finally a true new high end mixer from pioneer ("the Xone killer") DJM V-10

[SWS Productions]

Def let us know please.

I have been using nothing but Ashly processors for about 10 years now.. I have a Protea 24.24m in one system and a 4.24c in another at the moment... and these were old when I got them,
these are only 24/48 whereas yea, 96K is common these days.. but I'm still really happy with their sound and if I was going to put money into my system right now.. sure, I'd love a newer processor but I don't feel like the processor is the main thing holding the system back.. these are still pro sounding pieces.

We're on the same page. If it has Ashly on it, it sounds good. I've used Ashly stuff for 40 years. Currently have Protea 4.8SP's and 3.6SP's in systems and they sound great, as do the dbx Driverack PA, PA+ & PA2's in various systems. Also have also a couple of dbx Driverack VENU360's that sound great.

I have a small studio system setup for basic kick back listening that this PC feeds into and a workstation that I'm putting together for the DJ music library. That's probably where I'll setup the DJ controllers for initial testing. It sounds pretty decent, good enough for reference use. 4-way setup that's active tri-amped. Pics attached FYI.

As stated, this thread has me curious now about the DJ controllers in a good way - interested. I prefer the Prime 4 over the DDJ-SX3 I have, just for the overall layout and features + display which is nice. Nothing more, and I haven't used either yet. I may like the DDJ in the end better, no idea.

I'll buy used Ashly gear without hesitation. Their service department is great too, used them once for a repair to an analog crossover.

[Reticuli]

I think the biggest issue I have with the V10 is the channel filters on dry-wet knobs rather than frequency rotation, shared type selection, and the lack of being able to double up on filters on the same channel. The Send section below should have had the HP available on it, while the filter knob above for LP should have been inverted for frequency.

It sounds like the ADC architecture might be different than prior digital DJMs that previously had gain/trim pots prior to the converter stage and now may be fixed gain like most other brands do it on digital. Note how the V10 is missing the NXS2 and Tour DJMs' "Clip" LEDs?

Be very careful about how you evaluate digital gear. Bit depth and sampling frequency doesn't really mean much. I've heard 16bit digital mix bus processing that gives 96bit fixed point quadruple precision stuff a run for its money, and I've heard 44.1khz ones that can competently represent ADC inputs compared to much higher sampling frequency ones. Then there's the issue of how well your downstream gear is going to behave having higher frequencies actually present. Amps and tweeters, in particular, tend to perform better when not fed ultrasonics. When you get into sample rate conversion, things start getting even weirder.

***

in fact according to what I gathered Pioneer mixers had terrible headroom (SNR and THD, ie. distortion/clipping became an issue above 0dB and many people ran them at +18dB)

The digital DJMs don't hit 0dBFS until you hit the double red or "Clip" LED on them, which, yes, is about 18dB above the 0dBVu nominal average level point on the meters. If you're appropriately bouncing around that nominal point to get your average level around there and peaks past (dynamic tracks will peak higher), you'll never get anywhere near the brick wall even with effects and filters layered on top.

***

We ran my mixer (Xone 62) hot one evening at a gig (me + others). Absolutely red max everything. The thing purred because full analogue, everyone using the mixer couldn't believe it to flat out a mixer without distortion. Back in the day the DJM 1000 would not hold a candle to that. On paper the Xone does a mix to output of +23 dB...

That's such a goofy thing to think highly of.

***

Hopefully, the Prime 4 and DDJ-SX3 I have will sound good and have enough headroom to get it done. It was easy back in the analog days.

Unfortunately Denon Prime's playback baseline audio processing is still not what it could be. Dense content like tech trance, progressive, industrial, and shoegazer really suffer. Part of it seems to be their realtime SRC stuff, since everything gets way oversampled and then plinked to 96khz for the SPDIFs. Pioneers actually process and digitally output on their players at the rate of the loaded track. Hopefully InMusic improves it soon. It's got like 100X the intermodulation distortion of Pioneer, some crazy nonlinear harmonics being generated, and also a nasty band of ultrasonic grunge up top after an early roll-off. There's a limiter also present for the pitch and key change, but the processing to my ears seems to overall cause audible midrange compression even though InMusic claimed the limiter was to deal with high-frequency transients increasing in amplitude with pitch and key change. They really need to implement a 6dB pad on the players' audio processing so the limiter can be dropped and either get better interpolative SRC (like from the X1700) or, better yet, just have the rate on the layer change to match the track.

The X1800 mixer is also a touch dry overall, sounds slightly scooped out and mid-fi in the midrange even though it tests flat (probably a phasing thing), and seems to not have the best low-level resolution. The mixer tests well with RMAA and TrueRTA, does sound cohesive, doesn't have digital stridency to my ears, and has quite good low-end compared to (at least) pre-V10 Pioneers, though. The X1800 also has some neat features like an isolator bypass when at 12 o'clock on all the tone knobs for a channel. As with the players' sound issues, the mixers' seems also to be processing-related and not ADC or DAC stuff. So again, firmware changes I assume can improve them.

[Alex Murphy]

That's such a goofy thing to think highly of.

Thank you, that is such a kind comment to make. We thought it was unusual to hear a machine pushed that hard with no perceived distortion. When everyone on that day wanted loud and clear, as far as I am concerned, job done.

[light-o-matic]

\
The digital DJMs don't hit 0dBFS until you hit the double red or "Clip" LED on them, which, yes, is about 18dB above the 0dBVu nominal average level point on the meters. If you're appropriately bouncing around that nominal point to get your average level around there and peaks past (dynamic tracks will peak higher), you'll never get anywhere near the brick wall even with effects and filters layered on top.

They aren't all the same.. the DJM800, you could hit 0 dBfs pretty easily and make the mixer sound terrible.. that is to say *I* never did.. but other DJ's who played on my gear did it often. just turn up your gains and master and bam, you'll get that clip light blinking and instantly sound terrible.. I could hear it half a mile away and sometimes WOULD hear it half a mile away and have to come running to play bad cop and turn it down. But if you played with the meters at the zero mark or even as much as 6dB above, the headroom was enough. So you really had to be that kind of person who needs to see the meter hit the top of its scale... (and there was NO reason for that.. because I could make the sound system go just as loud at 0dB on the meter as I could at +10.. I can turn them up, I can turn them down.. I can make them quieter at +10 than the next guy who plays at +2, a reality that some DJ's can't seem to get their head around.).

But with the newer mixers, such as.. I have the 900NXS now.. and the headroom is much MUCH greater, you can pin the meter and it's not clipping, yet the dynamic range is still there. The increase in bit depth on the mix bus makes a huge difference there. So now, those DJs who aren't well behaved aren't clipping the mixer and I can turn them down at my amp rack and let them play with the mixer lit up like a christmas tree and they're happy.

[Windows 95]

The increase in bit depth on the mix bus makes a huge difference there. So now, those DJs who aren't well behaved aren't clipping the mixer and I can turn them down at my amp rack and let them play with the mixer lit up like a christmas tree and they're happy.

Best argument I've heard for up****** your DJM800 to a DJM900NXS. Nobody likes replacing speakers whether they are a bedroom DJ, a bar, or a mobile DJ.

[Reticuli]

Thank you, that is such a kind comment to make. We thought it was unusual to hear a machine pushed that hard with no perceived distortion. When everyone on that day wanted loud and clear, as far as I am concerned, job done.

The Xone 62 meters then aren't accurately showing you how far from clipping you are so that you can get the most out of its total dynamic range when necessary on very dynamic, sparsely-mixed less-dense tracks without actually clipping. The DJM-1000 meters, assuming your channel EQ knobs aren't turned down while you're using analog inputs, are accurate. One mixer allows people do something reckless with it and get away with it without knowing how actually close to clipping they are, while the other doesn't. Not really a laudable thing on the Xone 62 or something worth criticizing about the DJM-1000 for not being able to do.

They aren't all the same.. the DJM800, you could hit 0 dBfs pretty easily and make the mixer sound terrible.. that is to say *I* never did.. but other DJ's who played on my gear did it often. just turn up your gains and master and bam, you'll get that clip light blinking and instantly sound terrible.. I could hear it half a mile away and sometimes WOULD hear it half a mile away and have to come running to play bad cop and turn it down. But if you played with the meters at the zero mark or even as much as 6dB above, the headroom was enough. So you really had to be that kind of person who needs to see the meter hit the top of its scale... (and there was NO reason for that.. because I could make the sound system go just as loud at 0dB on the meter as I could at +10.. I can turn them up, I can turn them down.. I can make them quieter at +10 than the next guy who plays at +2, a reality that some DJ's can't seem to get their head around.).

But with the newer mixers, such as.. I have the 900NXS now.. and the headroom is much MUCH greater, you can pin the meter and it's not clipping, yet the dynamic range is still there. The increase in bit depth on the mix bus makes a huge difference there. So now, those DJs who aren't well behaved aren't clipping the mixer and I can turn them down at my amp rack and let them play with the mixer lit up like a christmas tree and they're happy.

That's because the DJM-800 DSP, while 32bit, is fixed point. Has nothing to do with the bit depth. You can turn a floating point DSP down at the master, booth, zone, aux, headphone digital volume sections and prevent actual clipping from occurring at the outputs because of all that float scaling going on in the DSP. I'm not advocating people do that and I think it’s an overrated capability in audio, but you can also do this on the Denon X1700 and Rane MP2015, among others. Float DSP math code really only became super popular and widespread because it’s now so ubiquitous and cheap to license, and that only occurred because it’s widely used in non-audio applications, too. Eventually you have to either send it digitally in fixed point or convert from digital to analog in fixed point, anyway.

On the DJM-800, double red on the channel meters is definitely clipping something even if it's just the channel. Prior to the DJM-900NXS2 and DJM-Tour in the line, you had to worry about not only that issue, but the fact that the channel meters give potentially inaccurate representations of analog input signals if your channel tone knobs are turned down since the gain/trim knobs affect the ADC input levels, the EQs are entirely digital domain, but the meters are entirely digital domain, too. Hence the reason Pioneer added "Clip" that is now independent of the meters. On the channels, "Clip" is telling you the analog input state. On the master out meter, "Clip" is basically the top second red on the DJM-900Nexus master when the master limiter is off.

Now, I'm not saying that sounding bad when clipping is all bad, either. I think mixer limiters should be off to prevent people from being tempted to crush into a look-ahead peak limiter. Clipping a digital mixer should sound bad and hopefully dissuade someone from increasing the chances of burning out your woofers. I would hope if it sounds bad, they stop doing it. Limiters only compress the signal slightly less than clipping does. The other problem with clipping on something like this is ultrasonic harmonics produced from the squaring, but most digital mixers aren’t going to be capable of producing much of those at high amplitudes, anyway. Not advocating ultrasonic clip harmonics, either, but nowadays they’re less of an issue for frying tweeters even if they come out of a mixer with other limiters and protection circuits down the chain. Granted, any additional ultrasonics you don’t need is just degrading the performance of downstream gear, like the overall performance of amps and tweeters. DJM-800 and MP-2015 don’t have master limiters, which is fine by me.

Advisable rule of thumb running levels on a DJ mixer with proper meters:

Put your master volume at its unity.

Don’t turn any other rear output knobs past that point as the master’s unity spot.

If you have a way to put the output knob unities at the knob maximum (old & new Denon DJ), do it.

Keep it out of the top meter LEDs on the channels and the master, even if you have float DSP. You don't want to clip a headphone jack summing or rear output.

Second to top meter LEDs usually encompass a big chunk of headroom, and once you're in them, you won't know how far from clipping you are, so use that as non-intentional emergency headroom. Don't intentionally go into that LED if you can help it.

On the old digital Pioneers be aware that EQs being down gives a false impression of low metering levels of analog inputs.

For fast-response dBVu meters, bounce about symmetrically around the zero point, with troughs below and peaks above about the same distance from that zero nominal average level point and you’ll never get anywhere near 18dBVu/0dBFS. Meters that are hold-only (some old Stantons) you're going to want to put at or slightly above the 0dBVu point on tracks that are very dense and compressed, so you leave headroom for tracks that need more oomph. Some Ranes use a quasi-peak metering where they have a slow response center hold section of the meter bounce with a higher response blinking peak, too. In those Ranes, you can just put that longer hold center section at 0dBVu and get a pretty consistent average loudness from track to track for normal crest factor audio material. Yes, your peaks of the top more responsive portion of the metering will vary in height.

[SWS Productions]

…..Be very careful about how you evaluate digital gear. Bit depth and sampling frequency doesn't really mean much. I've heard 16bit digital mix bus processing that gives 96bit fixed point quadruple precision stuff a run for its money, and I've heard 44.1khz ones that can competently represent ADC inputs compared to much higher sampling frequency ones. Then there's the issue of how well your downstream gear is going to behave having higher frequencies actually present. Amps and tweeters, in particular, tend to perform better when not fed ultrasonics. When you get into sample rate conversion, things start getting even weirder...…..

***

Unfortunately Denon Prime's playback baseline audio processing is still not what it could be. Dense content like tech trance, progressive, industrial, and shoegazer really suffer. Part of it seems to be their realtime SRC stuff, since everything gets way oversampled and then plinked to 96khz for the SPDIFs. Pioneers actually process and digitally output on their players at the rate of the loaded track. Hopefully InMusic improves it soon. It's got like 100X the intermodulation distortion of Pioneer, some crazy nonlinear harmonics being generated, and also a nasty band of ultrasonic grunge up top after an early roll-off. There's a limiter also present for the pitch and key change, but the processing to my ears seems to overall cause audible midrange compression even though InMusic claimed the limiter was to deal with high-frequency transients increasing in amplitude with pitch and key change. They really need to implement a 6dB pad on the players' audio processing so the limiter can be dropped and either get better interpolative SRC (like from the X1700) or, better yet, just have the rate on the layer change to match the track.....

I'm not sure I understand all this; "Dense content" and "Non-linear harmonics" are things I'm not familiar with. I have experience with digital professional class gear, I'm new to DJ controllers. For the Denon Prime 4, I'll do some bench testing as well as basic listening tests. Both analog and digital music sources. Also will do some signal generator and scope testing, compare input to output sine waveforms, run some square wave through it. Probably some transfer function testing as well. I'll check meter calibration as well reference the output.

Where was the experience with a Prime 4? Club, mobile show, showroom, demo unit? Do you own one? Someone else's unit you used? Read a review somewhere? This suggests spending some time with one: "Unfortunately Denon Prime's playback baseline audio processing is still not what it could be. Dense content like tech trance, progressive, industrial, and shoegazer really suffer".

If it's junk, out the door it goes.

[Reticuli]

I'm not sure I understand all this; "Dense content" and "Non-linear harmonics" are things I'm not familiar with. I have experience with digital professional class gear, I'm new to DJ controllers. For the Denon Prime 4, I'll do some bench testing as well as basic listening tests. Both analog and digital music sources. Also will do some signal generator and scope testing, compare input to output sine waveforms, run some square wave through it. Probably some transfer function testing as well. I'll check meter calibration as well reference the output.

I wouldn't call it junk, and it appears to be from firmware/code, not hardware for the most part, and therefore can be improved.

Linear harmonic distortion's multiplier is fixed regardless of frequency, while non-linear harmonics change their multiplier based on the frequency of the harmonic. Among the linear type, even-order harmonics (like 2x, 4x, etc) are often associated with acoustic instruments and musicality, but there are odd-order harmonics (3x, etc), too. So a second-order linear harmonic distortion with a fundamental frequency caused by a 1khz test tone would have its first harmonic at 2khz. If you were to use a pitch fader with keylock off to double this signal's speed at added 100% pitch, the fundamental would now be 2khz and the first and loudest distortion harmonic would be 4khz. In contrast, with nonlinear harmonics, you'll see the multiples stretching or compressing such that the multipliers of the distortion harmonics are actually changing.

Non-linear harmonics are easy to generate from digital signal processing, and are usually quite displeasing to the ear/brain and 'nonmusical'. Non-linear harmonic distortion is a type of intermodulation distortion. Another form of intermodulation distortion would be certain types of guitar distortion pedals or that raspy right-channel treble on a phono cartridge with poor micro-tracking, loudly-cut or dynamically-compressed highs on the record, and/or insufficient downforce. IMD in general is regarded as some of the worst-sounding distortion and far removed from 'musical' acoustic instrument harmonics.

By "dense" content I mean stuff that's not mixed sparsely. I hear the effects of the IMD and non-linear harmonics more with complicated recordings/productions rather than on, for instance, minimalist techno. I'm sure it's having an effect on everything, but it's less noticeable on some of it to my ears.

The Denon Prime mixer tests well, it just sounds a little dry and lacking low level resolution. To my ears, at 96khz there's a bit of something odd going on up top on the X1800, but the Prime 4 is only 24/48 and the X1800 doesn't exhibit this at its lower frequency sampling rates. The X1800 sounds quite good, but is, IMO, a step down from the MP2015, DB4, X1700, and even the DJM900NXS2 (minus the bloated bass on the Pioneer). It's not a bad sound on the Prime mixer, though, sort of a digital version of the old Numark DM-905 sound. Some people really hate the Prime's effects sound quality, but they don't bother me.

Regarding the Prime's Engine OS playback processing sound quality, you can see the non-linear harmonic distortion in the following video where first I play a test sweep in Traktor and then on Prime's playback:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTOWJGSkBhI

Here is another method of showing the same thing by sweeping the pitch fader:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw_EpjblFhU

Here are test waveforms, which look pretty good other than some amplitude oscillation and the fact that extreme negative pitch with keylock on can cause the keylock to temporarily malfunction with test waveforms and mutilate them until toggled:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLFVL_4ctWc

You can see links to graphs and RMAA measurements in the following forum post:

https://denondjforum.com/t/improve-a...ssing-quality/

But here are the direct links:

http://forum.djtechtools.com/showthr...l=1#post765578

https://denondjforum.com/t/firmware-...425?u=reticuli

[SWS Productions]

^^^ I'm lost at what your point is here sir.

I'm going to checkout a Denon Prime 4 that I have slated for doing Wedding Receptions. Other applications (event type) performance is of interest for sure - but still the Prime 4 only. Do you have some testing specifications for the Prime 4?

Please share if you do.

More interested in basic waveform transfer function illustrations for the environment which it will be used. For wedding reception use, processing isn't high on the list of features - not to be dismissive. The audience would be happy with a $2000 pair of powered brand XYZ speakers on poles for these events. The audio system the Prime 4 will be pushing is a bit more sophisticated than average. Which in and of itself will reveal nuances, but again we must weight things accordingly.

Somewhat interesting data you have there.

Sound Forge - what about test hardware? Outboard sound card used is?

[Reticuli]

^^^ I'm lost at what your point is here sir.

I'm going to checkout a Denon Prime 4 that I have slated for doing Wedding Receptions. Other applications (event type) performance is of interest for sure - but still the Prime 4 only. Do you have some testing specifications for the Prime 4?

Please share if you do.

More interested in basic waveform transfer function illustrations for the environment which it will be used. For wedding reception use, processing isn't high on the list of features - not to be dismissive. The audience would be happy with a $2000 pair of powered brand XYZ speakers on poles for these events. The audio system the Prime 4 will be pushing is a bit more sophisticated than average. Which in and of itself will reveal nuances, but again we must weight things accordingly.

Somewhat interesting data you have there.

Sound Forge - what about test hardware? Outboard sound card used is?

Digital to digital on the tests posted and cited. Analog doesn't change the measurements or sweeps.

The Prime playback all uses common code. The playback firmware is called Engine OS and is shared by all the playback hardware. These issues are not hardware-related, but just software.