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Just posted this video about how to deal with a few terrifying technical issues you might encounter during a gig or DJ performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_yKjtBmqt4
I'm interested to hear about any DJ nightmares you have run into and how you have dealt with them on the job. (Research for part 2 maybe :D)
Good timing - I've had a couple of months of them :D
Going back about 6 or 7 weeks, I had two weekends in a row where either me or my customers kicked my power out of the wall mid-gig (I did it at a venue where the sockets were made in the 1920's and the plugs literally fell out of the sockets at the slightest touch). Most of my kit recovered fine after the power drop, but the VDJ mapping for the mixer section of the MC6000 controller went completely nuts, meaning that fader 3 became assigned to channel 2, fader 1 to channel 4, etc, etc and I spent the rest of the night trying to remap my brain and fingers to use the right side of the deck!
Talking to a few other people, it should have just recovered without remapping itself, so I used the issue as an excuse to finally move my DJ laptop up to Win10 and from a hybrid hard drive to SSD.
The Win10 upgrade was completed 3 weeks ago and the first few gigs were fine. Last weekend though the sound dropped out for a few seconds twice during the night, but each time came back by itself. On Saturday night though it dropped completely 2 songs from the end of the night and I had to switch to backup. The switch over wasn't too smooth as I tried first to recover the main deck by powering it down and up again (it was running video too, whereas the backup wasn't hooked up) and was then complicated by one of the guests standing next to me making drunk requests in my ear as I'm trying to get ANY sound back on (she misunderstood what I meant by "Plan B" and started going on about some of his worst songs... :D )
Anyway, limped to the end of the night on the backup and powered it up the next morning to try and check it over. It all seemed OK so I figured it'd get me through the 1hr kids party I had yesterday (working for another DJ). Got to the kids party, setup, checked it again and all was well. 15mins before the start of the party I got a phone call from the other DJ to tell me that they'd given me the wrong venue and I was setup in the wrong hall!!! Kit down, back in the van, rush to the RIGHT venue and setup the bare minimum and VDJ opens and crashes out immediately. With 30x 4 year olds and an annoyed parent breathing down my neck, this was bad timing. Complete reboot of the laptop and VDJ opens and limps through the gig (with some delays between button pushes and action).
Turns out installing the Denon ASIO drivers was the wrong thing to do on Win10, it's a class compliant device, the native Windows drivers are the ones to use and Denon ASIO driver is known to be a pile of poo :bang:
On the plus side, I've pulled the mains on the controller a few times and it now recovers with consistent mapping so I've finally fixed my (re)mapping issue :D
Julian
My DJing nightmares of late....
1. First dance music disappearing.. this was due to power to my controller vanishing. I panicked a bit & after trying TWO spare PSUs and a whole spare controller it turned out to be a dodgy socket on my own 4 way mains extension! I discovered that though the customer may forgive such a problem, the guests might not. I heard comments from guests like "you ruined the first dance" after sticking to the venue's hard & fast finishing time.
2. A groom came up to me after I'd set up & asked what colour I was going to do the uplights. Uplights? There's nothing about uplights in my notes.. OOPS! Very sweatily rectified just in the nick of time, not helped by guests inviting themselves into the room 15 minutes early.
3. Guests demanding to use the mic when they're drunk then kicking up a stink with the customer because I've not complied lately. One threatened to make sure I was :Censored: on the venue's TripAdvisor. She hasn't... Yet...
Lee, welcome along to the forum, and could I ask you please to pop across to Newbies and introduce yourself? We're a nosy lot, and like to know who we're typing to. Thanks.
Julian, I'm curious as to why the 6000 lost memory. My VMS when used with my previous laptop would not function correctly when powered only by USB from the laptop. The soundcard wouldn't connect. However, a couple of times recently, I've forgotten to plug the mains in, and on my latest laptop, it functions perfectly, other than laptop display being dim. I'd look towards a poorly laptop battery perhaps, or some power issue from the USB ports.
Justin, I've had dodgy sockets in multiways before. Real pain to diagnose, and usually sends you off in the wrong direction first.
The 6000 won't run from USB power alone and just switches off when the power is taken away (my old VMS was like yours and would generally run OK from USB power). The MC6000 didn't "lose" the memory/mapping, it's just that VDJ did some really crazy remapping of the controls when it lost and reconnected the controller. Upgrading to the latest version of VDJ seems to have fixed it, so I'm assuming it was a bug in VDJ of some kind (prior to this upgrade VDJ hadn't been updated for 18 months or so - I'm always reticent to upgrade anything that "just works").Quote:
Originally Posted by Excalibur
Julian
I've had a few DJ nightmares over the years, mostly to do with guests being proverbial pains in the backside or venues that I would rather never visit again..........EVER for one reason or another. I won't bore everybody with those, but I will no doubt bore you with this particular incident that happened when I'd been going full time just a couple of years.
Luckily though, one of the most important things I learnt from the very start (and was also said on here countless times), was that BACK UP was super important.
I was booked to DJ for some friends of friends who used to go to my Indie / Alternative nights back in the early 90's. They were chuffed when I confirmed that I did do weddings and didn't just concentrate on the dark and dingy clubs, playing anything from Indie, Punk, Goth, New Wave etc etc.... I was happy too because it meant that I'd see a bunch of old faces from back in the day, all suited and booted and looking smart who would no doubt request loads of music from that era.....(they did!).
The venue of choice was a very, very nice one, just 5 minutes drive up the road in the van from my house...(that would prove to be VERY handy). I'd provided lots of Discos at the venue in the past, and did lots after this wedding too and I'd never had any issues whatsoever.
I would always arrange to set up early so I wouldn't have to sweat my bits off because the load in involved a bit of a walk, especially as the venue wouldn't let you park on the grass right outside the venue which would make it 10 times easier, no....that would have been too nice of them!
So, the Saturday morning arrived. The van was loaded up and off I went to set up. At the time I was using an all passive system. I had a pair of JBL JRX 125's powered by a Crown XLS602 (I think?) and some Peavey subs powered by a Peavey 2000 (I think?). I bought the Crown brand new and had used it around 25 times up until then. I bought the Peavey off a fellow DJ. It was in immaculate condition and I'd used it probably 20 times at least.
I set everything up, did the usual sound check and gave it a good 10 minute blast and all was well................then I left.
When I arrived at 7.00pm, a good half hour before I was due to start, the guests were flooding in to the venue. I went behind the set up and turned the power on. The Denon HD2500 and mixer in the flightcase powered up, as did the lighting box and the lights..........However, when I pressed the power on the Peavey, there was nothing! I thought I'd seen a flash of light inside it, but didn't think anything of it.
I panicked for a second and then thought to myself "Ok, no subs tonight then". I didn't think it was much of a problem although yes, I was pretty narked at the time. I mainly used the subs to just fill out the sound a bit more as the JBL's, even though they were full range, they did sound a bit top end. So, I unplugged the speaker cables from the Peavey as I wasn't going to be using it. Then I pressed the power button on the Crown and OH NO..... No power, nothing....It was then that I started to get pretty wound up. I saw the Bride and Groom approaching me to say hello and I was all hot and bothered. "Pretty impressive looking sound system" said the Groom.... (The JBL's stacked on top of the subs did look like a tower of power....only nothing worked!!!).... I asked them if they'd had a good day, all the time thinking to myself "I need to get home quick and get my active speakers".
Quick thinking time came and I told them that I just had to nip back home as I had forgotten to bring my back up speakers in case anything went wrong. "Better to be safe than sorry" I said, smiling as I legged it out of the venue, straight to the van. I arrived back home, grabbed the DB Technologies actives and got back to that venue as quick as I could.
All that panicking and I don't think anybody noticed I had gone.
I held my breath as I plugged those actives in. I pressed the power buttons and YES! they powered up and I started playing background music.
The issue I had, well 2 actually was firstly, the venue is quite large and my passive system would have easily coped had it been working, the DB's were probably good for a venue half the size. Secondly, all I could think about throughout the night were the 2 potentially ruined amplifiers near my feet. I had bookings the following Friday and Saturday and I would have to reply on the DB's. I was on my toes all night and was surprised at the end of the night when I was complimented by everybody. One couple even came over and said that they were impressed because I wasn't blasting out the tunes at a stupidly high volume. I did chuckle inside.
The thing is, NOBODY said anything about it not being loud enough either. I walked out front a couple of times and it was plenty loud enough on the dance floor. I did see the limiter buttons light up a few times on the little DB's (which I still have), and had to take some of the bottom end off the mixer.
It was a really horrible situation to be in and I never wanted to be in the same one again....ever. I ended up buying some Mackie 450's as back up during that week.
The amps? Well, the Peavey had literally died on me. When I took it to a repair place to be looked at, they said the board inside was burnt out and melted. It was beyond repair so I dumped it. The Crown? Well, the same guy said said the board inside had been destroyed, but it was repairable and he could get it back to new. £255.00 later, it was (and still is) back to new.
The issue? Well, the repair guy said it could have been (probably was), a spike in the electrics or something (I have no idea?) and it had fried the circuit boards.
Funnily enough (although not at the time), I was chatting to a guy who used to do regular gigs at the same venue and he told me that he had an issue once with his RCF active subs not working there, but they were ok everywhere else? He also knew of somebody else who had done a gig there who had issues too. I didn't have any issues after that and did around 10 other bookings there. I went fully active after that incident and always took my back up actives in to the venue too. In fact, after that I took back up with me everywhere!!
Tonight - scummiest crowd I've ever encountered at any gig (including some of Glasgow's roughest boozers) never mind a wedding in a 5 star spa hotel...