly reflects the BPM resulting from both. These two are separate by design: the software pitch fader is what SYNC uses to match tempos (since it has no way to move the pitch fader on your physical turntable).
  3. We decided to make this change visible, whereas some other apps SYNC changes the tempo without a way for you to see what it does. When you deactivate SYNC the software pitch fader stays where it is so you can keep mixing without interruption and tempo changes.
  4. If you want to reset it, hold the SYNC button down for two seconds.