DJ Vintage

Trip down memory lane, thank you! My first serious and matching turntables were Lenco beltdrives. 🙂

Somewhere in 77 or 78

Greetinx,
C.

I know … just yankin’ your chain LOL

LOL … when I started in the mid/late 70s, the first mixers came out. Til then you would have amplifiers with multiple (2 lol) inputs with rotary volume controls. So that was your “mixer”. Most turntables had very weak motors (actually true til the crazy torque 1200s appeared! – with the exception of some radio station models) and although you could do something with a slipmat, that was usually only good to do a quick start. Besides no backspin needles, so they’d either eat your vinyl or break. So something like beatmatching wasn’t a real option. DJs would actually talk a lot in those days while in the background doing the transition from one song to another.

It was (for me) not a case of not wanting to but first not knowing it existed and there not being the right gear. At some point we got DJ needles, “real” 2-3 or 4 channel mixers with faders and pre-fader listening (cue), slightly stronger turntables that you could use a slipmat on and backspin with and do some (far from) subtle nudging.

I like to think the crowd got educated too in the meantime, even if they are exactly the same people as back then I would have come to expect a little more advanced DJ-ing now.

But that is just me. To each his own right, it’s a free world.

Greetinx,
C.

Hi,

Yep, headphone is no delay, both your cue and your master sound hit your ears at the same time.

I can tell you how my setup is. I have a Numark NPM-100 (not the 5!), just one – I can’t see the added value in a stereo setup – that I have on a microphone stand. I can angle it towards my ear and set it on a height I prefer, which in my case is about halfway up my chest and angled upwards. It takes RCA and combo (Jack/XLR), has a mic/line setting and volume control. Puts out 100W RMS into two fullrange 5″ speakers. The good thing about that (as opposed to an 8″or 10″ with a small tweeter) is that this keeps it to a small (although not extremely lightweight) form factor.

For me practicality was the major factor, sound quality a clear second. Having said that, I think they sound ok, definitely loud enough and with enough low punch and high clarity (after all you really only need the bass and clap/hi-hat/snare for mixing) to fulfil my wishes.

I want my practice setup to mimick what I do in real life, so one speaker, one side headphone is a real as I need it.

The absolute kicker for me is that I toss it in the car when I go somewhere and if there is not booth monitor, I take it out, set it down, plug it in and I have my own booth monitor with me. Easy. And I have a spare speaker if something goes wrong :-).

I position it on the opposite side of where I keep my cans and turn down the volume (have a booth control on my mixer and on my controller) when I am done prepping til the moment I actually do the mix. No delay, clear sound and I don’t lock every other sound out as I would wearing my full headphone when doing the mix.

Again, this is my setup. You might check out and preferably listen to the NPM100 and see if this might work for you.

Greetinx,
C.

You have such a way with words, Terry 🙂

That is a hornet’s nest LOL. Highly personal choice. Depends largely on your exact set of wishes and demands on the one hand and your budget on the other.

If you want to practice and want it to sound close to club PA equipment, getting smallish (10″) active PA speakers might be your best bet. They will be also be suited to do small house and garden parties and general moving around. A couple hundred bucks should get you something nice with stands.

If you want to do more mastering and have an overall more “true” sound, a set of studio monitors would be better. Realise thought that studio monitors (in general) will be more tiring to listen to, due exactly to their “true sound” character. Also they are not made for long time, high level volume listening (bad idea anyway, unless you fancy lots of whistling in your ears in later years – tinnitus).

A good monitor with a user-friendly price tag is the KRK Rokit series. 5″s are ok (lacking a tad in the lows for real production work, but I have been using them for years and they suite me fine), 6″s are definitely a little beefier. 8″s are nice but are way too big physically for my taste as near-field monitors.

There are a few “rules” to setting up monitor speakers, but other than that it’s pretty straight forward.

What many people tend to forget, (and this is not important for practicing DJ-ing, but is paramount for good production work), is the acoustics of the room you will be using. No amount of speaker quality or EQ-ing can compensate for a “nasty” room. And when it comes to acoustic treatment of a room, you’ll need loads of specific knowledge, (usually expensive) materials and quite often structural work. So, before you invest heavily in a set of really nice monitor speakers, it may be an idea to look at the room first. You CAN compensate for room acoustics in your producing/mixing/monitoring, but it makes your job a lot harder.

We’ve said it here before: “if only there was an easy answer” :-).

Greetinx,
C.

Hey Syd,

My tip: send an email to the secretaries of the various corporate offices and ask them to give you a top 10-20 of favorite stuff in their country (up to you to limit it to certain genres of course).

No need to become proficient in international music in a hurry for one gig (unless you really enjoy the experience and don’t mind to spend the time needed).

Greetinx,
C.