Beginner Setup – need advice!

Ok. Our current advice is to have a look at the Reloop Beatmix 4 as well. It comes with a FULL version of Serato (which saves you a 100 dollar upgrade), has great jogwheels, according to our house Reloop specialist Terry and is very complete, 4-channel and a complete steal at the 299 euro they are asking for it currently. Limited time offer apparently, so …

Secondly, depending on which type, the Sennheisers could be a good choice. The new HDJ7 and 8 are very good (not cheap though) and of course there is the inevitable HD25-II (get the alu ones ! LOL … just my wish talking).

Finally, being deaf on one side. The sound that comes out of the headphones will be stereo. There will be a knob on the controller that let’s you change the balance between cue (pre-listen) and master signal. Usually one would listen to the cue on the headphone (one-side on your ear) and the other to the master coming out of the main speakers or a booth speaker (if the main stack is too far away). This is not gonna work for you obviously. So using the cue/master knob is what you will have to make work for you.

I am guessing that you have learned how to deal with not hearing on one side and developed some compensating skills. It have had some ear infection ones during a very nasty cold and lost hearing in one ear for about 95% for a week. I did do a gig the way I just described and it can be done. Obviously I stopped practicing that after my ear healed, but goes to show it’s possible.

Actually I know there are a few guys on here that prefer to mix through their cans! If the controller/mixer doesn’t have a so-called split cue button than what comes out of each side is pretty much the same, so using one ear should be very feasible.

These days there is the additional support of things like sync buttons (like a get out of jail free card if you run out of time to get them mix right before the track runs out and you haven’t fully integrated using a long loop in your workflos 🙂 ) and waveforms on screen.

All in all I’d say go for it. The Mixtrack Pro II is a good controller, I am very charmed by the Denon MC2000 (not just because I am a Denon buff either) and, as said, you should look at the Beatmix 4.

Good luck and greetinx.

Set your audio to mono in your system prefs. I know several DJs who use in-ear headphones to mix which they never take off and mix via the “mix cue” fader for pre-listen and master.

+ sennheiser hd-205 this is the one i can recommend for you, advantages of this one is, its cheap compared to others, has one side cable(less irritation and less chances of breaking wire). you can also go for nx audio headphones, these are cheap but not well build, cheap plastic which breaks easily.

Short from setting your sound to mono (which it often is on the PA end in venues anyway), there isn’t anyway. Merging the l and r signal cables is a bad plan (and can actually hurt your headphone amp). So, you’d need a mono summing amp (which takes a stereo signal, feeds it through some internal circuitry and offers a mono signal at the end) to do that.

Fact of the matter is that if you have your cue mix set somewhere between cue and master, you get both out of one ear anyway (well two, but in your case you’d only be using one). Bass (kick) is mono anyway, even in a stereo system and usually they don’t pan the clap/snare hard left or right, but keep plenty of that driving sound in equal measures in l and r channel.

So, I’d just use a regular headphone and instead of listening with two ears, you’ll be listening with one. I am pretty convinced the stereo/mono issue won’t cause you to lose much (if any) musical information pertaining to mixing.

Greetinx.