DJ Vintage

Please post in the correct forums. I moved this post from Mixes, Music and Shows (for registrations of exactly those things) to the DJ Booth, all things DJ-ing that isn’t MM&S, Hardware or Software.

To all (new) posters in general: It is not rocket science, simply reading the description of each forum should give you a good clue. And it makes our volunteer moderator lives a lot easier.

On-topic. +1 to D-Jam for dressing for the occasion. Unless you are the headliner or a well-known resident, do not try to outshine the principals (wedding couple, company hot shots, birthday boy/girl). As a mobile DJ you are a (often major) part of the entertainment of the night. So you WILL be in pictures, people will look at you more than at random guests in general. This means whatever you wear is fresh (as in no 10-year old clothes), clean, pressed and appropriate for the event AND your station in it and it should look as if you put some thought into it not just grabbed the thing hanging closest to the front of the closet. I pays to have some clothes that you bought for DJ-ing. I have a few such pieces that I probably would not wear in private, but that do give off a vibe when DJ-ing.

Being DJ “Vintage”, I can sometimes use clothes to emphasize the Vintage bit.

Assuming most people still dress up to go to an event or venue (to an extend), it pains me to see that even at ridiculously priced festivals the 50k+ an hour main-liners will still show up in jeans and t-shirt. But, they get to wear what they want and people come to see them, so they get away with it. A luxury the other 99.9% of us don’t have 😀

Spotify is a really bad choice for anything but perhaps music discovery. You are NOT allowed to use tracks from Spotify for public performance. This is where DJ Pools differ from music streaming services like Spotify. A DJ Pool will most likely come with permission to use stuff in public (provided the venue is paid up on relevant fees). Careful though, not all DJ Pools are created equally. So read the small print if you want to be on the safe side.

I just noticed you had also posted your question in the DJ Hardware forum. It is against forum rules to post the same question to more than one forum. Please check the forum posting guidelines and adhere to them.

I have removed your other post. This is a final warning.

Well, you will not find any help here when it comes to finding ways to get “free” commercial or otherwise pirated tunes. Period.

There are some platforms and way to find tracks for free, because that is the way the artist/label distributes them and some posts on these forums have been made in the recent past about that topic. The search option is your friend. Clearly this will not be mainstream stuff, but can contain some very interesting tracks. Unless you are very underground, I don’t think this will allow you to build up a full collection of playing out in public though.

We live in a world where the price per track is down to 1 euro/dollar a track in sufficient quality to use publicly. Gone are the days of having to buy albums, even if you like only one or two tracks, for prices from 20 to 30 euro an album.

If you start playing in public for larger crowds, you should either have the money to pay for your hobby or make money for doing your job. In the latter case, a single gig will play for a large part of your collection.

We are also advocates here of highly efficient libraries, this means only having in your library those tracks you know you will play regularly. Being on a tight budget will help you turn every potential track around 10 times before committing money to it. And once in your collection you will treat it like the gem it is.

DJ Pools seem like good alternatives. 10 to 20 euro a month can give you access to a large amount of music. That said, it’s repetitive costs and once your collection is up to speed, you probably won’t be buying that many tracks each month.

DJ-ing, while infinitely much cheaper to get into than in the “good ole days”, is still not free. Nor is it a human right to be able to DJ. Digital DJ-ing requires a laptop and a controller, headphones, possibly a microphone. Together well worth a minimum of 500 euro or more. But as you have noticed, you do need to buy music too.

We advise new DJs to start building their collection from day one. If it takes you a year to get ready to play out and you spend 15 euro a month on tracks, you will have a collection of around 200 tracks. Picked carefully those 200 tracks will allow you to easily play a 4-hour gig.

As you said, ripped internet versions of tracks sound so bad on bigger systems that you will not endear those giving you a chance to play on their system/in their venue.

I’d do some searches on these forums and read up on recent threads on the topic of library building, music discovery and track sourcing.

Hope that helps some.

There are a few issues at hand here.

1) Gaining. Set the crossfader to center or better yet switch it off (if you are not scratching you really don’t need it LOL). Proper gaining of your system is important. Load a track in a deck and play a louder part of it. Set the channel gain/trim so the loudest part has the 0dB light burning (near)constantly and the next light flashing on the peaks. Now open up the channel fader to full. You are now putting out a constant 0dB signal to the main bus. Turn up the master volume knob until the master signal meter reads a constant 0dB with one light more flashing on peaks. Take a piece of white gaffa tape, stick it next to your master volume knob and mark the setting.
Next set your speakers to their respective 0dB settings (usually marked), if not, just set them to full. As you can never send more than a 0dB signal to the speakers, they should not go into limiting. If they do, just run them up til it goes into limiting and then set them back a bit (about an 8th of a turn or so). If you keep an eye on your channel trims with every track (best practice anyway), you will never clip or oversteer anything.

2) Speaker setup. Running your speakers (too) hard because you have more people than the system is made for is not good practice. It will make things sound crap and worst case kill your speakers/amps.
Proper way to set up a single sub/two top configuration is (generally, assuming the sub has both input and high pass top outputs) to run dual XLR cables from L+R output on controller to sub. Then run a single XLR from the high pass outputs to the individual tops.
If you add a second sub (assuming same brand/type), you just unplug two XLR cables(input sub and high pass output) and run the input into your second sub and the high pass output from that sub to the other top. Making for two identical stacks on either side.
Do not mix and match if you can help it. If you want to add a complete system (sub with 1 or two tops) from another brand (a matching set, so not a WD sub with a Mackie top), just use the full signal through outputs on the sub and run it to the seconds system.
If you want to use various brands of subs and tops together, daisy-chain the subs from your main sub (no stereo image there, so just go from one to the next) and the L and R tops from the through output of your main system tops.

Clearly you want to be using proper XLR cabling for all of it.

3) Indoor we calculate an average of 5Watt RMS per person, outdoor about 10W, all depending on musical styles too. If you play much bass-heavy stuff and you want it to be felt, you can go to 10W/person indoor. If you have 700 people at a gig, you’d need at least 3.5KW and up to 7KW (although that’s a bit overkill imho, even for 700 people). I can safely assume that your Alto setup won’t make that (or anywhere near). I have a Mackie HD-series setup with 2x 12″ tops and 1x 18″ sub and it puts out true 2kW RMS. So I stay under 350 people to be on the safe side. Any more than that I either rent extra sub/tops from Mackie HD-series or I just get a complete rental PA for the occassion. It beats having several brands and types and all.
Also for a bigger venue, I would always choose to have multiple tops spread through the room (even considering going mono if my setup allows it) to have a more even sound level dispersion and to prevent things from being way (too) loud at the front and not loud enough halfway and further down the room. I usually go 4 inward firing speakers on the corners and even a set of side fills halfway down the side (also firing into the dancers) if the room is relatively long. This way you can run your speakers a lot less hot and still have a nice even sound all over the dance area.

Hope that helps some.

I moved your post to the correct forum. Please pay attention in the future to this.

Platinum Notes is the software I use to normalize (and do a few other things to) my tracks. It’s not free, but for personally more than worth it. MP3Gain is the most well-known free alternative, but it works in a completely different way and not in a way I like. People have also used the normalize option in Audacity, also free software.

While a bit ambiguous about it being a DJ Booth or DJ Software item (and deciding Booth is more appropriate as calling MixCloud DJ Software is a bit of a stretch), it most definitely was nothing to do with the inner workings of these forums. So it’s been moved to the DJ Booth forum.

As for your question, I have no clue.