DJs take heeeeed
Delay
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http://www.vibeconductor.com/blog/2009/03/31/djs-stop-playing-so-fing-loud/DJ???s: Stop playing SO F***ING LOUDScience March 31st, 2009loud-music[photo: myslavelake.com]I want to talk about gain control today. Because it???s really out of control.As DJ???s, we???ve spent hours, weeks and years honing the various aspects of our craft: mixing, scratching, blending, programming a set, reading a room, digging for new sounds, mastering various types of equipment, learning about different genres of music???But truthfully, most of us fail at monitoring and maintaining optimal sound levels. It???s the one aspect of the craft that has been completely abandoned and I???m aggravated about it.If you???re not wearing earplugs at any show or nightclub these days, you???re in for a brutal assault. A few years ago, I started leaving a set of earplugs in every bag that I use. My regular day bag, my dj bag(s), travel bags. With the type of schedule I keep, I never know when I might end up at a party, a show or a session, and I ALWAYS have to be prepared with plugs.With most DJ???s these days, if you take a look at their mixer at peak time, the meters are slammed in the red, their gain knobs are maxed and their master volume knob might be topped out too.Red means ???Turn the volume down, you asshole!???If there isn???t any dynamic processing in the signal chain, at best the music will sound horribly distorted. If there are compressors and limiters and they aren???t set right and/or you???re pushing them too hard, you???ll get that irksome pumping sound. At worst you???ll blow a speaker or two, or all.Then you have people on the dance floor looking like this:loud_crop[photo: addicted2salsa.com]These people are not enjoying themselves.Understandably, many sound systems are poorly set up and maintained. They make it difficult to pump the music so people feel it in their chests and asses, but aren???t being assaulted. Note that I said ???difficult??? not ???impossible???. Our own judgement and attention to detail are the best tools for creating an optimal experience for the folks on our dance floors.- EQ your tracks as you play them.Cut those shrieking mids or that rumbling sub-bass. You???ll often find that perceived loudness increases with clarity as opposed to simply cranking it up.- Start your set with optimal gain levels.This might seem so basic but it???s so misunderstood. Unity gain is generally marked on most volume controls as the 0 (zero) level. That means that the signal coming into the channel is the same level as the signal going out. YOUR JOB IS TO MAINTAIN UNITY GAIN ALL NIGHT. You should set your master and the front end processing (if you can access those controls) to allow you some headroom over the course of the night, but you should NOT use your individual channel gains for overall volume control.Gain creep is a fact of life for the DJ. Over the course of a gig, the amount of distractions grows, the energy in the room increases, the noise floor increases as more people pack into the space, and one must compensate. But rarely is this done with any sort of specificity. For far too many DJ???s, louder is always better.- Walk the room.I regularly leave the turntables to assess the volume levels. Some folks find this odd. (???What are you doing out of the dj booth?!????) If it???s a room I???ve never played before, I do this a lot. Few of us have the opportunity to always play clubs with optimal DJ booth monitoring, so it???s almost a given that the sound in the booth will differ drastically from the sound on the floor. YOU MUST ALWAYS BE AWARE OF WHAT YOUR DANCE FLOOR SOUNDS LIKE.Please, all of you. You???re killing folks out there. People going home from parties with migraines and ringing ears. Sound systems being blown. Records sounding like crap because of distortion. We all want our parties to crank, but ultimately Bob Marley knew the way things should be:???One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.??? (Trenchtown Rock)
Comments
My main and number one complaint with 95% of the clubs I play in are the shitty f*cking sound system and set ups they have!!!! Ugh........ It's pathetic. You have a nightclub and spend money on everything but the sound system? New york clubs seem to be the only ones that have good systems. Seattle clubs are shitty. They don't even care. I have argued so many times with club management over this issue. The casino I play at has a dope system. I know they spent like a half a million on lights alone and it shows. You get what you pay for. I never ever have to max the system out there and never hit the red and it thumps with clarity.
I don't but I probably should.
Since I'm working as a sound technician at the radio I'm extremly concerned about my ears. Always have my earplugs in a small bag attached to my bunch of keys.
I can only recommend to make yourselves one of these:
It's a lot of money which but it's good invested. You get a plug that's custom made for your ears and a pair of filters that reduce sound pressure at exact figures like 9dB, 15dB, or 25dB. You can change filters depending to your needs. The best thing is that the filters reduce the frequency spectrum in a linear way. Like this you will still have a fairly balanced hearing instead of the mumble you hear with the cheap ones.
Do some DJs NOT do this? I know that in some rooms, no amout of eq'ing ing going to help, but in a decent sounding room on a decent system, you have to pay attention or a screaming guitar solo(or worse, screaming trumpet solo) is going to affect people's central nervous systems if you aren't careful.
And I concur, some folks just play shit too damn loud. I would rather err on the side of having to turn it up.
The worst is at weddings and special events, I mean this is not the club. The shit does not need to be on 11 during cocktail hour.
Yes, having someone in the party request that you turn up the music is probably a good thing. And of course, there is always the question, "How is the volume, up or down?" This is
pushing it into the red could be a habit that was developed while DJing on a small system. or on a big system in front of a huge crowd. also rappers like to feel the music so they turn up the volume.
also during the battle.....
I'm guilty of blasting bass. I do it when I am excited and when I want to call attention to the jams.
but Birdman9 is on it. always ask hows the volume.
also I try to pinpoint the dominant females on the dance floor and ask them to keep you in check.
*if you get her working with you then I'd say you will do alright....sometimes she is the bar tender.
I think being asked to turn it up is a compliment, but it is tricky playing all different records to all different people.
peace
illmonstu
I was basically making the point that it's real dumb when the music is so loud that you have to yell in someone's ear to communicate with them. Exited DJs need to realize that they're destroying an enjoyable part of a night out: being able to talk to people.
in the end, its up to the owners.
my experience in the lounge, bottle service scene is that the places are always built with aesthetics in mind, so they don't put in exposed speakers and the sound suffers. however, they do put a ton of money into the dj booth, and pay the djs very competitive rates. the result is that they want to get their money's worth out of the dj by having folks dance, stand on tables, whatever....but the systems suck. so...they always come running up and telling you to max out the sound. at one spot that i have dj'd, the owner routinely comes into the booth and pushes the gain knob all the way to the max.
This is all context, however. On the dance floor, I think people expect to have to yell, hopefully there are other areas in the club to escape to talk. Just this weekend Fatback and I were working at a regular club that many DC strutters have DJ'd, and there was a private party. No big deal, private parties can be quite fun to work, but these folks insisted on having the music quiet, even after 10pm. The problem was that the room they were in is connected(by sound) to the out door deck, and the volume situation between the 2 rooms starts to get complicated if you are having to have the main room significantly lower, as the deck sound is already lower still(the escape from the volume room). Essentially, we were left wondering why someone would go to the expense of booking a popular club for a party on a Saturday nite if they did not want the experience of being in that club on a Saturday night, but rather a lounge experience (which, oddly enough, is what I provide in that same club early Friday nights every week). It made the night kinda lame to have to wait til after midnight to pump it up even a little. And let me clarify further, when this club takes a private booking, they make it clear that all the party is getting is the exclusive bar, security to keep other club patrons out of the room, maybe food, and that's about it. The private party does not dictate the music or much of anything else, at least not the few times I have worked them.
words to live by.
Sometimes. It kinda depends on the monitor situation. I always wear earplugs when I'm in der clurb and not spinning, though.
Yeah, totally. As soon as I get done they go in. I can't mix with them in, at least at the regular spots I used to play at. People would look at my ears like I stuck kumquats in them. "You're wearing earplugs?" they'd say. "Yeah, you're not?" I'd reply.
where to cop? I'm in the market and I like that you switch the filters.
In germany every hearing aid audiologist will make the plastilin plug for you. I don't know where to do it in your home country. This is one of the german companies offering the filters:
http://www.meineohren.de/soundoptimierter_gehoerschutz.html
The thing most expensive is actually the filter (75 Euro a pair). I just use the 15 dB ones which is enough for maost situations. I still don't feel comfortable mixing in the club while wearing them but in especially nasty booth setups I did it a few times and it worked allright. These were some of the best invested 150 Euros in my life. Never again without them. It's such a good feeling when you're in the club (not DJing) and you can let people yell directly in your ear without doing damage.
What sucks, though, is that often what the owner, promoter, or whoever booked you wants is not what everyone else in the room or on the dancefloor wants.
I've played at many places where the sound system was so terrible the music would be loud in certain areas and too low in other ones. I usually always move around the club/room or whatever to check it out at least twice but it doesn't always work out the way you would like.
Another issue is that when you don't have a monitor or it's not properly set up and you have to evaluate things based on that you will unknowingly be doing a bad job.
Is this why whenever I step up to a listening booth at a record shop the volumes are all maxed out?