What am I doing Wrong? (Sync & Tempo)

Questions
1

Man, I LOVE DJay. I’m using version 5.2.4 on iOS (iPhone 14 Pro). I use two Technics 1200 MK5s for my vinyl. Denon X1850 Prime mixer. I love the DVS and the stems and so much more. Great stuff. And I’ve played a couple gigs that went off perfectly - really great.

But a lot of times when I’m at home practicing, I run into some goofy problems and I’m scared to death that this will happen at a gig - I have a double header next week and this is killing me.

Most frustrating relate to tempo and sync.

  1. A track is playing on Deck 1. Sync is OFF. I get a track all set up and looping on Deck 2 - beat-matched by ear and all set to go. Same tempo. Then I hit SYNC on deck 2, just to keep it locked in for a nice long transition without worrying about it drifting. Sometimes - way too often - the tempos of both tracks start going all over the place. Deck one will go DOWN by like 3-7 BPM, which is just insane. Deck 1 shouldn’t move AT ALL, if I am syncing Deck 2 to deck 1 - right?? God, that sucks when that happens. Suddenly the PLAYING (master channel) track just drops in tempo like 5 bpm. You can hear it and you can see the BPM ticking down like a plane in a nosedive. What a disaster. And deck 2 was already at the right speed. Should have been as easy match. What’s going on here?

  2. Besides that - sometimes - basically the same setup, I get them beatmatched, I have a loop going, they are synced, it’s all good. I start to fade up deck 2, and the the sync just falls apart. Deck 2 is going all up and down, hunting for a match or something, just making an utter disaster of the mix. Sometimes Deck to starts playing backwards during this! Not often, but it has happened more than once. These are all electronically-produced tracks by the way. Perfect grids. No live drummers. And I keep my needles VERY clean. I pick the lint off the needle and brush the vinyl after EVERY transition. I know that dirty needles causes a bunch of problems, but I have figured that out and all good now.

So what is going on?? It’s a total deal killer and so frustrating. Often… this doesn’t happen. But way too often it does.

I feel like I have no real knowledge of which deck is the MASTER deck, and it doesn’t seem to matter either way, because at any point either one of them can change the tempo of the other - even after they are well matched and just cruising. In fact… once I hade SYNC totally OFF on both decks… I dropped the needle on deck 2 and deck 1 synced to it anyway! Swear to god. I watched it happen, it changed by like 4BPM in response to deck 2 starting playing. Feels like it’s all very willy-nilly and not under my control as the user.

• SYNC TYPE is BPM and Beats
• RESUME SYNC AFTER… is ON
• RESET TEMPO WHEN TURNING SYNC OFF is OFF
• TEMPO RANGE is 16%

What else can I tell you? Any insights?

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2

I gotta reply to my own problem here. Seems much better (so far, after just 10 minutes of trying this) when I turn “RESUME SYNC AFTER…” to OFF.

Does that sound like it would make sense to anyone? Is this a known thing? It is detecting slight anomalies in the TT speeds and turning sync OFF and then turning it back ON again - causing “hunting” and unexpected results with which deck is the master?

I did a little experiment, turned this feature off and I can say I’m much happier (so far, small data set). I noticed that sometimes - with this setting ON, SYNC just turns itself off for seemingly no reason" (I know there is some reason, but it is not apparent). I intentionally bumped one of my TTs and that did it too. What is it detecting? What triggers it to turn SYNC of by itself… like what OTHER things? Maybe it has something to do with that. Moving the TT’s pitch fader doesn’t do it. But bumping the table does.

The settings list it as RESUME SYNC AFTER PAUSE, SCRATCH or CUE JUMP and I can verify that all of these actions (and lifting the needle, etc) do indeed turn SYNC off when this setting is OFF. And the don’t when it is ON. Maybe this is at the heart of the matter…

3

One more note on this… EITHER tempo fader will change the tempo of BOTH decks, when sync is on… so I’m not sure that there is ever really a master deck. Expect maybe when you first turn it on. That does seem to only adjust the slave deck.

I read this…

And I get it. That makes sense as to how I also agree it should work.

But don’t you think that the changing the speed of the TT on the slave deck would just turn off sync? Seems like only the master tempo should affect the other one, and not the other way around. Or is that just how it is meant to work and that’s a feature, not a bug?

2 Likes
5

I have noticed this problem also in djay Pro 5.0. It also happens when use a controller. It seems the Ai beatgridding function is trying to rescan the track when syncing 2 tracks??? That throws the two tracks off Sync. I have mentioned this malfunction in the forum. I was hoping the last update would address this problem. Lol, it didn’t. It’s not helping Algoriddim’s djay pro software gain any ground on the other dj platforms. This unresolved glitch will definitely turn me away from djay pro.

6

I’ve also encountered a lot of trouble using sync. Sometimes the BPM slows down—you can hear it—but the numbers don’t change (at least on the Mac version). Whenever I notice that happening, I just switch the sync off immediately, which helps. Then I troubleshoot.

However, it’s happened so many times during gigs that I constantly keep an eye on it now. It also seems to be an issue only with some of the tracks. After I switch up a few songs, I turn sync on again, and it usually works fine. This has been a mystery to me for a few months now

1 Like
7

Hi @DavidScottCole,

Thanks for sharing your question in the community, and sorry to see that djay hasn’t been behaving as you intend it to.

Our engineering team is currently looking into this thread for more clarity, and we should have some specific questions for you soon regarding these issues, especially the tempo fluctuation.

Looking forward to assisting you further!

8

I think this is the dynamic beatgrids. If you do not need them for older songs with variable tempo, switch your beat grids to static. I had crazy things happening because Djay was defaulting to dynamic grids and then adjusting the speed to tempo changes that did not exist in the song. To add to the pain, you do not see any change, because Djay thinks it is holding the tempo stable while shifting the speed of the track, so your tempo indicator won’t move.

Don’t trust the hive mind, lol. A.I.is faf.

9

Yes,
Turn off the dynamic in settings.
You can alway turn on dynamic per song while messing with the songs bpm.

10

Also,
Try disconnecting hardware and try without it connected?

11

People seem to assume that I have dynamic beat-detection turned on, but I do not. I never have. I almost never play music by a live drummer and that sort of “automatic” thing makes me suspicious, in general, so I never use features like that on anything. So that’s not what’s going on. Thanks for the suggestions though.

I just played the best gig of my life last night, the energy was through the roof, the place was crowded - on a Thursday - it was incredible - I’m still riding the high right now, it was “one of those nights”. DJay (via DVS) performed nearly-perfectly for me. There was one moment of goofy, scrambled-sounding playback but I resolved it quickly by switching that deck in INTERNAL mode, picking up the needle, brushing it clean (it was too dark to SEE if it was dirty or not, but that’s what I did), brushing my record and getting back to it (doing that was a pro tip from a friend, recently). It was only a problem for like 3 seconds and probably nobody noticed but me. Or if they did, they quickly forgot.

There was also just one of those moments where the tempo synced down by 2 or 3 BPM unexpectedly. I think it MIGHT be explainable but it’s kinda complicated to describe and I don’t have time to type it out right now. Either way, I noticed it so fast, I got it back up to tempo before you could even hear the difference. I’ll try to write that up later and see if the team feels it’s working as it should or if it’s something weird in the software. Right now, I’m on the fence about that.

At the moment, I can get through a gig without problems by:

• Doing my beat-matching by ear and/or looking at the BPM readout, get the incoming track like 99% beat matched and - only then - using sync just to keep them locked up as I transition. If I do that, I don’t think the sync/tempo runs around.

• Make sure to always re-center the tempo fader to zero on the TTs in between tracks.

• Obsessively brush my records and keep my needles clean and free of fuzz and hair - literally cleaning both record and the stylus after EVERY transition.

• Switch to INTERNAL mode temporarily to fix any fuzz balls that get through my defenses.

Sync going rogue and scrambled playback are two different issues, but with those habits, I think I can make it work. So far so good.

1 Like
12

I find the same thing with both Serato & Rekordbox. If you sync too large of a distance, you’re more likely to get sync dropouts or drifting wonk. The only software that I’ve never had an issue with this is Traktor, but I left Traktor because every update was turfing my entire collection’s beat grids, creating a stupid amount of fine tuning work. So, every program has its pain. Overall, Serato is the most stable, but they sure like to lock their platform down. I own a full licence, and can’t connect any hardware that is not “certified” (Serato speak for ransom).

13

Is DJay really the only App that has software across most platforms?

14

Counting mobile, I think so.

Edit: I didn’t even think about the VR stuff…

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