Gain Staging for DJs

I once went to kick it at an open decks session with a buddy of mine. It didn’t sound very good, but that’s open decks – sometimes new DJs don’t know what they’re doing.

I didn’t think much of it until my buddy went up. He brought his TR-8 instead of a thumb drive. And when he went up, it sounded bad.

I mean bad. Really, really bad – like wet farts bad.

I took it upon myself to peek at the house mixing console to see if I could see anything wrong.

Everything was wrong.

I spent a couple minutes adjusting the mix, with the hosting DJ complaining over my shoulder not to touch anything and my buddy yelling at him from the booth to leave me alone and let me work. The difference was night and day. The sound came into focus nicely – and everybody at the bar noticed.

The Problem:

Severe clipping caused by improper gain staging and panning.

Gain staging is methodically adjusting each volume control in a signal chain to achieve the optimal volume throughout the chain.

The Process:

1. Turn ALL of your volumes down. This includes gains, faders and master volumes. If there is a problem with the house mixer and you have permission/access to it, turn all of those volumes down as well.

2. Find a point in a track where it’s going full tilt and raise the channel fader on your DJ mixer. Adjust the channel’s gain (“trim”) until the channel meter is hitting around the yellow. NOT THE RED.

*Let me repeat that: DO NOT GO INTO THE RED.*

3. Now, raise the master volume on your mixer until you the signal hits the high greens/low yellows on the master meter.

*The space between your average level and the red is called headroom. Headroom is good – it allows your music to be more dynamic and gives you wiggle room while you’re mixing.

4. Go to the house’s mixing console. If you have your left and right outputs plugged into two mono channels, make sure you pan those channels all the way left and all the way right. This gives you stereo separation and prevents the two signals from stacking. (Part of the problem I fixed at the bar had to do with this very issue.) If you plugged into a stereo channel, don’t worry about this.

5. Find the gain knob and raise it, keeping an eye on the channel’s meter. If the mixer doesn’t have channel meters (or they are tiny LEDs), press the PFL button – this temporarily changes the master meter into the selected channel’s meter. Raise the gain until you are hitting low yellows. Do this for both channels. If you used the PFL buttons, switch them back.

6- Raise the master fader to unity (0dB). Now raise the channel volumes until you hit the appropriate volume for the room. Keep an eye on the master meter – you want it hitting in the high greens or yellows. If you still need more volume, adjust the volumes at the amplifiers.

*If you have adequate volume at this step and you’re still in the green,
that’s a good thing! This means you’re working with a killer sound system
that can easily get much louder. Stay in the green if it sounds good –
don’t push it if it’s not necessary.

7. If you turned down your amplifier volumes at step one, this is where you will raise them again. Same rules apply. Otherwise, this is where you adjust them if it’s needed.

That’s about it. The trick is to raise all the volumes in order down the signal chain so each component is receiving the signal at the optimal level.

If you raise all your channels to unity, you are not clipping (going red) at any point, your amp is maxed (and also not clipping) and you still don’t have enough volume, the house has a weak sound system. Not your fault, not your problem. Just play.

Conclusion:

The host DJ in the story didn’t know what he was doing. The music suffered all night because of it until I fixed it. Once I made my adjustments, the difference was so noticeable that people were literally asking who fixed the speakers. Don’t be like that host DJ. Don’t trash your set (or a whole night) because you don’t know proper gain staging.

-Chris
AudioMunk

Looking for more DJ-centric tips and tricks? Check out these articles!