Now, given that this site is predominantly about house music, I don’t want to head into ‘mobile disco’ territory here. If you’re playing music out, then chances are that you are plugging into an existing system in your venue. If you’re playing big clubs, there will already be an installation waiting to go, and all you need to do is get set up with your tunes in the booth.
What I want to talk about here, are some of the situations in which the deep house dj might find themselves, where you are playing in small bars, really providing a background soundtrack for the night, rather than taking over the entire room. And it is these situations that can often require a bit more thought and preparation.
First of all, make sure what is expected of you and be clear on what your role is for the night. Talk to the manager and try and get a feel for what sort of atmosphere they want for the venue. If it is a bar, with people sitting talking, think about your volume carefully. I have heard a lot more people complain that the music is too loud than complain about it being too quiet.
Find out (ideally several days in advance) what the venue’s music setup is and work through a checklist of questions:
Do they have a built-in set up with an amp you can plug into direct from your mixer?
What type of connections?
How far from the amp will your setup be?
How long do your cables need to be?
How is the in-house system set up? Is it summed to mono or does one part of the bar get the left while another gets the right? (This actually seems to happen quite a lot…)
In some venues that are basically bars, there may be a small space suitable as a dancefloor, but without additional sound reinforcement there. One solution I have used in the past is to use a single powered PA speaker on its side, much like a monitor wedge for a foldback mix on stage. Many modern PA speakers are designed so that they can be turned on their sides like this and angled up.
In the case of deep house music, you can’t really skimp on your low frequency extension, so look for speakers that extend down to 50 Hz or below. In a lot of cases, this means looking at 15″ woofers supplemented with a high-frequency horn. Normally, this would cause problems as, once woofers get to above 10″ or 12″, the cross0ver frequency ends up in the middle of the vocal range, reducing intelligibility. However, for most styles of EDM, this shouldn’t cause too many problems, as the rest of the venue system should cover this range well, and the point of this speaker is purely to supplement the bass frequencies in one specific area.
You will also need to consider how to add this additional speaker to your setup. If your mixer has an additional set of outputs, you can sum the L+R pair using appropriate cables to your powered speaker. If not, using splitter cables is perhaps not the best option. If you use one pair of outputs to feed multiple destinations, you will change the impedance load seen be that output, this will attenuate the output, with the amount of attenuation varying by frequency. If your situation requires splitting the signal, consider using an inexpensive small-format mixer, most of which will offer multiple outputs in the form of main, control room, tape outputs and auxilliary sends. An additional useful purchase is a stereo graphic equalizer, allowing you to tailor the sound to the characteristics of the room. Remember that if you soundcheck early, the sound of the room will change as it fills up with people.
Perhaps the most useful tips are the basics: do your homework and find out about the venue system; take many more cables than you need, as well as a box full of adapters; ‘Greal’ your setup, using different colours of electrical tape to label your cables so you can quickly find your way around what can quickly become a complicated nest of wires; buy the best cables you can, the quality of the wire isn’t as important as the connectors and good ones will survive a lot more plugging and unplugging; always carry duct tape and a good few electrical extension cords and multiways.
Hopefully, in most situations when you dj out you won’t have to worry too much about the setup, and any additional equipment you add won’t be nearly as complicated as if you were engineering a live band performance and having to worry about monitor mixes, stage boxes, phase issues etc. However, reading about large concert live sound engineering is never a bad way to spend your time, and it’s always better to know a little too much than not quite enough!
Fynn's House and Audio Tech Notes 