Hardware & signal path
Talkover
Talkover automatically reduces the music whenever the microphone channel detects speech, then restores it when you stop. On club mixers the amount of the dip is adjustable, typically between about 6 and 24 decibels.
In practice
Set the dip depth once, at the level the room actually needs, and stop reaching for the master with a mic in your hand.
On a DJM the depth is a rear-panel or menu setting rather than a front-panel knob, so it is easy to inherit somebody else’s. Fourteen decibels is a reasonable default for a club: the music drops clearly out of the way without the floor feeling like the night stopped. If the venue does frequent announcements, check whether the release is fast enough that the music is back before the next bar lands — a slow return is what makes talkover sound amateurish.
6–24 dB
Typical adjustable range
~14 dB
A workable club default
Menu
Where the depth usually lives
Where these come from: The adjustment range published for common club mixers plus a practical default — not catalog figures.
Why it matters
It solves a problem that has no good manual solution. Reaching for the master while holding a microphone means the dip arrives late, goes too far, and comes back too slowly — and you can hear a DJ doing it. Talkover makes the same move identically every time and returns the moment you stop talking.
The setting matters more than the feature. A shallow dip leaves the announcement unintelligible over a peak-time record; a deep one kills the room every time somebody breathes near the mic. Most venues want something in the middle, set once, and left there.
Frequently asked
Why does the music duck when nobody is talking?+
The mic gain is high enough that the channel is triggering on room noise. Lower the gain until only speech at working distance opens it, or switch the mic off between announcements.
Can I turn talkover off?+
Yes, and some DJs prefer to, particularly where the mic is only used for a single shout. The trade-off is that every dip you then make by hand is a different depth.
Does talkover affect the recording?+
If the record output taps after the master mix, yes — the dips are in the file. That is one more reason to set a sensible depth rather than a dramatic one.
Related terms
Mic input
A mic input takes the very low signal a microphone produces and amplifies it to line level, with its own gain, usually its own two-band EQ, and on club mixers a talkover control that ducks the music while someone speaks.
Ducking
Ducking pulls one signal down whenever another plays — almost always everything else dropping on each kick. It is the pumping motion at the heart of most house and trance.
Master output
The master output is the mixer socket that feeds the room. Everything you do on the channels arrives there summed, and its level knob decides how hard the club system is driven by the mix as a whole.
Feedback
Feedback is a loop: a microphone hears a speaker playing what the microphone just heard, and the loop builds until one frequency dominates and howls. It needs an open mic and a speaker the mic can hear.
Explore: Closing a set · Ducking · Mic input · All DJ terms