Advice on this sick Turntable, Mixer & Speakers Package

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing ... =294538717

2 Turntables, 4 channel mixer, 2 standing Sony home theatre speakers:

I'm mainly producing but am looking to learn dj-ing in the future possibly. I'm mainly sampling vinyl into my MPC so I need to buy a phono preamp anyway (my old preamp is terrible, stuff is way more expensive in New Zealand than America) so I thought this great mixer would be a good substitute. Based on the reviews I've read these speakers sound great, just what I want. However they're not "monitors" (they're home theatre speakers) does that matter?

Also, I'm going to buy a sound interface in the future so I can record out to a DAW, so maybe I should keep this in mind if I purchase this package?

Last of all in the future I may want to perform with the turntables (playing vinyl/scratching), performing on MPC.. What would this mean in terms of having a mixer?

Thanks!

4 Channel mixer should be enough for MPC + 2 Turntables... and something else.

Sweet. Any thoughts on the speakers? Does it matter they're not monitors?

jC__23 wrote:Sweet. Any thoughts on the speakers? Does it matter they're not monitors?

Yes it does matter. Anything set for production should be done with ref monitors. You could then use those speakers to a/b your mix, and try your material in other consumer listening environments to see if things are well balanced across the board.

dabmeister wrote:

jC__23 wrote:Sweet. Any thoughts on the speakers? Does it matter they're not monitors?

Yes it does matter. Anything set for production should be done with ref monitors. You could then use those speakers to a/b your mix, and try your material in other consumer listening environments to see if things are well balanced across the board.

Thanks for replying. Sorry what does a/b mean? Based on the reviews I've read though it sounds like these speakers would offer the balanced, clean sound you want when producing and mixing though? I don't see why you NEED monitors? I'm not a noob btw haha I'm just questioning why monitors are a necessity if you have good quality speakers? Damn maybe I'll need to buy headphones for producing AND Dj-ing? There aren't any good quality ones which work well for both producing and dj-ing are there? Because eventually I'll want to record vocals onto my tracks so won't I need open and closed end headphones for producing/mixing/recording and then dj-ing?

Thanks

jC__23 wrote:Sorry what does a/b mean? Based on the reviews I've read though it sounds like these speakers would offer the balanced, clean sound you want when producing and mixing though? I don't see why you NEED monitors? I'm not a noob btw haha I'm just questioning why monitors are a necessity if you have good quality speakers? Damn maybe I'll need to buy headphones for producing AND Dj-ing? There aren't any good quality ones which work well for both producing and dj-ing are there? Because eventually I'll want to record vocals onto my tracks so won't I need open and closed end headphones for producing/mixing/recording and then dj-ing?

Thanks

A/B is a reference to comparison. The problem with consumer speakers is they may sound good but they usually don't cover the same frequency response as reference monitors.

It's more like you having a choice to use a well balanced tool, but you'd rather settle for a different one that just gets the job done regardless of the offsets. Then this will show on how your project will sound at some point in the mixing/mastering process.

But I'm not telling you to not use whatever you want, just putting it out there that you very well might run into some issues down the line when it comes to properly eq'ing and getting a good balance of things.

And yes, you'll def want to grab a good versitle set of headphones.

you dont know why you need monitors? well to be honest you dont need monitors. The thing is, monitors are designed to sound flat and they dont accentuate any particular area of the sound... the reason you want that is because every person who listens to a piece of your music wont be using a pair of those exact sony home theater speakers... and you just spent all that time mixing your tracks to sound good on specifically those speakers. It's like mixing on a set of 5 inch speakers with a big sub woofer... you pass your track to the next guy who doesn't have a sub woofer and all your low end magically disappears.

dabmeister wrote:
A/B is a reference to comparison. The problem with consumer speakers is they may sound good but they usually don't cover the same frequency response as reference monitors.

It's more like you having a choice to use a well balanced tool, but you'd rather settle for a different one that just gets the job done regardless of the offsets. Then this will show on how your project will sound at some point in the mixing/mastering process.

But I'm not telling you to not use whatever you want, just putting it out there that you very well might run into some issues down the line when it comes to properly eq'ing and getting a good balance of things.

And yes, you'll def want to grab a good versitle set of headphones.

Ok I think I'll settle for these home theatre speakers and probably get some nice headphones primarily for producing at the moment, probably Sennheiser ones. The home theatre speakers seem like they'd be fine for DJ-ing (hearing all the scratching sounds, etc)

mr_debauch wrote:you dont know why you need monitors? well to be honest you dont need monitors. The thing is, monitors are designed to sound flat and they dont accentuate any particular area of the sound... the reason you want that is because every person who listens to a piece of your music wont be using a pair of those exact sony home theater speakers... and you just spent all that time mixing your tracks to sound good on specifically those speakers. It's like mixing on a set of 5 inch speakers with a big sub woofer... you pass your track to the next guy who doesn't have a sub woofer and all your low end magically disappears.

Thanks for clearing that up! Makes sense..

I've heard many reviews and it seems like these Numark Pro TT-1's are great and will do the job for me. Anyone else here had any experience with them?

The mixer has pretty good reviews as well, my only concern is that it may be too big and may be hard to use the cross-fader in conjunction with the 2nd turntable (on the right). It's an American Audio Q-2422 PRO 3 Channel DJ Mixer. Anyone else heard of or used one of these?