Bad Digital DJs

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Bad Digital DJs

Hey guys

So this past weekend I had the joyful experience of a stomach virus that decided to only let me move from the bed to the bathroom and back for two days. I had to call out of the 2 year anniversary night of the gig I spin at cause, well, it would have just ended poorly for all.

They had a guest DJ booked. This DJ spins on Traktor. Apparently a nightmare ensued. The night started at 10:00PM. One of the guys that runs the event told him to be there early so they could set his stuff up, and then he could go do whatever he needed (he does audio work for a living, so keeps odd hours). Well, that didn’t happen.

He showed up at 12:45AM. He tried to set up his stuff and, lo-and-behold, he has no sound card.

He’s running his audio out of his headphone jack.

That’s right. He has an RCA cable to 1/8".

Well, he plugs into the DI box to the board, gets nothing. He plugs into the DJ mixer, registers three green bars, five when they max the gain. He consistently blames everything on the venue, the other DJs and says “Why isn’t Jared (that’s me) here? He could make this work” to which I laugh cause I’d have told him he needed to get out and come back with CDs or an audio interface.

And this guy has a gold record hanging on his wall. It makes me die a little inside.

Another good one.

We book a laptop DJ who spins on a Hercules Rmx controller and Virtual DJ for a Saturday night. He calls me up Friday night (I’m drunk as fucking hell by 9:30) to ask me what kind of cables he needs for the club. I told him what we need on our end (1/4" into the DI box or phono to get into the DJ mixer) but I don’t know what’s on the back of his controller (I was surprised I was this eloquent while I could barely see).

Saturday he calls me around 6 to double check. Says the back of his controller has 1/4" and Phono. I said stereo 1/4" to 1/4" is easiest. He brought those.

Well, I plugged everything up, he maxes out all his volume and I am having a steady, normal conversation with him on the dance floor. He doesn’t know why this is happening. I don’t either cause, well, I am not programmed to know every DJ controller on the market. So I play around a little and look at him and say “This is how it’s gonna be. Either spin on CDs or it’s gonna be soft and people are going to not have fun.” I told the guys that run the night, that was that.

He came up to me right before the night started and says “So, the back of the controller says that RCA is +4 and the 1/4” is -10. What does that mean?" I just shook my head and said “+4 is bigger than -10. It’s louder”. He got a little offended and I shrugged.

So, I left cause, well, I wasn’t spinning, my girlfriend looked for parking for two hours and was going to have a nervous breakdown, and I had a headache, so, I got the best of the story the next day. During my friend John’s set, VDJ just started looping a sample of “Throw your hands up in the air” randomly. The DJ didn’t know it was him, he didn’t know was to do, and he hard shut down his laptop.

And this was before he had his set.

So, unbeknownst to our lovely digital DJ, he didn’t know that when you restart VDJ it doesn’t save your audio settings. So, he restarted the program, fired it up, and away we go.

He starts playing, has his headphones on, and apparently the sound was so bad that people just walked right out of the room. After a quick “fix” it didn’t sound like warm, steril death… instead just… well… death. It could only get so loud (cause why would anyone bring different kinds of cables), he did some “mashups” that had no discernible beats, and then he thought he did really well and wanted another gig.

And I have to defend laptop DJs in my scene.

The guys who run the night told me “You’re the only laptop DJ we’ll let spin here.” And I have to do the whole “Well, let them talk to me cause I will make sure they know what they are doing, and will provide the cables just in case, and don’t ever book these guys again” dance. It sucks.

So what have your run ins been with embarassingly bad laptop DJs?

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how is it possible for someone to become a dj and not know this basic ass shit like what a club uses for audio inputs, and gain stuff (if the person was actually a good dj) and if not (well actually either way) I hate them in advance for the work I am doing to become a decent dj before I even have made a myspace to promote myself (because I’m not nearly good enough). So I am studying and they are out there ruining digital djs reps (which are already bad).

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exactly!

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Wow. There were so many opportunities for that guy to get out of the hole, but he just kept digging.

But I guess anybody can n00b out and have a really bad night? Well, maybe not that bad.

The lesson I take from this? Bone up on my CD-DJ skills, just in case.

5

I think most of it is these people are producers who want to make some extra cash . So rather than actually putting together a live set they think it’ll be easier to call them self a DJ and make a half assed effort at it .

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Been a bedroom dj for a yer or so, would never dare to go out in a gig without asking, just becacuse I DON´T KNOW HOW IT WORKS OUTHERE.
At some point in our lifes we all begginers want to have a gig other than those we give to our friends in our house with our lousy sound equipment. But for this to happen there’s still a lot of things to learn, the big risk (and the great advantage as well) for digital Dj ´s is that everyone can try it.
It would be nice to have someone, like the experienced people here, to give us some tutorials about the different kinds of set ups in clubs.
Personally, I don’t know much about it.

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Ean has an article on setting up in a club.

The steps are pretty easy. Plug sound card into DJ mixer (usually phono connection). Just bring different cables (phono (or whatever plugs into your interface) to 1/4", phono to XLR, etc.) and connectors and you’re set. And know your gear.

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I agree. If there isn’t already a feature like Nicolas describes, I’d love DJTT to make one. Some kind of walkthrough that includes the sort of setup you’re likely to encounter in a club, what you should always bring i.e. cables/gear/stands, maybe some audio parameters.

It’d be pretty helpful in a lot of ways, if only because the DJs who already work in the club may not even know what they’re doing, and wouldn’t be much help.

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Honestly, I had to teach all of the DJs at the night I spin at how to use the gear. I had to show them how to use the mixing board, the DI box, their eyes still glaze over when I talk about the difference between the EQ on the mixing board and the EQ on the DJ mixer… how to use gain and volume…

ugh… sometimes I feel like a god

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  • Setting up digital dj gear in a club by Ean Golden
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Wow, I had the 1/8" to RCA guy problem 2 weeks ago. I came in about and hour 1/2 before I went on just to notice how horrible the sound was. I asked the owner, “What the fuck is going on, did the speakers blow?”. She, not knowing anything about sound, and her sound guy being out that night, shrugged. Then followed that with it’s been like this for 30-40 minutes.

So I run up to the booth and ask WTF?, he is confused and says it doesn’t sound that bad. I look on the back of the mixer and Dun Dun Duuunnn he has his internal sound card ran through a 1/8 to RCA to phono. Phono NO NO! He said it wasn’t loud enough in aux. And I told him “Because your sound card sucks” (Smiling as always).

Needless to say, he didn’t come back. I think he had a premade list on his PC that his simply press… play. Not to mention I had to tell him to get a drink and leave me alone for a while because all he wanted to do is talk while I was DJing after him. I guess that was what he was used to, seeing how he didn’t mix.

I understand the noob syndrome, we’ve all been there. But come prepared. My sound card fuck up on me 4 times in one night. You better believe I was on the CDJ with in a second to make the music come back. Not fun, but prepared yes.

DvlsAdvct, you need to get me a spot in NY. We’ll show them how to use Traktor :smiley:

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Dvls, Foreverhex, would you two be willing to throw up a basic guide to cables, gain and the essentials of preparing a club mixer for plugging one’s digital set up into it? I know Ean has the video posted, but some more in depth information would definitely make me feel more confident about walking into a club {fingers crossed, some day} to set up my gear. Even a list of the right questions to ask the resident DJ/soundguy?

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Maybe this will help some one

Here is what I think:

Firstly:

You can’t go out of the headphone jack on your laptop soundcard, you can’t monitor and it doesn’t go loud enough. Buy a soundcard.

:smiley:

You should know the difference between, RCA / TRS (1/4 jack) / XLR so that if someone says to you, “hey our mixer/desk only has XLR inputs, do you have XLR to RCA adapters”, you know what they’re talking about.

Some sound guys can’t fathom the fact that all the mixing is done internally. But you need to explain it makes it really easy, if you mix in software, all you need to do, is get/steal/buy cables, that go from the loud outputs of your sound card, normally ‘TRS’ or ‘RCA’, that go TO ‘TRS’ or ‘RCA’ inputs in the club soundsystem.

I carry TRS to XLR as well just in case :smiley:

If you mix externally. You will be using the club mixer, you need two separate stereo channels from your sound card. either 4 TRS to RCA cables or two sets of stereo RCA cables.

One stream of audio going to one channel of the mixer, and a second to the other. Then you can use the mixer to EQ, monitor and cross fade. and the mixer should already be connected to the club sound system.

it’s usually best to give a sound guy a lot of level, about 70% on the main output of your sound card. Don’t be afraid! Crank it out.

Make sure the cables are out of the way, tangle free and ideally, labeled. So there is a minimal risk of them getting unplugged by accident or falling out.

Turn up early for soundcheck!

Rj

x

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Stuff I bring is in the attachment. I bring 2 sets or RCA’s (components, red and whites, LandRs)[fig A]. One bigger than the other just in case I have to be further away from the mixer than I thought.

I bring a set of RCA to 1/8 [fig B], never had to use these before. Just in case.

A set of RCA to 1/4(left and rights) [fig C]. I’ve only used these at a house party.

Always bring a power strip [fig D], the club may have one. But a lot of the times it’s already full.

I bring some of [fig E] just in case also. You never know when they have a wierd ass mixer the you need to convert your 1/4 headphone jack to 1/8. Never happened before, but you never know.

Also, extra usb cables. I think that is the most of it for me. Any one else?

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I’m not a professional sound guy by any stretch of the imagination, and I have a very rudimentary understanding of the technical aspects of professional audio so I don’t want to assume I know what I’m talking about in a serious fashion.

I have a basic idea of how to take something and make it sound kinda good. If it goes to shit I can’t really fix it.

Pretty much, the way I conceptualize gain to volume is as follows. As a disclaimer, this could be a bad way of looking at it, and if it is someone can correct me and I will accept that.

This is how I explain it to new DJs so they have an idea of the correlation.

Picture a tube. That where your sound is traveling through. Think of the sound as bouncing off the walls of the tube as it travels. As the tube widens and tightens the volume stretches to match it. When everything is set to “normal” the sound bounces equally from wall to wall as it travels. Now, for a club, normal audio is not good enough. We need to increase the sound that travels. Just turning up the volume, though, isn’t enough.

The gain increases and decreases the diameter of the tube, widening and tightening it. This, though, changes the way the sound bounces off of the tube. If the tube gets too tight (turning the gain down) not enough sound can come out and the volume can only get so loud. If the tube gets too wide (the gain is too high) the volume gets stretched too far and starts to strain and distort.

EQ changes the tension of the sound as it travels. Too much high and it gets too thin and sharp and causes pain, too much bass and it gets too thick and muddled, too much mids and it shakes too much, overwhelming the ear drum and overtaking the other frequencies.

So you need to find the happy balance for your sound system (the tube) to meet between the gain and the volume for the individual tracks. You need the tube to be the perfect width for the volume traveling through, and that volume needs to be EQ’d to travel through the tube in an individual fashion for each song that you play.

I think that Volume and Gain should be set and not really tweaked too much unless needed. Use the crossfader, it’s what it’s there for, in the end. Now, different songs can be mixed at different levels, of course, so EQ needs to be tweaked, and sometimes gain and volume needs to be changed depending on the age of the song (compare 80’s dance music to modern dance music in a wave form editor and you see some crazy obvious differences, but the loudness wars is for a different thread).

That’s how I conceptualize it. Of course there are numbers involved I don’t know, and this isn’t perfect, but it’s a good way to explain it so people can understand.

On the topic of cables, until the guys I work with lost them, I brought a pair of quarter inch cables and a pair of phono to quarter inch cables. Now I only bring two pairs of stereo phono, a whole bunch of phono to quarter inch converters, usb cables and my own rig (laptop, audio8dj and controllers). I need to stock up on more stuff now (1/4" stereo, 1/4" to phono stereo, XLR connectors), and I need to start bringing my own powerstrip, but I usually think of that when I get there and need to scramble.

Hope this helped

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Honestly, there are idiots who call themselves DJs on all formats. I can’t count how many terrible DJs I’ve had to shake my head at. But eventually they all dig their own graves. I just continue to stand tall. Promote the DJs I like (digital or not), promote myself, etc. And let that speak for itself. Whether or not I defend a DJ should have nothing to do with the equipment they use, know what i mean?

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Oh of course, RSDJM. That’s not what I’m trying to get at. I’m sure any DJ who has spun at a club has had a bad experience with some DJ, but I’m just curious what everyone’s experiences are with strictly digital DJs

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+1, Amen Moniker!

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We have a DJ in town that plugs his macbook directly into the mixer (1/8" to RCA) and plays off of iTunes. does that count?

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Hope he doesnt plug into the phono port :stuck_out_tongue: