Denon HD2500 / New Controller? I need some help / advice....please!

[Creature]

Can it accept solid state that would be good?
I had a Denon and quickly sold it when It had HDD failure one night. Sod that, much rather use my mac.
6-7 year faultless history after that.

I would presume so - I have the cortex and they do you must have a small usb stick laying around you could try

[Shakermaker Promotions]

It's a strange one.
I've only done about 30 minutes of testing but I put myself in the same situation I was in on Friday with the exact same set up and songs.
(Obviously I will do more thorough testing tomorrow).

I set up USB1 on the left and USB2 on the right again and selected Shannon - Let The Music Play.
The right side seemed to freeze half way through the song just like the other night. Pressing the buttons did nothing.
Same song on the other side and all was well.

Turned off the whole unit and this time selected USB2 for the left and USB1 for the right.
This time I played Shannon off USB2 on the left side and it played all the way through with no problems.

Played a couple of tracks off the right side again and it seemed fine.

I have a feeling that the unit needs a service?

[deltic]

It's a strange one.
I've only done about 30 minutes of testing but I put myself in the same situation I was in on Friday with the exact same set up and songs.
(Obviously I will do more thorough testing tomorrow).

I set up USB1 on the left and USB2 on the right again and selected Shannon - Let The Music Play.
The right side seemed to freeze half way through the song just like the other night. Pressing the buttons did nothing.
Same song on the other side and all was well.

Turned off the whole unit and this time selected USB2 for the left and USB1 for the right.
This time I played Shannon off USB2 on the left side and it played all the way through with no problems.

Played a couple of tracks off the right side again and it seemed fine.

I have a feeling that the unit needs a service?

Not really a lot to service, you may want to look at whether the firmware is up to date or perhaps just reinstall the latest version again.

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Thanks for the tip. That doesn't seem to be that easy a task as I have no ideas as to where to find them.
Just did a YouTube search and contacted a guy on there who seems to have the latest firmware that was released so will have to wait to see if he replies unless anyone else knows.

For additional information though (and don't all laugh at once), I don't recall EVER updating the firmware since I purchased the unit.

OOPS!

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Think I may have found it now.

[Tonsk]

Last night the same thing happened to me with one of my HD2500's.

Twice.

First time it did that stuttering thing... Luckily I have two HD2500s, plus laptop with OTS DJ along with an SD Card reader on my backup mixer which is always plugged in ready to go in the flightcase. So swapped over to OTS and played a song off that while I powered down the HD2500 and switched it back on.

I only have one external harddrive plugged in and pull off that from both sides, using a belkin powered hub, latest firmware.

Reselected the external drive as had plugged in the backup HD, looped a track and started playing and it froze again - this time repeating 30 seconds of the track.

Back to OTS and powered down for about 15 minutes.

Worked fine - so I don't know if it was just over heating...

On an interesting note - two of my EVL Spins started going wrong too - Nobody noticed the lights going wrong (cept me) whereby EVERYONE noticed the music.......

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Very strange eh!

I did think at first that it might be a case of overheating because of the weather. They did have air conditioning units in the room I was in though. I also had a clip on fan on my Ultimax but it wasn't pointing at the external HD's because I was hot too.

Did some more testing yesterday in the end and all seemed ok.
I tried different scenarios to see if it was one of the external HD's, the hub or the usb keyboard.

The problem I have is that because it has happened I will now have my concerns that it could happen again.
One facility that I have never used on the Denon HD2500 is the 'Next File' option. I didn't think of it at the time as I was getting flustered but am I right in thinking that I could have DJ'd off the left side if I didn't have the back up? (luckily I did). I'll look in to that too.

I'm going to get a better back up system sorted today anyway and see if I can get the Denon looked at.

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Just out of interest - Does anyone use the Denon HC5000 or Denon HC4500?

[DJIanScott]

I used the 2500 extensively, from it's launch in 2006 right up til November last year. Must admit to having no real problems with it at all (never use the internal HDD seems to be the only golden rule). I don't understand why you're using two HDDs (one per side) for your tunes. I always managed fine with just one 500Gb one.
However.....last year I realised that the software was getting very old and no longer supported by Denon with updates, etc (wasn't the last one in 2009?!) and toys such as the Key Lock were sounding very wobbly when songs were pitched up, where other more modern systems sounded much better. I even kept an old Vista PC to run the Music Manager on because I was fearful of problems with newer platforms such as Windows 8, OSX, etc.

It was a sad day for me when I admitted defeat and looked elsewhere for a new play out system. I tried the first incarnation of the Denon MC6000 a couple of years ago, but the software mapping (for Traktor) was a complete joke, so I sold it on very quickly and reverted to the trusty 2500. I now use a Pioneer DDJ-SX with a MacBook Pro, and I've gotta say that I am completely happy with it. Can't think of a single major issue with the Pioneer. It comes with Serato DJ which I find very easy to use, and of course the controller is perfectly mapped for the software straight out of the box.

Take the leap, I promise you it's worth it!

[Shakermaker Promotions]

Thanks for the advice and comments.

The reason I had 2 x external HD's was because I wanted to make sure that if one external HD became faulty, I could easily switch to the other one. That's the reason I have a different one selected for each side. In my opinion you can't have enough back up.

I've been out today and looked at the HC4500 which looks like it could be the option for me.