Hi all,
I've been using my Traktor S4 Mk2 since 2017, largely reliably until recently. Currently running on a Windows 10 Machine- Asus Tuf Gaming Ryzen 7 3750H, 16GB RAM. Music library is on its own Samsung Internal SSD.
For a long time, Traktor had been dead reliable- prior to this PC, I was running it on a $250 Best Buy special laptop. Could barely run anything, Traktor ran slowly- but never failed to play music. That also describes my experience on my current laptop, until later versions of Traktor 2, and now Traktor 3.
There are 2 main bugs that happen, and I've seen once described on these forums many times, and in Reddit threads and other various websites. The other I haven't seen described before.
Bug 1: The "loud buzzing" sound. After some amount of time playing music, the music will stop, and the audio output is an extremely loud "buzzing" sound. It's not exactly a buzz- it almost sounds like it's a fraction of a beat being repeated. The most common response I see to this issue is to run latency mon and check for buffer underruns. I can confirm that once this happens- the buffer is no longer fed and continuously underruns. I've also run latency mon- I did note that Adobe Creative Cloud would cause issues, so I uninstalled that. (This laptop is 99% dedicated to DJ work, had it installed to do one thing one weekend.) I was testing by letting Traktor autoplay overnight, and after uninstalling CC, it would consistently play for 12hrs+ with no crashing. Thought my problem was solved- however last night, as I was DJing a wedding, on the first open dance floor song- music died and the buzz came in. (Traktor had already been running several hours playing background music.) Latency mon indicated no issues.
Bug 2: This one was strange- at another wedding a few weeks ago, if I had Traktor just sitting idle for a while.... say an hour.... and came back to play music- it would not play. To be clear, Traktor was not frozen. I could use the scroll wheel to move the track selection on screen, but hitting play did nothing. The play indicator would be lit on the screen, but the waveform was not moving, no audio out. No effects that would be freezing the track- same effect on both decks. This, though annoying, wasn't as big a deal as with Bug 1, since it produced no audible issues to the audience. Quick restart of Traktor and I was good to go again.
So I suppose my question is: Has ANYBODY experienced the buzzing crash issue, and successfully alleviated? I've seen many threads, but nobody reporting back that they had actually permanently solved the issue. I haven't yet installed the latest Traktor 3- I thought my issue was solved, and so opted to not update to stay stable. But I supposed I'll update now since there's certainly the possibility that it may fix something.
Some responses to common diagnostic questions in other threads: My MP3s aren't corrupt, I've gone down that path checking the particular songs it has crashed on. I've gone so far as to replay the exact sequence of songs leading to the crash, even 2 hours worth, and the crash/buzz is not replicable. Totally random. The crash/buzz also doesn't happen in any particular time frame. I've gone 6 hours during a gig with nothing happening- as mentioned I've let Traktor autoplay for 12 hours+ without it bugging, and other times, as last night, it crash/buzzed at the most inopportune moment.
Any thoughts appreciated!