Software help archive

A read-only archive of old serato.com help threads.

Instability Issue...

Product
Scratch Live
Version
-
Hardware
Ortofon | Serato S-120
Computer
-
OS
Platform
-
Lephunk 1:10 AM - 27 July, 2004
during a 6 hour gig... serato had multiple hiccups... when importing songs from the desktop on the fly, and also playing off an audio cd... the laptop i'm currently using is a dell pentium4 about 2.6 gigs... and using a external harddrive for the music storage... the audio sometimes also gets muddy at times... is this a overheating laptop issue? or an instabilty issue? anyone else experiencing this type of behavior from their SSL??
Serato
Josh 2:47 AM - 27 July, 2004
Hi Lephunk,
It sounds like your system resources were being pushed to the limit, have you tried a larger USB buffer? Also turning off auto-fill overview in the setup screen will perhaps free up some resources if you have to import on the fly again. The "muddiness" could be your callibration, have you read the relevant section in the manual?

Have a play around seeing how far you can push your system before the graphics start to skip slightly, the graphics will always suffer before the audio in ssl if the cpu is being taxed. If a disk is lagging behind you will get a clue from the waveform display, the empty buffer will become visible as a grey area. Ever had a buffer underrun while burning a cd? a similar concept here.

A little time spent in advance will pay off dividends when it comes to gigging.

Bear in mind how much data is being shunted around your system, i.e. Audio CDs being uncompressed will require alot of CD access, about 10megs a minute per track at normal speed, pitch it up and you're demanding more from your CDROM drive.

Also Lephunk, please don't post the same help requests in multiple threads.
Lephunk 12:06 AM - 28 July, 2004
thanks josh... apologies about the multiple threads...
DJ White Lightning 1:01 AM - 28 July, 2004
If you think you Laptop is getting to hot - as mine was cause ventillation in one club I work in is poor and it gets so hot - I bought an iBreeze and it is so cool (pun intended) and if you are gigging for 6 hours im sure your CPU is getting hot

www.macmice.com

for MACs or PCs
Lephunk 2:21 AM - 30 July, 2004
i got a cooler (just got it yesterday actually), and hopefully that helps... as for the buffer being all the way to the right, i'm unable to do that because it is nearly impossible to scratch with those settings... I'll definately keep that audio cd thing in mind though... that's probably one of the reasons i had an audio dropout...

another thing...

I LOVE SSL... BUT... it has crashed on me four times... once during sound check before a gig...
once during a gig (luckily i brought a crate along for old time sake)... and when i was organizing the music files(two occurances)...

all four incidents were different times... but it's still sketchy... i'm not doing anything out of the ordinary so it shouldn't tax my cpu that hard should it???

BTW, the other crashes happened when trying to map a track while another was playing
Serato, Forum Moderator
Steve W 4:13 AM - 4 August, 2004
Hey Lephunk, what version did you experience crashes with?

If you have a specific mp3 that causes Scratch LIVE to crash please ftp it to ftp.serato.com/incoming.
Lephunk 4:42 AM - 4 August, 2004
I was using the latest build...it's not really a particular MP3, cuz i've used that track many times before...

new incident:
i just dj'd a fashion trade show which consisted of 3 days (8a.m to 6p.m. daily), all while using SSL... of the three days, i found that when i place an active Mike next to the laptop, the graphics start twiching after 5min.... and there was even audio drop out...

another time, the music just stopped and the song files/playlists on the external harddrive disappeared... an no the plug didn't disconnect... both sides just went blank with no songs mapped... after a minute of silence, it starts to work again... it seems as if it's trying to think too hard... i mean the laptop used is quite powerful so i'm not sure what the problem is...

p.s. a stanton rep showed up while i was djing at the tradeshow and asked how SSL worked for me... not knowing that he was from stanton, i started telling him how much better SSL worked
compared to FS... started bragging about how dope the live sample feature was etc... yea... just thought i liked to share...