Best Way to Set up a Mic for the Mobile Club or Bedroom DJ so You Don't Get Feed Back

0:01 Channel receiver, receiver channel, couple

Right, ladies and gentlemen, as usual, Jonathan Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor here. So, the microphone had a couple of emails from actually recently over the past couple of weeks, so I thought let's do it. From a couple of people, different places, different times and eras, asking me about the right way to set up your mic. Now, this may seem a little bit sort of weird, like, I mean, it's a mic, you turn it on, you talk into it, and you get sound from your speakers. But there's a little bit more to it than that, because it doesn't matter whether, like in this room, you've got small, tiny monitor speakers or a very big PA system. What I'm about to show you is exactly the same for both. So, whether you're in a nightclub with a massive sound system or you're in your bedroom, you want to do a bit of live streaming and you want to use your mic, it's exactly the same. Slight difference though, and that is that if

You are, of course, in a big nightclub and you have your own booth system, in other words, you've got your inside your booth monitor system, then, of course, you need to check on that as well. So, I will be explaining about that. So, right. Okay, first and foremost, I've got this here. It's a wireless system from X-Vive. It's the U3. So, I've been using this for quite a while. So, this here plugged into the microphone is, of course, the transmitter and down there is the receiver. And what I like about this is you can choose the channels. So, you've got anything from one to six channels. So, if you've got one, you just channel one on here. Same with the receiver. So, if we look there, I'm on channel one. Let's say I had this mic on channel one, the receiver channel one. I had another microphone. I could go to channel two and two on the other receiver. Anyway, right. So, what do we do?

2:01 Let's imagine I'm going to turn that off

Okay. So, let's imagine I'm going to turn that off. Everything is turned on, right? So, you've got your speaker system, your decks, everything's turned on. One of the first things I recommend you do is to turn your monitor system up full. So, there's a little dial there and I've got that all the way as high as it can go. Now, bearing in mind with that, that doesn't mean to say that all of a sudden I press play and it's going to be very loud. It will be if, of course, I've got volume all the way up and the gain all the way up, but we're not going to do that. So, what I'm going to do is on my controller, I'm going to turn the master volume all the way down. Okay. So, that is pretty much all the way down. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to switch the microphone

On and I'm also going to switch the transmitter on and the receiver on. Now, if I start talking through the mic, of course, you can't hear me. And if I turn the master volume up, you can't hear me. If I turn the master volume down and turn the mic volume up, you still can't hear me, but that's because one's up, the other one is down and vice versa. So, what I'm going to do, I'm just going to turn the mic up on the dial here to about 11 o'clock. Now, I do have treble, mid and bass, and I'm going to set those to flat. Flat is 12 o'clock so I'm not increasing, decreasing, bass, middle, treble. I just want them to stay at a constant. So, I've now got the mic by my mouth and I'm going to start talking. And while I'm talking,

Well, I'm talking anyway, I'm going to slowly bring the volume up now on the gain, the master volume on the controller. Right. So, can you hear like a slight echo? Up. If I turn it up a little bit more, listen, one, two, three, one, two, there. Could you hear that high-pitched sound? Now, that's known as feedback. Now, that's something we don't want. If you get feedback, you imagine that on a small system like this, it's a little bit ear piercing. You imagine that on a big sound system, it's just going to be ridiculous. Now also, you may hear there's when I talk, there's like this sort of almost like a mid sound after I talk. So, you don't really want that. So, what I'm going to do is I'm now going to turn the volume,

4:55 Loads of DJs, professional, nonprofessional around the world

The gain on the mic down just a bit. So, put it about there. One, two, one, two, three, one, two, three, there. Right. Now, that's completely gone now. Okay. Absolutely gone. Now let's turn the gain up the master a little bit more. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. It's there still. So, I'm now going to turn that down just a little bit more. Okay, right. Let's turn the mic off. Okay. So, why have I done that? Well, loads of DJs, professional, nonprofessional around the world. They'll plug everything in. They'll turn the master volume up. They'll plug the microphone in and then they'll switch the mic on only to have that mad feedback. Instead, if you set up your system like I've done now before you play anything, then you know by the volume

You've got there, you're not going to get any feedback. Now, during the course of the evening now, if I want to, I can switch the mic on, just turn it on and start talking like that. And then when I finished, turn the microphone off. So quick tip there as well. If you've got a mic and you're using it, the last thing you want to do is keep it on and put it down somewhere because there's a good chance of you getting feedback again. So also with a switch on your mic, it means you don't have to go to the controller. You can just switch up and down. Now, again, if you want to, you can use the EQ. So what I'm going to do, turn that back on one, two, three, four, one, two. Let's turn the gain, the master volume up one, two, three, one, two, three, four.

7:12 The microphone is listening to what's happening through the speakers

Okay. Now I've got like a kind of an echo sound, so I'm going to turn my mid down a bit and also maybe the bass down a little bit. One, two. It's still there a tiny bit, so maybe turn the bass down a bit more, maybe the mid down a bit more. One, two. Yeah, it's still over a little bit. So I'm just going to turn the master down a tiny bit there. Okay. It's pretty much gone now. Okay. So why do this? Well, one of the worst things you can do is you're halfway through your set. Someone says, oh, give me the mic. I want to have a little go. You turn it on, you're piddling around and all of a sudden you've got massive feedback. Now, the microphone now is right next to the speakers as well. Okay. So by all rights, I should really be getting feedback,

But I'm not because I've set the microphone level correctly. Now again, if you're in a club in the club arena and you don't have a monitor system, maybe you can turn it up a bit more because the microphone will feedback depending or it'll feedback a little, a lot or none at all, depending on how close the microphone is to the speakers. Because what's happening is you're almost getting a loop. The microphone is listening to what's happening through the speakers. I don't exactly know the correct terminology. Maybe someone in a comment. I can tell me the actual stuff that's going on. I mean, there's got to be some kind of genius out there that can explain this in greater detail, but by doing this, you're not going to get feedback.

Now also, if you are, let's say, in a nightclub and you do have your PA system for your DJ, another great thing to do is if someone wants to use the mic, just turn that down or turn it off even so you're not going to get any feedback. All right, now please, by all means, send me some comments. Let me know what you think. Maybe you've been in the situation where you've been to a big nightclub, all of a sudden the DJs come on and you've heard whistling and everyone's looked at him or her so they're idiots. Or maybe you've been somewhere and you're having problems setting the microphone. I'm going to finish this video off with simply this. If you've got your microphone on and you can hear any kind of whistling or echo or sound, a different kind of sound when you turn

The microphone on, it is because the microphone is giving you feedback. The PA system is giving you feedback, should I say? So the best thing for you to do is turn the game down on your mic. Turn it down until you can't hear that sound. Once you've set that level, then leave it. Leave it for the rest of the night, but also just make sure you don't start turning the master volume up, because when you turn that up, the microphone is also going to turn up at the same time. All right? Bear that in mind. All right. Thank you for watching. Practice and enjoy.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.