I’m using a MacBook Air M5 running the latest version of macOS (26.6.2), djay Pro 5.6.8, and a Pioneer DJ DDJ-FLX4.
Here’s how I observed the problem:
During the song, press the Loop In button. Then, during the last 4 beats before closing the loop, activate Neural Mix (for example, by switching to Acapella), and then close the loop.
In this situation, the loop always loses sync and randomly drifts out of time. The issue doesn’t seem to occur if Neural Mix is engaged at least 8 beats before closing the loop.
Hi @SIMSU_84, thanks for the setup details and issue description. Since this sounds repeatable, can you please capture and share a short screen recording of the issue to help clarify what’s happening? Thanks!
Thanks for the video @SIMSU_84. Can you please use the screen recording function on your Mac, Shift + Command + 5, instead so the entire screen is captured and easy to see?
it’s neuralmix - that elephant is heavy to kickstart (choking the M5)
It has been our reality for ages (intel mac guys) - we thought you guys were safe.
@SIMSU_84 On my i7 mac, if I engage a loop intro for the incoming track prior to a cross-fader FX transition that involves neuralMix, it nearly always goes into a train-wreck. Same thing happens if I were on automix and I engage a sweet loop for the incoming track: for as long as the transition involves some kind of neuralmix, 90% of the time it’s a train-wreck
It happened to me during a live set: I set the loop in point, then I thought, “Oh wow, if I remove the vocals now before setting the loop out, it’ll sound like an extended version of the song.” Then I found myself with the track completely drifting out of sync, and you can imagine the look on the crowd’s faces with such a mess. That’s why I’m reporting it.
Hi again @SIMSU_84, thanks for the screen recording - this is very helpful. I was able to reproduce this on my M4 MBAir, running macOS 26.6.2 and djay 5.6.8 and no DJ controller connected.
A few things that would help before I hand this over our engineering team for further review:
Which Quantize snap value do you have selected? 1/16, 1/4, 1 beat, and so on
Do you get the same result if you turn Quantize off entirely?
Do you remember whether this happened on an earlier version of djay, or is 5.6.8 the first time you’ve hit it?
In the meantime, the safest way around this is to perform a quick Neural Mix action when you first load the song onto a deck. Something like a quick NM EQ adjustment or a quick NM Mute On/Off action. This forces djay to analyze the Neural Mix parts of the track and should eliminate this latency/jump you’re experiencing.
Sorry about the live set. That’s a rough way to find a bug. Thanks for taking the time to write it up properly and capturing the videos. This made it a lot easier to pin down and reproduce on my end.
yes, same problem with quantize off, even with sync engaged, the track drifts and then after few seconds return on sync
to be honest i have no idea
Unfortunately i feel that this workaround doesn’t works, i’ve already tried to engage neural mix before performing the loop and that doesn’t solve the problem.
Hi again @SIMSU_84, thanks for answering my questions. If it still happens with Quantize switched off, then quantization likely isn’t part of the issue here. This fits your video, where the deck lands about a quarter of a beat out. With a 1 beat snap value, a quantize problem should have put you a full beat off. So we can set that whole area aside.
The drifting and then returning to sync is worth digging into as well. I did see the gap start closing again in your recording, so you’re not imagining. Does it snap back suddenly for you, or does it gradually creep back into place? Maybe you can capture another screen recording with sync enabled?
One thing I want to make sure I’ve got straight. In your first post you mentioned that engaging Neural Mix at least 8 beats before closing the loop worked fine, and that a second attempt straight afterwards behaved itself. Now you’re saying engaging NM beforehand doesn’t help. Have you found that the 8 beat thing works sometimes but not reliably, or does it never actually work and the first attempts just happened to look OK? I’d rather not hand engineering a workaround that doesn’t hold up. Thanks again for your help narrowing this down!
The version that introduced NM crossfader FX (at least for me that’s when I first noted this continuum of behaviours)
AFTER recovering from the momentary pause(drift), it “Snaps” to any one of the ensuing random beats in track (depending on sync setting), NOT “snaps back” because, sonically speaking the intended sync/phrasing is lost by the time it recovers. Practically, it’s still a train-wreck as the loop is already transplanted downstream by the duration of the pause. Look at it like missing to cue on the downbeat, and cueing instead on beat 2 or 3 or 4 (pick any) - no matter how perfectly synced the BPM and beat are, the phrasing is already off…
YES/NO, - the narrower the gap, the longer the momentary pause (drifting),
- the wider the gap, the shorter the drift
- the less powerful the CPU, the longer the drift (at all gaps)
- a 8beat gap did not work on my intel i7 MBP 2019, but was near-fine on a buddy’s M4.
- instead a 16beat gap was near-fine on me (of course that’s such a long loop if you add the tail prior to engaging NM - my typical loops are 4, 8, very rarely 16.
WORKS all the time - no issues looping after that.
Hi @Armigo, thanks for jumping in, and sorry for the confusion, those questions were actually aimed at @SIMSU_84. Not a problem though, your answers are useful even if your NM issue is slightly different from SIMSU_84’s. I appreciate the additional input here!
Thanks for the quick follow up @SIMSU_84. I need to pin one thing down before I take this further, because there’s a conflict I can’t resolve from here.
Earlier you told me you’d already tried engaging Neural Mix before setting the loop and that it didn’t help. Armigo says doing it beforehand works every time for him. Those can’t both be right, so which is it on your machine? If you have a couple of minutes to try it again deliberately, that would settle it.
The other thing is the pause. Armigo describes a momentary stop, and then when it recovers you’ve lost the phrasing entirely, like cueing on beat 3 instead of the downbeat. I went through your video and I don’t see a stop, both decks keep moving smoothly the whole way through, and you end up a bit under a quarter of a beat out rather than a full beat. But your recording has no audio, so it’s entirely possible there’s a brief gap in the sound.
So the one thing that would help more than anything is another recording, same sequence, but with the audio captured this time. In the Shift Command 5 panel, click Options and set Microphone to whatever you use for system audio. What I’m listening for is if there’s an actual gap in the sound at the moment the loop closes, and how far off the loop lands.
Depending on what that shows, this is either one issue that hits harder on slower machines, or it’s two separate ones. Right now I can’t tell, and I’d rather not send engineering something I’ve guessed at. Thanks!
Hi, thanks for your reply. Please take a look at the two videos below. In this case, it seems that engaging Neural Mix before setting the loop solves the problem. However, I can say that in other situations this has not been the case, so I believe the behavior is somewhat unpredictable.
Hi @SIMSU_84, these were really useful, thank you. The audio made a big difference.
First thing, there’s no audio dropout. I checked both recordings for gaps in the sound and there’s nothing, the audio runs continuously straight through the loop in both clips.
Second thing, in the clip where it works, you actually engaged Neural Mix later relative to the loop, not earlier. About 0.8 beats before, versus 1.8 beats in the one that fails. So the amount of lead time doesn’t look like what’s driving it.
What is different is this. In the working clip you muted the drums on that deck about eleven seconds earlier and then unmuted them, so Neural Mix had already been used on that deck before you set the loop. In the other clip, that vocal mute is the very first time Neural Mix touches that deck in the whole recording.
Which is exactly what you said back in your first post, that a second run of the same thing behaves itself. I think that’s the real pattern, and it also explains why it feels random to you. Nothing on screen tells you whether a deck is in that state or not.
Could you please try one thing to test it? Load a fresh track, before touching Neural Mix at all, do your Loop In and Loop Out normally. Then briefly mute and unmute any stem on that same deck, reload nothing, and do another loop the same way. If the first one drifts and the second one doesn’t, that pretty much confirms it.
First load of the track > press loop in > engage Neural Mix > press loop out = song drifting, out of time.
Track already loaded > Doing the same operation AFTER the first fail = works, no drift.
First load of the track > Engaging Neural Mix randomly during playback > press loop in > engage Neural Mix > press loop out = hit or miss. Sometimes there is no drift, other times the drift bug is there. Yesterday I tried it several times and I can say that I experienced the bug around 80% of the time. My feeling (please take this with a grain of salt, as it is just a feeling) is that it gets worse if the procedure is done further into the track.
Hope this can help make everything clear and simple.
Regarding your request, I will try next week. It will be a super busy weekend for me.
