Set craft
Soundcheck
A soundcheck is the time before doors to test your setup through the venue system — levels, monitoring, connections — so that nothing is discovered for the first time in front of a room.
In practice
Check the connections and the monitor, not the sound — an empty room tells you nothing about a full one.
Work through it in a fixed order: every channel passing audio, your own media reading on every player, the headphone output and cue mix, then the booth monitor and its own volume control. Set your channel gains against the mixer meters rather than by ear, and note where the master sits so you know what you have been left. If you are on a DVS or a controller, test the whole chain including the interface before doors — that is the setup that fails in a way nobody in the venue can help with. Ten minutes, done once, properly.
Every channel
Confirm audio passes
The monitor
And its own volume knob
Against the meters
How to set gain
Where these come from: Booth procedure, not catalog figures. For what we can measure, see setting the level itself.
Why it matters
Most DJ problems in a booth are connection problems, and every one of them is trivial to find at six in the evening and impossible to fix at midnight. A channel that is not passing audio, a USB the player will not read, a monitor that is deafening at 2 — all of it is a soundcheck away.
The part people skip is the monitor. An empty room sounds nothing like a full one, so the level that seems right at soundcheck will be wrong later; what soundcheck is actually for is finding out that the monitor exists, works, and which knob controls it.
Frequently asked
What should you check at a DJ soundcheck?+
Connections first: every channel passing audio, your media reading on every player, headphones and cue mix working. Then the booth monitor and where its volume control is.
Do DJs get a soundcheck?+
Not always, and rarely a long one. Arriving early enough to do a two-minute line check yourself is usually more realistic than expecting a scheduled slot.
Why does the club sound different when it is full?+
Bodies absorb high frequencies and change the low end, so an empty room is brighter and boomier. The level that sounded right at soundcheck will not be right later.
Related terms
Booth monitor
The booth monitor is the speaker pointed at the DJ, fed from its own output with its own level control. It is separate from the master, so turning it up changes what you hear and nothing the room hears.
Gain
Gain sets how hot a track arrives at the channel before anything else touches it. It is a correction for how the record was mastered, not a volume control for the room.
Line level
Line level is the standard signal strength equipment sends between devices — a player into a mixer, a mixer into an amplifier. It is far stronger than a microphone or turntable signal, which need preamplifying first.
Rider
A rider is the document setting out what a DJ needs to perform — the technical rider lists equipment and setup, the hospitality rider covers travel, accommodation and the practical side.
Explore: Mixing guides · Booth monitor · Headroom · All DJ terms