D2 Director Problem

[dj_craigb 0]

Hi All,

 

I am new to the forum and i must say i have been reading some of the posts concerning the d2 and feel i must also post on here.

 

I purchased a D2 director in April 2008 the Maunfactuer date of the D2 is Jan 07. I brought the D2 after some of my fellow DJ collegues / friends said they had one and had been using it for some time and they loved it.

 

I am a mobile dj and have always used cds so when i got the D2 i thought it was a BRILLIANT bit of kit it saves so much time and effot carrying in cd cases and also searching for songs . . . . . .

 

However there seems to be a problem and i have a concern so i thought i'de share it.

 

When i use the d2, it will work for 3/4 hours fine viewing folders in the files menu and then selecting trakcs and sending them to either 'A' or 'B' just as you would expect.

 

HOWEVER RANDOMLY AND WITHOUT WARNING THE SEND TO 'A' / B BUTTONS WILL LAG OR STOP FUNCTIONING ALSO THE PLAY AND THE CUE BUTTONS WILL THEN SLOW DOWN / STOP.

 

The unit is just over a month old, with firmware v1.09 installed on it. I use a 8gb FAT formatted freecom usb pen and there are no more than 200 songs in each folder (10 in total).

 

I do have my pc as backup so when the unit deciedes to play up i revert to pc unplug the d2 leave it for 20 seconds and then all seems ok again.

 

It's just very frustrating that this happens and it cant be a faulty unit as the buttons work fine most of the time and then without warning just fail.

 

Please can anyone advise or help me as i feel i need to raise this issue again.

 

Kind regards

 

 

Craig

[spinner 0]

I believe a similar problem has been reported on the Numark forum.

 

Suggest you have a look there.

 

 

[DJ Sacha 0]

Hi,

 

I know this thread is quite old but I'll add my 2 cents...

 

When I first got my D2 I copied my CD based stuff using EAC to my WD drive. All MP3s are sampled at a VBR of up to 320Kbits.

 

At first I had 400 files per folder on a FAT32 drive. When I copied the songs from the File browser selection I too found that the current track playing would stutter or even stop. Now bear in mind that this was before I built the library. Songs also took about 5 seconds to load.

 

Now when I built the Library I found that songs took about a second to load and that there was now stuttering or stops. So it seems that the indexing does work very well! I do not use the File browser on the D2 but just stick to the Search, Album, Artist etc etc. I also ensure that the drive isn't fragmented either.

 

Also, we have to bear in mind that the D2 is an I/O device just like any other computer. It may run Linux but it is just as prone to bottlenecks and memory faults too - as with MS Windows. Numark has obviously used Linux because of the licensing costs and the modular architecture of the OS. BUT that doesn't mean to say that it is rock solid! It isn't!

 

The fact that us D2 owners introduce an unknown variable to the equation - USB Hard Drive - increases the risk of problems. Numark cannot possibly test this device with ALL USB HDs. So what happens if your usb HD hangs or takes too long scouring the platters looking for the MP3 data of the song you are trying to load. How does the D2 handle that?

 

If you imagine a queue of programs - one of them being the next part of your currently playing MP3 data - is waiting to be executed by the D2 CPU and the program being executed at the time - now a process - is your load-up of the next track. Now if that load-up process takes too long, or simply fails then the D2 must either wait until the process finishes or execute an error-correction program. The end result being that the programs in the queue waiting to be executed are delayed - the real world result is a momentary lock up of the devices I/O - the song playing pauses.

 

This is acceptable on PCs and laptops at home or in an office. But in critical useage such as what we do it can be a pain in the ar$e. However, it is the nature of the beast. I suspect that the D2 is single processor unit - having 2 processors, one for each track controller would probably make life eaisier but would most likely increase costs too - if they were still producing it.

 

So in my opinion the D2 is a great unit and has revolutionised my DJ-ing BUT at the end of the day it is computer and is prone to all things that annoy us - Linux or not.

 

As with a computer, I have learnt not repeat actions that I have not received a response to on the D2. For instance, if I press the button to load a track and I don't get a response I have learnt that it is futile to keep pressing it multiple times. The multiple inputs will be executed once the I/O becomes responsive - this results in the same Program building up in memory and being executed by the CPU. The risk here is that the limited memory of the unit will be saturated and the CPU will be overwhelmed...the end result is pauses, stops etc in the music being played!

 

It's not perfect but the D2 it's a damn sight better at what it does then my laptop running Windows. If you can understand that this unit is not a CD Player but a computer and suffers from the same annoyances then you should be ok. In order to get the best out of the unit one has to understand:

 

* Programs & Processes - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_(computing)

* CPU Architecture - Andrew S Tanenbaum has written fantastic books on this

* FAT File system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

 

Finally, a lot of people are requesting that the D2 is made compatible or can wite to NTFS formatted drives. Well as I stated earlier the D2 uses the Linux OS. NTFS is a microsoft file system that can be found on NT4, 2000, XP and Vista. It is a file system that utilises file system Access Control Lists that enables administrators to control file and folder access. This is determined by a Windows user account or group membership of a Windows Group. Seeing as the D2 is neither a Windows user account or a member of a default windows group on the file system's ACL then writing to an NTFS drive will be impossible...

 

However, what MIGHT work is that if one reformats their drive as NTFS, removes the default users and groups in the ACL and then add the EVERYONE group with FULL CONTROL. This may allow the D2 to write to the drive.

 

Crikey I've really blabbed on!