Reply to MF Pro Beatmasher Freezing Issue at Gigs

Hey all,

Back in September, I added a MIDI Fighter Pro Beatmasher to my DJ setup. For the most part, I absolutely love my beatmasher. At home, I have no noticeable issue with its functionality and found it a great addition to what I've been doing, but I've had quite a few frustrations when taking it "in the field" so to speak.

I'm a touring pro DJ playing on both sides of the Atlantic. I've only begun to take my Beatmasher to gigs with me over the last month or so. Since making the purchase, I gave myself some time to get used to it and get to know it before doing so. Since then, I've had about 5 gigs where I've used the MF Pro. One was totally problem-free, but at every other gig I experienced issues with the MF freezing up on me. Things would start out fine, but after anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes, I'd suddenly get no response from any of the buttons or the faders. Traktor, however, would generally continue to function properly. When I have my gear set up at home for practice, recording, etc, the MF functions as it's supposed to and I have no issues at all with freezing. I've ONLY had this problem at clubs

I've had two incidents that were particularly frustrating:

1. Wednesday evening , I had a gig and experienced the freezing issues with the MF Pro. I didn't believe too much of it beyond annoyance because I would unplug the MF, plug it right back in, and things would be fine for a good while. However, the freezing happened repeatedly and in the Middle of my set, while hitting one of the beat slice buttons, the sound completely glitched out (by this, I mean loud noisy stuttering) and I had to immediately cut to the next track. I unplugged the Midi Fighter, but that noise was actually "stuck" on my channel A until I could reboot Traktor, even with no track playing or when loading a different one. I had to use deck C in its place for the remainder of my set. This glitch/freeze with lingering noise on the channel had happened on one other occasion, but it was during soundcheck so I had a chance to reboot Traktor before the club actually opened.

2. Several weeks ago, I was in the UK and played a gig there. I was experiencing frequent freezing on my MF Pro, but found that 9 times out of 10 the unplugging and replugging trick did not help the issue at all. In fact, not only would the Midi Fighter freeze within a few moments of starting up, most of the time it wouldn't even work, period. A few of the LED buttons would blink (I can't remember which, sorry) and it would respond to no commands. In the event it DID work upon being restarted, it would only be for about 2 minutes before freezing on me again.

My setup doesn't change, whether I'm DJing in a club or just working on stuff at home: NI Kontrol S4 (standard mapping) and MF Pro Beatmasher running into a 13" Macbook Pro with Traktor Pro 2 (all latest patches installed). I'm also using the Focus AB .tsi file for the MF with the S4 added in. My S4 is completely stable and I've had few problems in the year I've owned it.

In international settings, the only difference is that I have to change the type of plug I'm using. In both cases, I swap out the plugs on both my Macbook Pro and S4 power supplies with the adaptors made specifically for this gear by Apple and Native Instruments themselves.

Anybody know what's going on here? Anyone experienced issues like these? Admittedly, I'm still a bit new to working with MIDI Fighters, so there's a lot I need to learn, but I simply can't figure out what could be causing the issue, especially because it's a bit like a Jeckyll and Hyde thing in terms of dependability.

Any fixes? Anything I can do to prevent these sorts of issues in the future? I love my MF Pro and what it can do, but I really need to be able to depend on it if I'm going to use it in a live situation.

Any help would really be appreciated on this one. Hopefully I've provided enough info, but if more is needed I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Ilyssa