I am a beginner and I usually play at house parties and private events for fun. In this environment I find it’s often hard to hear the music good enough. Maybe the speakers are far away, not loud enough, positioned too far away from my sweet spot etc. It’s not very fun to do all the mixing in the headphones. I would like to be able to mix without them and was thinking about having a pair of small but great speakers at the make-shift dj booth.
Is this something DJs do? Are there any particular active speakers you can recommend? I am not too fond of the Logitech style cheapo PC speakers.
yup, that’s why most pro level mixers have a ‘booth’ output. I’m not sure about a recommendation, depends on your circumstances. I don’t have much experience of club installs lol. KRKs are always a good bet for sound definition and bang for your buck.
Hmmm… always depends on how loud you need em. For a smaller club situation a friend of mine got himself a pair of JBL Control 1 speakers and connected two of these to their back:
Not really massively loud, but I guess for house parties and such, absolutely adequate. Great if free space is an issue, and for monitoring, one could just as well use only one of them.
This might be a good solution if you have a spare one of these somewhere. A lot of people do.
Thanks guys. How would one go about connecting a pair of these to the Kontrol S4? Splitting the RCA output? I have no equipment that utilizes the XLR output.
btw the S4 doesn’t have XLRs, they’re TRSs, but yeh you could just get something that plugs into them. You can get cables to convert TRS to most other types of plug, such as RCA if needed, but TRS is a balanced signal and it’s nice if you can use that.
They will not be in a club environment but at home parties. I haven’t had a listen but according to reviews they should be loud enough. Will have a listen as soon as possible.
Well, I agree. Those would be by far the cheapest parts of my setup. But I will give them a listen. When there’s enough oomph in the room I won’t need them anyway. But I guess I will be spending a fortune on monitors in the end. I always end up doing that
Just had a look at KRK’s RoKit series. Which KRK do you have? I might opt for the RoKit 5 G2 series. Looks like they might do the job. Not very portable though, but that’s the penalty for better sound.
If your just looking for a monitoring situation, you really only need one speaker, seriously.
You just need that speaker loud enough to hear what you need to hear.
A lot of times I will bring one of my KRK Rockit G2 6" monitors to small house parties that have the EXACT issue you described.
I would advise getting either two of the 5’s or one of the 8’s.
One KRK 8 is going to be PERFECT. You only need one power cord, and one audio signal cable to hook it up. It will be fairly portable, and you can get bags for them too. It will be PLENTY loud, and will fill your need perfectly, as well as having adjustments on the back of the speaker for fine-tuning.
There’s a pic of most of it somewhere in the show your setup thread, but that doesn’t include the KRKs. I would take more pics but most of it’s in england and I’m in spain! what’s more it’s not even set up because the room I was using is in use for something else at the moment.
The weekends I go home it’s depressing to see everything unplugged, but as soon as I get back permanently from spain it’s all going to be set up in all its glory again!
Yeah, if its SOLE purpose is going to be as a BOOTH monitor for the DJ, there is NO need for two speakers.
Take up extra space, require extra cables, and your not looking for a “complete stereophonic experience” … you want to hear what the mix sounds like. One KRK 8 will do that with flying colors.
And as for routing them from the S4…
You have RCA and 1/4" outputs for you “mains” output.
I would use the “balanced” 1/4" output for the speaker system wherever you are.
Then I would connect two RCA leads to the RCA output on the S4, and right before I got to the ONE KRK, I would route the two RCA leads into one of these:
And then into the RCA input (single post) on the back of the KRK.
Adjust the Main output level in traktor so that you wont clip the signal (I run anywhere from -6 to -14db’s when I mix internally in order to maintain sound quality) Then turn up the amplifier, or home theater system to the loudness you would like to run at (knowing you have a little bit of headroom inside traktor to turn it up from your S4 as the night progresses, if you set the master out from -6 to -14 like I suggested ).
Now use the volume knob on the back of the KRK to adjust how loud you want it to monitor from, and if you want it to be louder or quieter throughout the night, adjust it on the back of the speaker.
This is what I will need to get. The RoKit 8 or maybe 6. Problematic to find a dealer in Sweden, but I’m sure they’re available somewhere other than online.
Just had a listen to the lauded Creative speakers and just as I thought they don’t do the job. Sounded great, but they’ll do a better job in a girl’s room than in my setup.
One RoKit 8 isn’t very expensive either. I can find them for about €270 around here.
Now I just need to figure out how to connect them. I have no idea what a TRS port is. They look just like the standard 6.3mm tele/guitar plug.
You could always get the new Rokit 10 instead :eek:
TRS is tip ring sleave, and yes it’s the same size as a guitar plug. In short, for a balanced signal (professional standard that eliminates noise caused by other electronics and static), you need 3 connections per mono channel (so 6 for stereo). XLR and TRS both have 3 connections, XLR is a bit more secure but TRS is more compact. There’s no noticeable quality difference.
I believe guitars use TS (tip sleave) which only has 2 connections but is otherwise identical.
Not trying to diss the KRKs, they’re great. But honestly, aren’t they a little over the top for a situation where you have sound from a headphone on one ear, sound from the monitoring system on the other and muffled, indirect, wall-reflected sound from the PA mixed in from the room to both ears?
