Soundcheck before the gig - how do you do it?

nikopol

How do you conduct a soundcheck before you start your gig when you're not an opening dj (and have all the time in the world) and an option to make the soundcheck earlier it's not possible and all the dj's before you are playing on cdj's?!

Is there a "go to" master level (MAIN OUTPUT) setting in Traktor that you always use/have/set on and of course what's your limiter settings for a 4 deck external mixing?

Thanks for the help 🙏

AVLien

I am a sound engineer (for over a decade) and a DJ (20+ years). There is no such animal as you are asking about. There might be if you ask some DJs, but your engineer will disagree. I try to keep the master hitting around the second yellow (but just lighting it up every now and again). You really have to listen to it to know where the sweet spot is.

The room itself affects the sound, as does the signal chain, any processing on the master from the mixer (BOH, not your mixer) as well as the input processing. Your engineer will probably have preferences and know how their rig likes to be fed sound. LISTEN TO YOUR ENGINEER. DON'T ASSUME ANYTHING (except that if you are seeing red lights you are doing it wrong).

Making your audio sound so-so is simple enough using limiters and such, but if you really want to pull al of the sound out of your mixes, you have to pay close attention to your levels as you mix. There are no panacea settings to maximize your audio. The complexity of the signal chains on most big show rigs (and other aforementioned factors) makes this more an art and less a science.

AVLien

Excuse me, the master output on my controller only has one yellow at +4, so essentially I want my master going to the BOH mixer at about +2. If they can really push the speakers. zero is where you want to be, but often this will give you quite a bit of noise if the signal chain is not pristine. Again (I can't stress this enough) limiters make assumptions about the music/sound, so I will never use them if they can be avoided.