Vibration audio dropout issue
Hi DJTT
Was playing in a club last night with the booth literally mounted on top of the subs, using Traktor with an external mixer. Gets louder as night goes on, booth starts vibrating like mad, next thing audio starts dropping out momentarily. Eventually figured out the vibration was due to usb cable for sound card wobbling around in laptops USB port - however I am at a loss as to how to fix this issue for the future?
Thanks, Harry
laptop has SSD? what usb cables are you using?
That’s a had booth design, and it would negatively affect almost any setup…
Tape might help.
Getting an isolation pad for the gear to sit on would solve it better. Back in the day, clubs were built with suspended/isolated DJ booths using very heavy materials, springs, and/or rubber. A lot of people use Sorbothane for this kind of thing now, though it’s less common in the DJ world. If you play in that type of place often, it might be worth figuring out what size/thickness of a sorbothane pad will isolate your euqipment from the table it’s sitting on. I’ve seen that in a couple places, and it seemed to work really well.
Laptop has an SSD yes. Originally thought the issue was the laptop itself however whilst the music was pausing traktor was still completely respondent, hence reaching the conclusions I reached. I am using the USB cable that came with the soundcard (Numark DJ IO)
The booth was indeed awfully designed hahah.
Half way through the night I placed my laptop on the jacket that I bought with me to try and absorb some vibration. Thank you for that though, I shall check it out!
I use electrical tape from the laptop case over the USB plug.
Note the tape.
Same here. Note the tape on the left edge of the laptop.
Instead of looking for a short term solution, schedule a meeting with the sound tech. Explain the issue in detail.
TBH this is a super horrible way to setup sound period. Not only will that interfere with small electronics, it will effect jog wheels, loosen screws, etcetera. Not to mention making turntables complete unusable.
The problem is doing that for every gig. If you’re a resident, you can get away with it. If you don’t play that often, you probably don’t have the clout. And, well, the sound guys in clubs have a lot of different goals pulling them in different directions. I agree, it’s just flat out wrong. But, it’s also really common, at least where I’ve been.
Something not all that big/heavy/obtrusive that you can bring seems preferable for a lot of people, even if you don’t use it that much.
For a while, I had those inflatable turntable pillow things in my record bag (proabbly still have them somewhere). Flat out saved at least one pop-up gig where the only real alternative was to switch to an iPod or something. I’ve also run home to get my iso-acoustics speaker stands to put CDJs on after somebody thought it was an okay idea to use subwoofer cabinets as table legs…it didn’t work great, but the jog wheels stopped vibrating.
When you’re dealing with rampant incompetence, anything you can do is worth it, even if it’s not ideal.
Thats insane that you guys run into it so often. Luckily, I have only had it happen once. In that instance, it was “Thank you for the deposit and hotel, but Im not playing on that setup tonight.”
#TurntableLife
Noted, cheers guys!
There wasn’t a sound tech guy at all, and I doubt they’d care really. Was more just looking to avoid having the same issue in the future in a similar situation.
$2 roll of tape. Even the big boys use it.
Or throw a tantrum, diss the setup on the mic, storm off the stage and refuse to play because the setup was shite … seen that one from the big boys too 