Buying A Mixer... or not?

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chasegreist

New DJ
Sep 29, 2011
34
0
33
Tallahassee FL
So last night was one of my first real gigs... I borrowed my friends PA system to DJ another friend of mine's apartment party. It started out small, then got pretty big and a lot of people said it was all thanks to the music, so i'll count that as a success. I was using my Mixtrack Pro, running it through my friends mixer (that I do not know the brand/type of but it looked fairly nice/expensive), then running it to a Kustom KPC12P speaker (not bad sound for only 100$!).

Everyone seemed to really love the music and I talked to a couple people about doing more parties, but I don't want to do this until I can get my own PA system. I have a good grasp on powered speakers and what I want, but not so much for the mixer. My First question is, is a mixer really necessary? What is stopping me from running the RCA cables out of the back of the mixtrack pro into the 1/4 in jack found in the back of the speakers? Would I not get stereo sound or would other problems arise?

Question number two is, IF I do need a mixer, what are some good inexpensive options? Does the quality of the mixer alter the quality of the sound? or is that completely reliant on the quality of the music/soundcard/speakers?

Thanks for your input everyone!
 
Any time you're running sound with more than one input, you should have some type of mixer board. The mixer allows the operator direct control of gain and level in one place.

Without a mixer, you have no way to control your sound. Some sources are louder than others. You can't run to the active cabinets to make adjustments every time you start a track. You need that control at your fingertips.

If you're on a tight budget I'd suggest a Numark board. Numark has been a fixture in mobile DJ rigs for many years.
 
I'll look into your suggestion for Numark, but why can't I make these adjustments directly on my controller? I've got EQ's for each track, master gain and individual gain all in one place.
 
chasegreist said:
So last night was one of my first real gigs... I borrowed my friends PA system to DJ another friend of mine's apartment party. It started out small, then got pretty big and a lot of people said it was all thanks to the music, so i'll count that as a success. I was using my Mixtrack Pro, running it through my friends mixer (that I do not know the brand/type of but it looked fairly nice/expensive), then running it to a Kustom KPC12P speaker (not bad sound for only 100$!).

Everyone seemed to really love the music and I talked to a couple people about doing more parties, but I don't want to do this until I can get my own PA system. I have a good grasp on powered speakers and what I want, but not so much for the mixer. My First question is, is a mixer really necessary? What is stopping me from running the RCA cables out of the back of the mixtrack pro into the 1/4 in jack found in the back of the speakers? Would I not get stereo sound or would other problems arise?

Question number two is, IF I do need a mixer, what are some good inexpensive options? Does the quality of the mixer alter the quality of the sound? or is that completely reliant on the quality of the music/soundcard/speakers?

Thanks for your input everyone!
Click to expand...
See above in RED, is this correct? Were you running one speaker?
 
Thanks DJ SVO! That's exactly what I was looking for. So it looks like running a midi controller directly into powered speakers would work, but is a bad idea... Now I guess I'll be hunting for a mixer that I'll be using less for actual "mixing" and more for safeguarding my speakers.
 
chasegreist said:
And yes houston it was a single speaker. It was far short of professional but it was all that was available and for an apartment party it worked just fine.
Click to expand...
I would not even ask if you were running settings in Mono just by your statement. "What is stopping me from running the RCA cables out of the back of the mixtrack pro into the 1/4 in jack found in the back of the speakers? Would I not get stereo sound or would other problems arise?"
My friend you left off part of the music by running one speaker.
 
ahoustondj said:
I would not even ask if you were running settings in Mono just by your statement. "What is stopping me from running the RCA cables out of the back of the mixtrack pro into the 1/4 in jack found in the back of the speakers? Would I not get stereo sound or would other problems arise?"
My friend you left off part of the music by running one speaker.
Click to expand...

The statement about running the phono outputs from the mixtrack pro to the 1/4 jack in the speakers was a theoretical one. Last night I did use a mixer so I properly got both channels of the music out of a single speaker.

Let me know if I am misunderstanding you, since I'm not a huge audio tech!
 
chasegreist said:
The statement about running the phono outputs from the mixtrack pro to the 1/4 jack in the speakers was a theoretical one. Last night I did use a mixer so I properly got both channels of the music out of a single speaker.

Let me know if I am misunderstanding you, since I'm not a huge audio tech!
Click to expand...
How did you accomplish this task?
 
My friend who owned the PA system did the configuration, but I know we used the an RCA cable running from the back of the mixtrack pro into the mixer, then from the mixer an XLR cable running into the speaker cabinet. I believe what he did was put the left deck of the mixtrack on one channel and the right deck on another channel of the mixer, and have them output equally.
 
chasegreist said:
My friend who owned the PA system did the configuration, but I know we used the an RCA cable running from the back of the mixtrack pro into the mixer, then from the mixer an XLR cable running into the speaker cabinet. I believe what he did was put the left deck of the mixtrack on one channel and the right deck on another channel of the mixer, and have them output equally.
Click to expand...
It can work the way you described it if for instance the Mixdeck Left went into for instance Channel 1 left of the Mixer and the Mixdeck right went into for instance Channel 2 left of the Mixer. It would then have a left and right signal combined by the mixer into a mono signal going out of the Mixer's Left Output.

If the Mixer or Mixdeck had a Mono switch you could also get mono out by using just one channel of the mixer. Another option is to use a Summed Y Connector
 
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