rupespad : DJ Guide
: DJ Guide: headphone use

Well, the bad news is that there's no right and wrong way to use your phones.  It's very much a personal thing, I have them on one ear only (the right one) – sometimes fully on, sometimes half on, and sometimes not on at all.  You should play around and find what's best for you...not forgetting of course that what's best for you will probably change as you get better.

I would strongly advise not using the headphone pre-fade on the mixer if it has one (you would use this to hear a mix from both decks through the headphones), or use any weird features which let you put the left deck in the left ear and the right in the right.  If your aim is to play in clubs eventually, it's highly likely that the mixer you'll have in front of you at these won't have any of these features - so you don't want to become reliant on them.  It'll only have a switch for you to choose which deck you want in the phones.  So, this is how you want to learn too.  However, particularly when you're starting to learn to beatmatch, you might find it useful to play around with these types of features to help you get an ear for telling which record is going faster than the other (cause it's mighty difficult at first).  If you do do this, it's a good idea to keep swapping back to just having the new track on the headphones each time you feel you've made progress, so you don't get too reliant.


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This page last modified:22/5/03