Reply to Traktor + S4 Glitches Ruined My Gig - HELP?

Hi DJTT Folks!

Been a long time since I've posted anything. I've been happily and comfortably DJing with a Kontrol S4, MacBook Pro, and usually some sort of revolving secondary controller (MF, MF Pro Beatmasher, MF 3D, Kontrol F1) since the tail end of 2010. My S4 has traveled around the USA and internationally with me and though the past few years as a Traktor user have not been 100% problem-free, generally glitches and issues have been infrequent, minor, and recoverable.

This weekend, however, Traktor embarrassed me in front of a convention hall full of people. The crowd may have been cool enough to be forgiving, but my set was musically completely ruined (and there weren't even CDJs on hand to salvage the set that way). I'm a little traumatized despite trying to keep a sense of humor about it all, and I'm concerned about this happening again at an upcoming gig. As much as I realize that any technology has the potential to fail, I really want to minimize the possibility of such a huge snafu happening again, especially not in such a high-profile situation.

This is what happened...
I was spinning this particular event with 5 other DJs and I was the last of the 6 to go on. At the beginning of the evening we all were given time to set up our gear and do a quick sound check to make sure that we had signal and our volume levels were where they should be. During setup, I noticed that my computer was unusually slow to boot up (more detail on that to come), but once everything was finally in place and I sound checked, it all seemed fine. The first 5 DJs all played their sets without incident and when my turn came, things started off normally but quickly went to hell.

I was running a simple 2 deck setup and using decks A and B. Tracks would play normally until I started to mix into the next one. Once the mixing had begun, one of the tracks would decide to lock up on me, the audio would drop out, and the bar in between the Master and Nudge Left buttons would flash. I was mortified, but hoped that this was a one-time glitch. Unfortunately, it proceeded to happen for the duration of the set, every single time I tried to mix two songs together. The tracks would glitch out anywhere from 5 to about 15 seconds into a mix and which deck would drop out was random. In a few cases, it was the track that had been originally playing, and in a few it was the new track I was trying to mix in. Sometimes the track would drop out for a second or two and then start playing again, thus instantly sounding like a trainwreck. If all I did was hit play and leave everything else alone, the track would be fine. Basically, any sort of mixing was rendered completely impossible.

Here's some general system specs:
NI Kontrol S4 MK1
Midi Fighter 3D
MacBook Pro 13.5" - OSX 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion), 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Traktor Pro 2.6.5 (I have since updated to 2.6.6 via the Service Center)

If any other info or specs are needed, please let me know and I can post them.

A few other potentially notable points of info:

- During setup, my laptop took an unusually long time to boot up. It seemed to hang on the startup apple screen for an eternity and that had never happened before. Even once it was finally past, it seemed to take forever for my desktop to fully load. All other boot-ups since have been completely normal with no unusual hang times.

- No other programs were running and my AirPort was disabled. Both the MacBook Pro and the S4 were plugged in via their adapters.

- There was a lot of gear on the stage. A LOT. 6 DJs total, each with their own laptop/controller setup, all lined up next to each other across two long tables. And besides all the gear was all the typical light and sound gear you'd expect to find on a big stage setup. I've heard that sometimes the abundance of gear and all the different signals can cause things to glitch out and, after the gig, a couple of the guys I was spinning with noted that their laptops and/or software had been behaving strangely, though I was the only person to experience any noticeable glitches. I was also the last performer on and my gear, like everyone else's, had been sitting onstage all evening waiting for me. This was by no means the first time I've spun in such a large-scale setup, nothing like this has ever happened before. What can be done to protect yourself against interference from the gear around you?

- Is there any possibility that a bad RCA jack could be to blame? In every case where I've had a significant issue with dropouts, static, or freezing, my S4 had been hooked into the mixer via the RCA input (in all of those cases, however, I'd used the flimsy RCA cable provided for me... in the case of the incident I'm currently describing, I did use my own cabling). Generally, I use a 1/4 to RCA cable, with the 1/4 end running into the S4 to connect to an open channel on the mixer. In this case, the stage mixer had only 1/4 inputs, so I was connected with the RCA end going into the S4.


Anyone ever experienced an issue such as this one? If so, how did you cope with it and what can be done to safeguard against a similar instance in the future? Over the next few days I'm going to be doing a hard drive cleanup, some general stress tests, and otherwise making sure that my rig is as stable as possible. I'm not entirely sure what exactly caused the issue and if it was a software or hardware issue, but all I know is that I'm a bit traumatized and don't want to go through that again.

Any words of wisdom, help, or suggestions are welcome. Thanks for giving this a read!

Ilyssa