Jump to content

traktor z2 help/advice


jam

Recommended Posts

ok, so i finally got a z2 last friday. iv set traktor up to the best i can so far without looking too deeply into it all, the problems i get r kinda minor but its stopping from liking traktor and the z2 as much as it cud b liked... problems i get are, wen i hav a deck playing a track and i load a track on the deck that im cueing in phones, there is a slight click/drop on the playing track at the moment of loading other deck, not good, and never once experienced this in serato.. also get a slight dropout/click every 5mins or so wen a track is playing. only small problems but enuff to piss u off wen u just aint used to such shitty problems... any advice help is more than welcome, thanks ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

come home from work turned evthing on and evthing seems fine.. duno wat happened last night, everything good thankfully … one thing i do love about the z2 is its great for mixing in general, eq's and filter and effects r awesome.. shame they didn't put as much thought into having decent faders...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They sound like audio dropouts to me jam. Was your machine doing out in the background when u was experiencing cliks or pops. Did u turn wifi off? Was u running gay porn in the background? And what is the lowest latency u can get?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, as Justin points out, Traktor can only share so much of your computer's resources with massivecocks.com

 

I understand the irritation of little things not working right. It drives me up the wall.

 

Can't help you on the faders though, especially coming from a Rane mixer - You were using a kickass battle mixer with built in DVS, now you are kind of using a jack-of-trades 2 channel mixer/controller. I guess the more you accept what it is and use it for what it's good for, the more the Z2 makes sense. But yeah, there are times when it does remind you it's no serious battle mixer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i don't use massivecocks.com on the iMac, thats why i got 2 macs, one for gay spunkin one for muzik and ting… and i hav no anti virus on either.. i cnt remember wat was running at the time but i was fiddling wi a lot of settings and stuff tbh, maybe i turned wifi off as i read a tip to do that, used it this afty tho and all good... it cud b a badass battle mixer and the next one probably will, this for me isn't , i recently been getting my juggling back on and had some nice upfader to xfader patterns coming along on the 57 which iv tried on the z2 but those upfaders r kinda fisher price/tomy compared to the rane faders. and the mini inno, well, i don't like it ...i do like the z2 overall , but can't help thinking i should hav got the 62 :unsure: jus looked at latency, its at 384 atm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your whole setup doesn't seem to be working as I'd expect. I've got a 13" MBP with a dual core i7 and 8GB of ram and I always run my latency at 128 - I can get it down to 64, but only if I'm using one deck and no key-lock and FX and that. But at 128 I can use it pretty fully and also have Maschine open playing beats with plenty of plugins and about 192-224 buffer and my computer's not stressing at all. I doubt wifi makes that much difference, although I turn mine off at the studio as we have no wifi there. My computer seemed to work just as well when it only had 4gb of ram too. It is an i7, but just a dual core and my computer's about 4 years and doesn't run quite as sweetly as it used to, although not far off I guess.

 

I don't mind the mini innos in the Z2, but they're definitely no Rane faders and when it comes to straight scratching I do prefer the faders on my other mixers. My mini innos have been slightly improved by removing the tensioners from the ups and putting a normal shaped innofader cap on the crossfader. But I guess I don't use DVS that heavily and although the Z2 suits me for when I do and was all I was willing to spend on a DVS mixer, I can see how it may just not be for you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Na it's cool now, not running as good as I want tho if I'm honest, I'm thinking I'm guna send it back as I'm guna need a more powerful Mac to get wat I want out of it, I'm not satisfied at using jus some of the features, serato don't start acting shit wen u apply fx or other devices so it's that wats putting me well off the whole thing ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

try scanning your whole library into Traktor. If you've got a big one (wheeeeeeeeyyyyyy) leave it overnight because it can take about 5 seconds per song. It can be a bit annoying to then have to re-do a bunch of stuff but at least Traktor's not trying to sneak in file analysis while you're playing, which can be one of your issues.

 

Also, is your library on an external drive? The momentary pause could be because it's seeking and using USB bandwidth - this is especially the case if it's on the same port as the Z2.

 

Do you find you're often seeing the spotlight magnifying glass indexing - the little dot in the middle of the glass pulsating? Macs should defrag automatically, but sometimes if something's up they struggle and this can affect how long it takes to seek and load something into ram.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest rasteri

shame they didn't put as much thought into having decent faders...

 

You can replace all the faders on the z2 with standard Innofaders (or the less-stiff versions of the Innofader Mini) and then you get arguably the best faders on the market.

 

But yeah the build quality is never going to be as good as a mixer 3x the price for obvious reasons.

 

The market really needs a £1500 Traktor battle mixer, and also a £500 Serato one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Duno bout jam chris but ill be scanning my library today. Good advice dude! Jam dont give up hope on tacky traky just yet dude. Ur I macs an animal and shud b able to perform a lot better than it is. Anyone out there got any tips on optimising macs? Can u get a mac version of latency checker or is it even necessary on a mac? My windows celeron 2.0ghz 4mb ram almost runs on minimal latency setting without a controller attached. Peeps been telling me for years macs piss on windows. I envisaged dropouts from the mac book with machine plugged in and all the bells n wistles ringing with it not being an I processor. But the I mac shud b able t mek a brew at the same time as running traky!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A good tool for optimising macs is Onyx - http://www.titanium.free.fr/onyx.html. It doesn't really do anything that isn't already being done by your mac automatically or can be done by a command in a settings window somewhere, but it can help to have it all done in one go to ensure things are running from a known good point or just in case some of the things that os x tries to do periodically are perpetually interrupted.

 

When I said macs defrag automatically earlier it's not strictly true - the way that macs (and other unix based systems) actually work doesn't fragment data when it's written to a drive, it's kind of baked into the write process. If you're frequently writing big files, removing them, and writing more, though, you need to have a decent amount of space free on the drive to make sure things are still going speedy and the index file can keep up.

 

There's no need for a latency checker on OS X because audio is handled at a base level in the OS, thus always making sure audio devices have high 'hot line' priority.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, I don't use external for library purposes, all on Mac, don't hav all my music on the Mac, not massive just 128gb I think and I only hav one playlist imported to traktor with 230 tracks inside oh and a scratch tool folder wi bout 10gb in size... I'm not gettin dropouts now at all but play does get affect if I put fx on, I apply fx on both channels and then it's only slight , but even so atm not running as good as I want and only hav til next Friday to return it if I choose to... Replacing every fader wud cost well over 300 quid ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Man, I really like my Z2, faders and all. I was on the fence about it when I initially got it, but the issues were all computer related. I have a pretty fast machine, however, it was needing major updates, then updates for those, and finally updates for those. And shit, some more updates now that I think about it. Anytime there was a pending update, the tracks would drop out a little or get gargled up. Now that my computer is totally up-to-date, it's rockin' solid. Really like the crossfader, and the upfaders are nice, too. I heard they were stiff, but man, mine are just right.

 

I watched a grip of mixer videos before I bought it, namely of people scratching on the Z2, 57, and 62, and in my opinion, it sounds more legit/accurate on the Z2. I'm super happy with this mixer and it's pretty frickin' powerful. It's f'n dope for scratching, which was my main objective, but still wanna party rock. This thing's perfect for my needs.

 

Peace.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice one jhouse, man I know I sound negative towards it but I do like it, like u my probs r computer related and las night was working great, read some troubleshooting tips and was sounding pretty darn good, if it stays that way then great... So far I'm enjoying mixing more than skratching and enjoying the sync feature for fun as its a first time on that for me but, been mixing some of the fattest funk edits/tracks and spurring me on to do some mixes shortly... I think I got the latency pretty nice now so hopefully will b all good, yeah my up faders r too stiff for skratch and how I use em in juggling but that's not enuff for me to send it back, it was the poor running of software that magnified all the other things I wasn't 100% on.. Thanks for all input guys muchly appreciated...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest rasteri

If you wanted to you could replace just the upfaders with innofader minis for like £160. That'd make them exactly the same as the crossfader.

 

Or I think there's a way to get the stiff faders loose? Anyone tried that?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the tension can b altered ras, if kept il b gettin an inno pnp for xfade bizznis so il put the mini in the desired channel I guess

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...