What's your biggest tip for DJs using PA systems for the first time?

Great topic. The biggest intimidation for me was the seemingly extra complexity/cables/connections with gear I didn’t really understand. And what always seems to happen is you hook everything up, drop a track, and silence. Then begins the swearing and panicking.
First tip is start from the front end and work your way back. Ie set up your gear first. It will calm your nerves and get you into hookup mode with stuff you’re familiar with. Then work your way to the mixing board/amp or powered speakers.
Secondly, actually, this should be first, TURN ALL VOLUME POTS TO ZERO.
I had an embarrassing momemt years ago DJing at a wedding reception when a speech was being made. I was finishing setting up and I can’t remember what I did, but suddenly, a godawful blast of noise came from the speakers and everyone turned and looked at me. Hehe.. hehe.. duhhhh….
Anyway, turn em down and once you’re hooked up, drop a track and check your meters to see you’re actually getting a signal. Another time, I wasn’t getting any sound and was convinced I’d made an error connecting to the amp, when Infact, in my pre gig nervousness I had plugged the cable from my CDJ into the booth out on my mixer.
So, play your track and follow the signal, turning your volume up,to a low level, as you go.
Hopefully, when you get to the last one, you’ll be rewarded by the sweet sound of the tune you are playing.
Although, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m amazed this still doesn’t happen as often as it should.
I did a birthday party last weekend and it was a simple setup, just powered speakers, and once hooked up I got zip out of one channel. Spent ages dicking around and getting frustrated. Which brings me to my trouble shooting tip – use a simple process of elimination to locate the problem, starting at the source. I did this and after checking the obvious stuff it turned out one of my RCA cables which I’ve used for years, had died. Never seen that before. Which also leads me nicely to my final tip – always bring spares of everything.
If after all of this, you still don’t get any sound, unplug everything, neatly pack it up and run away! Run away!

Definetly have things on seperate power supplies. I have my decks and mixer on one, the amp rack on another and the lights on another. Another tip which saves me a lot of stress, have it all pre-wired. I have a stand with an in built power inlet, xlr outs and a wifi router (it similar to a ZOMO stand but cost much less) I have a rack case with my amps, xovers, EQ etc all wired up so all I need to do is run the xlrs from my stand and plug the speakers in. After ever gig everything gets turned down before powering down so at the next gig there’s no sudden pop on power up. My top tip is quality over quantity when it comes to sound, if you need to crank it up to full consider upgrading. There’s nothing worse then full volume distortion, get out on the floor a few times during the night to listen because as the crowd fills the room the sound will change and if your speakers are at either side of you what you hear is not what the crowd hears

Here’s some pics of my desk it double as my home workstation too, it so pretty even the wife likes it : )
https://plus.google.com/114494655211253091441#114494655211253091441/posts

If it’s your first time using a club system, watch your levels and try to get used to the monitors before your set. Some monitors are great some won’t help you at all. I played in one club and for some strange reason the had the monitor underneath the DJ booth so the speakers faced up you could hear a thing from them but you could feel the bass in you feet. Luckily they’re having a re-fit and will be repostioning them. Also, you’ll be used to stereo sound at home whereas clubs tend to have a mono set up all you’ll need to concentrate on is the DJ mixer. If your not sure about the best level check with the sound engineer if there is one. Red lining is not good but it’s not always bad as most good mixers have plenty of head room. If your the first or only DJ get there early to test the level but remember what I said above about the difference of a empty room vs a full one and the warm sound from a warm amp and speaker couls compared to when it first fires up.

One last thing be prepared for the BUZZ!

This is an awesome topic.

Terry_42, post: 29831, member: 1843 wrote: Use a separate power supply for your PA and other gear (especially lights), especially if you live in the US.
Have good cables and have spare cables.
Turn all volumes to ZERO before startup.
Check your cabling at least twice before turning on.
If you have a PA mixer in your chain, make sure all channel faders are set to zero and the EQs are in the middle and all F/X turned off.
Turn on your gear from inside out (aka laptop -> controller -> mixer (if you have) -> other controllers -> monitors -> PA)
Break down from outside to inside (aka opposite direction from above startup)

Can I just say “turning all volumes to zero” is the worst thing to do. Thats a sound engineers nightmare! To get the best sound out of a system its about gain structure and signal to noise ratio’s. You need to have a even gain structure through your set up otherwise you will end up with a very hissy system or a over driven system.

Here’s a good little article on gain structure, its more for instruments but it gives you a good understanding!

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr98/articles/gainstructure.html

Bunyip, post: 30003, member: 2464 wrote: I think the point about turning all volume to zero is just while you’re hooking things up, to avoid unwanted or unexpected blasts of noise. Then you do turn volume up to get the right gain structure for the system. The habit also makes you check your volume levels which may have been left very high from a previous gig, and which you hadn’t touched since then.

Ok here’s the confusion, zero to a sound engineer is loud! What you mean is turn it to infinity which is out.

Push the levels to 2 bars of Orange (can vary depending on the club’s PA system though). I couldn’t get my music loud enough in my first gig cause of the clubs poor PA system in the room I was located in, however that is no reason to not try and smash the dancefloor 🙂

LOL … you do know you are reacting to a 1 1/2 year old thread here, right?

AH, missed that one (took the free course ages ago lol).