Timecode L and R values

Jay McQueen

Of all the things on the internet, you'd think I'd be able to find an answer to this, but so far I have not….

When using timecode vinyl and in the TIMECODE SETUP submenu of Traktor Pro 3 — what do the L and R values represent and how is it measured? And what numbers are ideal and not ideal? I notice that when the vinyl is on, the numbers are roughly in the 30s. When I take the needle off the record, it goes up into the 60s or even 70.

Thanks!

Owner

Basically, a few things that I was able to take from your postings:

You play on a different setup at home than at this house party, right? Please describe your complete setup at home and then at the house party.

So, which turntables, needles, sound cards, mixers, etc. you use?

Recognizing sources of error in a DVS setup takes a bit of practice and coolness, as you have to be able to do cross-comparisons while you're playing in order to locate the source of the error.

Let's start by looking at the chain of where the problem could be.

Internal:

1. You may be using a different interface at this house party than usual and therefore have different values ​​for latency and sampling rate. A latency that is too low or a sampling rate that is too high could be a cause of your problem.
2. Your scopes on your screenshots looking good so far, including the grounding.
3. The values ​​for L and R are very high, but that could be due to various things. As I checked yesterday on my Rane Tewelves MKII, the value of these numbers increases if you reduce the volume of the Timocode a little. Therefore, the inputs on your mixer or sound card could also be relatively weak.
4. From experience, I have had only a few problems in Traktor if the signal was too hot / e.g.the phono preamp was too "loud", etc... The prime example for me was the DJM-750 from Pioneer, where the signal was too hot and then repeatedly caused calibration problems or playhead skipping.

External:

1. Clean needles and clean pins on the connections. Oxidation on the pins or dirt on the needles can cause problems.
2. Oxidation on the pins in the tonearm. Fogged up pins on the tonearm connection can cause problems and are usually the biggest weak point nowadays.
3. Bent tonearm, or incorrectly set height or anti-skating, can quickly cause certain inconveniences when playing with timecode.
4. The tracking weight of your needles. Especially when there is a lot of bass in a room and strong feedback, if the tonearm is incorrectly set or the turntable is not on a decoupled and leveled surface, can cause problems.
5. cinch cables have loose contacts, broken solder joints or are worn out.
6. grounding, see above for cinch.

as you can see, the causes can be different. If you play in a room with strong bass vibrations this can even make the problems worse.

Since you don't have any problems at home, I'm assuming it's one of these. If you can, check the setup for this house party again in the next few days, without the stress of standing in front of people and having to entertain them.