Recurring USB Hub Failure with Pioneer DJ Setup and MacBook Pro

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antz1210 Author

Level 1

32 points

Recurring USB Hub Failure with Pioneer DJ Setup and MacBook Pro

Hi people.

So I have an issue with my DJ set up and I’m not sure where to go with what’s causing my problems.

I’m currently using a 2022 full spec MacBook Pro 16”

Serato Dj pro

Sandisk extreme pro 2TB ssd V2 portable drive with my music on.

I started at another club a couple of years ago and I set up as follows, pioneer DJM900nxs into right port.

External drive into top left port (cheaper sandisk model than what I’m using now)

Cheap eBay Hub into lower left port

2x pioneer CDj2000nxs into hub.

It was going well for a few weeks until one night the players just would not link at the start.

The mixer was fine, but there was no control from the players as they would not link at all.

Not realising it may be the hub, I took my laptop back to Apple, who did all the testing and a fresh install and could not fault it.

I didn’t install any antivirus and disabled everything I could.

The tech guy at the club said it was my cheap hub, so I bought a more expensive one.

I read on the pioneer site they advise to use an external powered hub so I did that.

I got all new leads from local office shop.

All was good for a while again until I started to get sound issues whenever I touched anything on the CDJ’s. Pops, crackles, distortion and sound fading away.

I thought this to be odd as the mixer is the sound card, not the players.

The tech guy said it was my usb hub again and it’s because I powered it, I shouldn’t have done that. The hub had failed again. And now don’t work.

That night I was stuffed and didn’t have my USB’s as I lent them out, or even another hub so another Dj lent me his usb and the night went on. However, the whole set froze that night too using the usb and had to re start both players.

Anyway, I spent a lot of money on a decent USB hub again, all new Dj tech tools cables and the new extreme pro external drive.

Updated all the pioneer kit, the laptop, Serato.

All has been great for well over 14 months. Switching between laptop and usb every night on several occasions no issues.

But then Friday a new Dj came in for a hour trial to start.

I set up all my stuff before he started and waited for him to finish.

When he had done I switched on my laptop, linked the kit, and was mixing in my track from Serato to his playing usb track then bang, everything froze and the CDJ’s was not linked.

His track was still playing but both players was not responding.

After a few mins of testing and fiddling, it had blown another hub.

Put a hub in from another Dj, and my night went on as normal.

So now I’m on my 4th hub, with this old pioneer kit.

Now this is the kicker. The CDJ’s get swapped out a lot as they fail, play button, cue button etc etc.

So it’s hard to trace if it’s a particular player.

What I would like to do is prove it’s not my MacBook. The finger obviously gets pointed at me.

All the hubs still power up, but nothing passes through them when connected. No players, no drives, no usb, no controller.

Dead.

If it was a power spike, would they not power up? What way does the power travel through the hub? From my Mac through the hub to the player or from the player through the hub to the Mac?

How can I diagnose this issue and prove it’s one thing?

I can’t see 3 hubs from 3 different manufactures being at fault. So it’s either the player, the Mac, or Serato right?

Please help. Thanks.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

MacBook Pro (M2, 2022)

Posted on Oct 14, 2024 3:06 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 14, 2024 7:03 PM in response to antz1210

First, only purchase good quality devices from respected brands. You usually get what you pay for and much of the cheap stuff is cheap in quality as well in price. In fact poor quality devices can damage your expensive equipment. Good quality devices will usually be a bit more expensive, but not always excessively expensive. Plus you need to make sure to use quality cables and adapters as well.

OWC is one vendor who provides quality devices specifically to work with Apple products.

I also like products from Plugable and StarTech. My organization also utilizes some Anker products. I've also seen people mention Satechi although I've never personally used their products. I'm sure some other regular contributors can provide some other quality brand names and advice.

I'm not personally familiar with you setup & workloads so I cannot help with specifics in that regard. When troubleshooting, it is best to connect an external device directly to the computer to see if it has any issues compared to using a hub or dock. In fact disconnecting all other external devices may even be necessary to eliminate any compatibility issues between devices. Hopefully some other contributors will chime in here to assist you.

FYI, you should check whether your SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD has a firmware update available. Some of those SanDisk SSDs have a major firmware issue with drive disconnects and data loss. Western Digital/SanDisk never acknowledged the data loss issue although it was well reported in the tech news:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/lawsuit-takes-western-digital-to-task-over-sandisk-ssds-allegedly-erasing-data/

Also, I hope you have a good backup of your computer as well as all external media (including the cloud) which contains important & unique data. It is very difficult to impossible to recover data from an SSD due to how SSDs work. In addition, there are a lot more new ways to permanently lose access to the data on the internal SSD of the recent Macs due to all the hardware, software, and security changes.

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Answer 2

antz1210 Author

Level 1

32 points

Oct 14, 2024 7:21 PM in response to HWTech

I am using quality products. And the device will work again using another hub or direct to my MacBook.

something is killing the hub either from my MacBook or from the CD player.

All ports go down on the hub.

I don’t use the internal hard drive for anything hence externals so not worried about that.

I have back ups. Just no cloud back ups. Any recommendations on who to use?

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Answer 3

antz1210 Author

Level 1

32 points

Nov 6, 2024 9:42 PM in response to antz1210

Hi

So after contacting all manufactures and them pointing the finger at each other, I'm still not getting to the bottom of this.

Pioneer blamed my external hard drive. So I removed this completely and put all my music on the internal.

This freed up a USB port and allowed me to get rid of the HUB completely.

So each CDJ now has a port, the mixer (is just the sound card) has a port.

Nothing else is plugged in and running.

I ran diagnostics on the MacBook at home, all passed. I took it to the Apple Store, all passed. It was suggested however to take it to an independent for repair/inspect, but I'm not keen.

Was all good until the other night, it happened again. I disconnected the left player from MIDI control to play a USB and the right player became Semi responsive. The music was still playing, the software was still operating, and I could control the music with the players Jog-wheel.

But the screen was blank, no other buttons worked except the connection button, and it was not re connecting, just going mental like it was confused.

The only thing that fixed it was to re start my laptop. I did open and close the software, I did force quit it too, but it still would not re connect. Serato don't think its their software.

Once the MacBook was re started, it connected immediately.

Is my laptop at fault? Is there a problem using MIDI devices with it?

As when this always happens, is when I need to disconnect one player from the laptop/software to play a USB in the player. It's when this happens that I get all my problems. Like one player disconnects fine, but the laptop then also rejects the other to a certain extent.

Both players are seperate MIDI devises when connected, and output no power.

I don't understand MIDI so I don't know what's going on.

I never had a problem with my 2012 intel MacBook Pro though.

I really need help please.

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Recurring USB Hub Failure with Pioneer DJ Setup and MacBook Pro

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