Serato DJ Pro General Discussion

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 Serato DJ Pro General Discussion
Audio dropouts in SDJ Pro practice mode, but VLC fixes the issue
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Audio dropouts in SDJ Pro practice mode, but VLC fixes the issue

W1lkone 3:07 AM - 5 July, 2018
Here's a weird issue that I've been struggling to understand.

I'm experiencing audio dropouts in practice mode. Ok, I get that practice mode requires a lot of resources, but I'm running an i7 with 12 GB of ram so it shouldn't be an issue. At any rate, I realize that dropouts can occur for a plethora of reasons, and that there are hundreds of forum posts about that subject.

What makes this issue strange is that the dropouts completely disappear if VLC is running in the background. As soon as I launch VLC, all that choppy playback in Serato immediately goes away. I don't need to play an mp3 in VLC. I just need to launch the program. I have no idea what would cause this to happen, or what VLC is doing to fix my audio issues in practice mode.

I've tried playback in Serato both from an external drive, and from the internal SSD on my laptop, with the same result. Choppy playback in Serato practice mode, then launch VLC and everything sounds fine. Any ideas?
Hanginon 3:19 PM - 5 July, 2018
Mac or Windows?
W1lkone 5:00 PM - 5 July, 2018
Quote:
Mac or Windows?

Windows.
Hanginon 8:24 PM - 5 July, 2018
OK, try this -

Set processor scheduling to "Background services"
This will improve the performance of your audio drivers on your computer. To do this:
- In control panel select "system"
- Go to "Advanced system settings" and then the "Advanced" tab
- Click on "Settings.." under Performance to bring up the "Performance Options" window.
- Go to the "Advanced" tab and set processor scheduling as "Background Services"
- Click "Apply" then "OK"

"Background Services" are given priority in Windows. I'm taking a wild guess that Serato (when in Practice Mode) is not doing that - VLC does.
W1lkone 3:45 AM - 11 July, 2018
Thanks for this suggestion Hanginon, but I already have the background services option selected from when I followed the optimization guide for windows when installing Serato. Any other potential solutions?
Hanginon 12:20 PM - 11 July, 2018
Hail Mary -

Right-click on the audio icon in the taskbar and select “Playback Devices”

Double-click on your primary audio device to bring up the speaker/headphones properties dialog, and navigate to the “Advanced” tab

At the bottom of this dialog, locate the option labelled “Allow hardware acceleration of audio with this device” and uncheck this option.