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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Prime 4 - Faulty Soundcard?
I have had my Prime 4 since Jan 2020 and have always thought the sound wasn’t QUITE as good as it should be, but about 6 weeks ago, there were certain tracks that made me jump up an think that there was something wrong, it was very noticeable. The best way I can describe it is if you turn the filter knob slightly to the left to filter out a bit of the high regency, mixed with a bit of phase effect, mixed with a poor quality MP3 from 20 years ago. It made me straight away check my speakers to see of there something wrong with them - they were OK though. It is only noticable on certain tracks/files but they are exact files that I have been playing for years without issue. I was using Virtual DJ, but it happened with the same file in standalone mode too. I did a bit of troubleshooting last night and came to the conclusion that the soundcard is playing up. All of these test are with the same file. Virtual DJ - Prime 4 - XLR out - same issue Virtual DJ - Prime 4 - RCA out - same issue Prime 4 Standalone - XLR OUT - same issue Prime 4 standalone - RCA - same issue

Virtual DJ - Pioneer RX2 - no issue Virtual DJ (using usb on Macbook for sound output and Prime 4 as the controller) - no issue

Virtual DJ - Prime 4 - BOOTH OUT - no issue Prime 4 Standolone - BOOTH OUT - no issue

So it seems that the proble is when using either the master out with XLR or RCA, as possible Booth out uses a different soundcard.

On the files that had been giving me issues, the difference is sound was night and day. I’m assuming that there is an issue with all files, but maybe the frequencies of these particular ones are the ones that are affected.

I tried with different speakers too - same results as above.

Look like it could be a repair?
 

Inviato Sat 01 Oct 22 @ 1:20 pm
That's a really weird one.

I'm aware of an issue where the main balanced outs don't sound as good as the RCA on higher volumes, but Denon conveniently swept that one under the carpet.

The fact that the booth out is OK is the weird thing here as I would imagine the main and booth outs are fed from the same processing stream.

Do they sound off through the headphone port?

Could also be something that the Denon processing doesn't like about the way the track is encoded. You could try taking one of the bad ones and running it through Audacity and saving it again to see if it's an issue with certain files rather than the unit itself.

Also you could meybe upload one of them to the Denon forum and see if another Prime 4 owner has the same issue.

So many scenarios at play here.

As a footnote one of my friends had a similar issue with his MC6000. Turned out he was running all his tracks through some kind of Adobe volume normalizer program and some of them sounded horrific but not all.
 

Inviato Sat 01 Oct 22 @ 2:15 pm
Hi - many thanks for the reply. I remember discussing the RCA / XLR issue with you at length! It's hard to tell with the headphones but I'll have another listen later tonight. I'll try the Audacity suggestion, but these files sounded perfectly fine until about 6 weeks ago. There's not been any recode or any other processing going on. Weird indeed...
 

Inviato Sat 01 Oct 22 @ 2:41 pm
Just tried on a different Prime 4 and the sound is fine. Looks like I have a fault... As I said, there are some songs where you can't really hear it, but I've picked out 2 songs in these videos that you can really tell, particularly the Whigfield one. The Billy Joel one can just about be heard, but will need to take an actual recording to hear it properly rather than just filming the speaker.

Videos are here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KedP-5h2eh5Le_ehFG07RHvM0zlpiiRX?usp=sharing
 

Inviato Sun 02 Oct 22 @ 1:32 pm
I’ve solved where the issue is it - sort of!

The master out switch was on mono instead of stereo. That should not make the sound so bad, but it did.

As soon as I switch to mono, the sound is so poor again. Stereo - sound is absolutely fine

The booth output bypasses the stereo/mono switch therefore sounded OK.

Here’s the weird thing - I was able to recreate the issue using the booth outputs using an external mixer: Booth L out to Channel 1 on Mixer (the channel then outputs this to left and right) Booth R out to Channel 2 on Mixer (the channel then outputs this to left and right)

When both channels were playing, the sound had the issue I have been describing - poor quality

When I put the fader down for EITHER one, the sound was fine again (albeit only receiving from one channel from Denon obviously)

It’s as if there is some kind of has issue where frequencies are being cancelled out sort of, if that makes sense?

Maybe it’s the same issue with the mono switch?
 

Inviato Wed 05 Oct 22 @ 1:46 pm
Some tracks just sound "off" in mono, in particular westlife Uptown Girl.

I noticed this in the bowling alley I worked in where the whole place was mono.

You could try re-encoding them and see if they are any better. If not it's the studio mastering.
 

Inviato Wed 05 Oct 22 @ 2:43 pm
Bizarrely, one of the ones that was really noticeable was Uptown Girl by Billy Joel....
 

Inviato Wed 05 Oct 22 @ 3:34 pm