Daryl Northrop

I use a Xenyx mixer to plug my controller into and run audio out to the club PA. If my rig dies, or whatever, I can plug my phone into the mixing board and run a pre-recorded set while I diagnose and fix.

This is also a way to keep the music going if DJ’s need to do extensive gear swapping.

Great points in this thread.

I got into house/dance/techno back in the mid to late 80’s, so the soaring mainstream popularity of EDM still baffles me from time to time. Plus, there is a ton of bandwagoning and me-too’ing that is going on. Also, big media companies are looking to cash in.

That being said, there is an amazing amount of good music being produced by small, medium, and big name producers/groups. The problem I have is having access to TOO MUCH good music and having to throttle back my consumption and how I incorporate tracks into my DJ sets. Back in the day (late 80’s, early 90’s)- finding a few good songs took days of crate diving at multiple record stores, often in more than one city. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but very time consuming, and often you couldn’t listen to a track in advance, so you had to take a leap of faith.

My $0.02 worth. I love DJ’ing more than ever, and I count myself lucky to be doing it in 2014.

I’m running into problems with venues that are too lazy to even update their facebook and twitter  with a link to the event your are supplying DJ’s for at their venue. May I bartend and mop up for you at the end of the night too?

Harmonic mixing is great if you have two songs that you are mixing together while lots of instruments/keyboards are playing. If you are just mixing together the two tracks while drums are playing – it’s not so important.

Again, like the other posts have said, your ear should be the final answer on whether or not a mix sounds good or not.

I had some hipster twats request LCD soundsystem *or* Radiohead. Gosh! A choice between shitty or narcoleptic? Dreams do come true!

I’ve been using a Twitch for over a year now and have been pretty happy with it. I don’t scratch either, so the lack of jog wheels has not bothered me. As far as quality and reliability it has held up well. It’s a great two channel controller. I do wish it could handle 3 deck or 4 deck mixing from time to time. It also has multiple sampler banks, which is  a nice feature if you are into that.

Now, about the sound- that is an issue, but not a deal killer. The audio output level from the master-out is quite low compared to other controllers. The audio out from the booth output is a bit louder, so sometimes I run that to the PA of whatever venue I’m playing.

Either way, you will want to invest in a small pre-amp to boost up the signal cleanly. You can do it by jacking up the gains on your channels, but I do not recommend that route. I use a behringer xenyx 502 audio mixer for this. It’s small, and runs about $50. A real life saver. Plus, up to two other DJ’s can jack into it at the same time, so it makes transitioning from DJ to DJ in the booth much less traumatic.

Hope this helps. If you have other questions, let me know 🙂

It is perfectly acceptable to Jesus-pose while you are dj’ing….if you are in fact Jesus. If not, do not ever do it, ever. EVER. Idiots like Aoki throw cake, so try throwing something at your audience. Maybe razor blades? Or mousetraps?