Dealing with Club speaker latency

[Nvisibl]

I had my first live set in a club recently and experienced severe ussues trying to mix properly due to the latency between club speakers output and my ears

How do you guys deal with this?

My producer friend recommended me to get Sony mdr150 headphones and to mix within them

Will these do the job, or do you have any other advice for me?

Cheers

Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk

[Alex Murphy]

Headphones never solved lag, and mdr150s are entry level, I would not consider them for dealing with club sound levels.

It's either fix the real problem, or compensate by estimating the amount of lag with your ears and brains.

[mitchiemasha]

Welcome to the real world of Dj'ing, this is 1 of the first hurdles you have to overcome. A lot of what bedroom Dj's under estimate about the ease of the Job.

It's not really latency in the system... It's time the sound takes to travel from the main speaker to your ear. Electricity travels extremely fast, sound does not. Anything inside 20ms apart, coming from separate sources, our ears locate as 1 (HAAS) very hard to hear until you mix it together. Remember... even quarter a second is a complete train wreck, anything but perfect is wrong. Using loud monitors helps but the bass in the floor from the club system will throw you. One venue I worked the monitor made it harder, it got turned off. I'd quickly jump from complete headphones to system, allowing my brain a fraction of time to adjust for the skip. I don't use a monitor in my current venue, my ears are old and damaged enough. You quickly learn to adapt to the latency with those perfect cues. It was a lot worse when CD players had slow start times, especially if it was random for each press. This is why the Denons were king back in the rack mount days.

Play both songs in the same can on the headphone

Another bad one is when the crowd starts clapping during your mix. People are incredibly poor at clapping in time. You have to look like you're loving it but inside you're crying so hard! The fear of throwing your mix!!!

[Nvisibl]

Jeez, okay

I set all my cue points and grids on the tracks beforehand and use the sync button, so that's okay.

It's then mostly the fade in levels that I have no accurate control over at all. I imagine my mixing to be very clunky and abrupt most of the time because of this

I just can't get a good feel for it at all and thus loose the spontaneous creative edge to my set

I'm thinking here that my best bet is to buy better headphones and mix within them.

Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk

[BDC]

This club doesn't have DJ booth monitors?

[Nvisibl]

This club doesn't have DJ booth monitors?

No, bummer

I'll need to buy appropriate headphones and mix within them...if anyone can reccomend a suitable pair at decent price?

[mitchiemasha]

If the club doesn't have DJ booth monitors, that usually means it's a venue that has never really cared if the DJ was a mixing type or not.

You could always get a powered speaker and connect that to the booth output on the club mixer. A lot of the venues I first worked in I took my own monitor with me. It wasn't long before I would be putting in the entire sound system. Venues, management usually have no idea when it comes to sound, making terrible decisions, like buying PROSound speakers or bass bins that rattle to bits after 3 months. As a DJ for 20+ year, this is the worst thing I've had to deal with.

we all understand the WINE brand pricing trick. I've never understood why managers can't grasp this the same with sound. It's not hard. Don't buy cheap but don't blow the budget, something upper mid priced of average will do... But no! A £130 bass bin!!! when the others are like £1000. ARGGHH! lol! its not difficult to understand. Did they really think that would work!

Sorry just having a vent there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nvisibl]

lol, I totally get it.