Beyond the DJ Booth
Brian B and Joe Bunn tackle questions about the private event DJ industry, share music, gear/gadgets, and stories from their events.
Beyond the DJ Booth
In-Ear Mixing, Cleaner Setups, Better Shows
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Some sets feel effortless - not because the crowd is easy, but because your monitoring and setup give you control before the first blend. This episode breaks down the practical choices that make private events smoother, from the IEM workflow we rely on at every wedding to the booth setups that tighten timing, reduce stress, and keep your mixes honest.
We start with the foundation: why one in-ear monitor and one open ear is the sweet spot for awareness, cue precision, and crowd connection and when full isolation makes sense with split cueing and a crowd mic. Then we move to the booth itself: how a small battery-powered floor monitor sharpens blends without blasting the mains, and why disabling your crossfader prevents those accidental sleeve-swipes that can wreck a transition.
In Gear Corner, we introduce a new batch of 3D-printed accessories built for working DJs: tripod cable clips for fast cleanup, column speaker caps that safely mount a wash light, and custom adapters for modern tube lighting. Thoughtful hardware, small-batch construction, and simple solutions that reduce friction across ceremony, cocktail, and reception setups.
We wrap with clean, actionable mixing ideas: when to choose EQ-based blends over crossfader cuts, how to route your headphones for better timing, and why consistent booth ergonomics improve your performance more than any new effect or plugin. If you’re trying to level up your sound, tighten your blends, or streamline your setup for weddings and corporate work, this episode is your roadmap.
If this helps you build a cleaner booth or a better show, subscribe, share with a DJ friend, and drop a review so more working DJs can find the podcast.
RESOURCES & LINKS
Our website. Please leave a review! - https://www.beyondthedjbooth.com/
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To book Brian B: https://djbrianbofficial.com/
Joe’s Gear Finds on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/djjoebunn
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Brian B's Coaching Options: Https://www.thdjscreativeedge.com
What's up, everybody, and welcome back to Beyond the DJ Booth, the Private Event DJ Podcast. I'm Joe Bunn. That is my boy Brian B, and uh we are just sitting here cranking out episodes today, full of laughs, full of knowledge, full of stories, full of music. And uh we just appreciate you guys listening. So what's going on today? How how what are we what are we are you feeling good? I'm feeling great. I can tell my voice is starting to get a little horsey? A little hoarse, a little horse. We've been doing a lot of talking. Normally I'm by myself here all day.
SPEAKER_01:That's true. You speaking of horsey, do you like horsey sauce? Are you a horseradish? Nah. I can't do it either. I don't fuck with it. Yeah, just as curious. Yeah, my wife loves that. I'm like, nah. Wow, I can't do it. Just doesn't work. It doesn't work for me. Garbage. Well, we've got garbage. We gotta thank some of our friends. So let's uh thank some of our backroom members. Tell people what backroom is.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the the back room is that that's the highest tier, right, on our Patreon. One of two. Um, Patreon is a platform that allows you guys to get more from us bonus episodes, uh, content in advance, bonus content, winky wink, uh, PDFs of what we played last week, PDFs of what we're gonna be playing in the future, uh, our favorite edits. I mean, all these things are in the back room. And the back room members that we want to shout out this time are Eric from Hovey Entertainment, Jeremy Parker. Yep, uh, Code P. That's a cool name.
SPEAKER_01:Code P. Again, this is like you can put whatever you want there. And then hello. We have hello, and then in their email address, it was like Rolling Waves. Okay, shout out Rolling Waves Interview. What's up, hello? Yeah, what's up, hello? Uh, these are folks that have joined the last little bit. So part of the membership is we get to shout you out. Hopefully, people follow you and check you out as well. But thanks for supporting the show. And uh, we got a lot of cool things coming in the back room. We're just like tossing some ideas around, actually, in between um filming here.
SPEAKER_02:So And always want to hear from you guys as well what you want. Um it's beyond, I'm sorry, it's patreon.com slash beyond the DJ Booth Podcast. Patreon.com slash beyond the DJ Booth Podcast if you want to be a member.
SPEAKER_01:We haven't named it officially, but let's head into our pop culture segment. So, dude, I saw this on Instagram. I sent it to you. It's just wild to me, but I think I need to get your uh I never did ask you what you thought of it. Um it's just crazy. So World of Club.
SPEAKER_02:Oh man.
SPEAKER_01:I'm glad I don't play in clubs anymore. Did you have to deal with that?
SPEAKER_02:I'm so glad I don't have anybody else touching my gear. Oh my God, dude. Can you imagine? No, I can't imagine. I mean, imagine that panic you felt when you were were on those decks in the in the middle of Peru or whatever. Totally. Nah, this is why I need my own gear, man. And and furthermore, this takes me back to when we only had two or three DJs, and I used to have little systems that they would have to come by my house and pick up. Yeah. When we when I was working out of my house, Bundy J Company was barely, you know, blip on the radar. Yeah. And dude, you know, somebody else the next weekend would come by and pick it up, and they'd be like, bro, there's no RCA cables in here. Right. Or like the microphone head is looks like somebody ran it over with a car. Or you know what I mean? Like the drawer, it was back when those you had those little dual deck uh CD drawers. They were like, the drawer won't come out. How am I gonna get a CD in here? It's like I I cannot imagine the dealing with the case.
SPEAKER_01:Speaking a different language, it would be how you speak Deutsch, but then when it's on that, how do you even know where to go to change the language? That's what I'm saying. Right?
SPEAKER_02:Like now you're on the phone trying to do a translator.
SPEAKER_01:And then the cable, the cable being half pulled out, that's the worst.
SPEAKER_02:Look, a cable out is easy, a cable barely in. Yeah. Oh my god, dude.
SPEAKER_01:That's what worries me about having this pre-ready your booth on the thing because you're not setting it up individually to know that it's all in there. Like you almost have to pray that everything just stays intact and you never have an issue. When it's pre-wired like that, that gives me anxiety.
SPEAKER_02:See, for me, I know I would know any item. No power. Oh, the power cable jiggled out of the back of the power strip. Yeah, I mean, I would I would all I just know every nut of of everything that can go wrong, I think, at this point. But it's 40 years it's taken me to get this far.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, anyways, thanks for posting that because now I know what to look for if anybody ever does get on my gears.
SPEAKER_02:Those are the those are the hacks to know what now you gotta go learn Dutch or whatever that is.
SPEAKER_01:Um so there's some DJ news out. Or German. I don't know. Sorry. Just some DJ news. What's the big news? Uh I think you're getting in some more SKUs uh to the DJ button. I guess this is a gear corner.
SPEAKER_02:I did, yeah. It's more gear corner ish. Yeah. So uh there was a uh person that was um selling 3D printed parts to DJs um through mostly through Facebook groups, and I saw these things, I bought these things and I was using them. And then I think he got a little bit overwhelmed, to be fair. Um, I don't I don't I no need to bring up his name. I mean, people that bought them know who I'm talking about, but um but the designs were genius. I think he just got overwhelmed with orders and yeah, it's it's a whole thing when you get into manufacturing correctly. To be fair, 3D printing takes a long time. So I bought the designs and basically bought the business from him and then I started making them. So these um what are these for?
SPEAKER_01:For cables? Yep.
SPEAKER_02:So these go on your tripod, yep, and your clips, these go on the tripod itself. You run your cables down from your 12-inch speaker down the back of the tripod, and instead of wrapping gaff tape or velcro around them, yeah, they go right through that little part on the back. But aren't maybe I'm naive.
SPEAKER_01:Ravity clips makes them, but they don't make them in white. But are the stands in white?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I got black and white.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. I I guess I've never seen a white stand before.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I got I uh we have uh white white stands for bun gap or X white tripods. So we put the white Everse on top for our ceremonies, we use the white Everse on for our cocktails. But um these are that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So this is one of how many SKUs?
SPEAKER_02:Ten. Um you got the both lighting tube to the gravity stand. You want them to go vertical in front of your lights.
SPEAKER_01:Screw that up, sorry about that.
SPEAKER_02:Uh we forgot to light that up. There we go. There it is. We've been doing four episodes without it. Uh but I also have the ones for the Astera. I got ones for different size stands on this size.
SPEAKER_01:So basically cable clamps.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, but then I have caps that go on top of all the column style speakers that will hold a single light to wash the dance for. So you got the column speaker sticking up in there, these cap on top, and then you know, you put one of your lightweight, you're not gonna put a mover up there, but you put a little lightweight, you know, IR4 or a little wash light to wash the dance for. So now you don't have another extra speaker stand sticking up back there behind you.
SPEAKER_01:So this is January 14th when this drops.
SPEAKER_02:Are all these SKUs going to be out? They will be out at bungear.com. Just go to the accessories tab, and all of the stuff that we are currently offering will be out and ready to ship. So let's call it if you ordered it on a Monday, it would probably go out the latest on Wednesday. You'd probably get it on Friday, no matter. I mean, I don't want to say no matter where you are. If you're on the West Coast, because we're in North Carolina, you'd probably get it the next week. So within a week, you should be getting your stuff.
SPEAKER_01:These packaged in twos, ones, singles?
SPEAKER_02:Some are in twos, some are in fours. Um, most everything is in pairs. Um and the prices range from I think these are like$6.99 for a pair up to about$60 or$70 for a pair of those things that go on top of the speakers. Got it. Because those take the longest to print. We have hardware that go on them. They've got padding in them so they don't mess up your speakers, make a little rubber strip in the back so they don't flip off the back.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Um, but yeah, I mean, totally reasonable price points, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Since you just got into this 3D printing, any other I mean, what's been some revelations from it? Like it man, I just jumped right in head first. You never had used a 3D printer?
SPEAKER_02:I had never seen a 3D printer, to be honest with you. I bought one years ago for my son for Christmas when they first came out, and it was disastrous. You had to build this thing. He never even quite got it working, and he's very smart and very good at stuff like that. He built his own computer when he was like 13. Like he never even really got it running. I never saw it working. And I was just like, well, what are the what's the best machine? And I happened to catch it on Black Friday, and so I got four of them. My godson, who's 14 down in Charleston, he's making a lot of this stuff and then just ships it up to me. And then I've got two machines in that room, literally right there, that are running every day when I come in. I start a new batch of something like these and just let them run. And luckily, there's a camera in there, so every once in a while I kind of glance down at the camera that just lives in there to make sure. Because if you don't clean that plate that these are getting pressed onto, bro, it goes spaghetti wild. Wow. And you don't have a lot of money in the filament, but now you've wasted two hours of printing something that's a shit show.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So, you know, it's almost like an alarm, basically.
SPEAKER_02:It it will definitely, if it gets jammed or something, ping you on your phone. Okay. So then you can, you know, come back here and fix it, or just stop the it, or if you look at the phone and the the camera's showing just a spaghetti, you're not going to recover from that. So I just hit stop, toss it in the trash, and start over.
SPEAKER_01:And how many of those mistakes are kind of happening? Once a day?
SPEAKER_02:No, one out of six batches.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Something like that you lose the two-hour window of getting them printed. Exactly. Has um any ideas spawned from knowing what its capabilities are?
SPEAKER_02:I think that I've got a lot of ideas, but I want to get this stuff out first. Right. You know what I mean? I need to see if people are are hitting on these. Like, do they like it? Are they gonna buy them? He sold a ton of that stuff, man. He just got behind. Because again, it takes a while to print. It's not magic. And we're not, you know, to order something like this from China would be you would need to order, I would say, five to ten thousand. Wow. Five to ten thousand.
SPEAKER_01:Because they won't sell them.
SPEAKER_02:It's just not you, minimum order quantity. Yeah. And and for them to make something like this, I guarantee it would be five or ten thousand. And I don't, I don't know that I want to, you know, commit to five or ten thousand.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:I'd rather make a hundred of them and see if they are gonna see.
SPEAKER_01:How many legs, yeah. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway, that's cool, man. Yeah, man. So Bun Gear is off and running in 2026. Bungear is off and running. We'll we're gonna keep it, keep it crushing, man. We just like I said, we're bat batch recording this on the fourth, and Frank is unloading a truck load that just came in today.
SPEAKER_01:So amazing.
SPEAKER_02:Shitload of booths and deluxe laptop stands are on that thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, this is also probably gonna go towards you. Let's hit the question of the day.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Question of the day. All right. Uh from Ryan Michot, I think that's how you say that. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:This was on the Patreon. You answered it there, but I felt like we needed to bring it into the fear of the pod.
SPEAKER_02:Ryan said, I bought in-ear monitors uh four months ago, and I can't get comfortable mixing with them. Can you walk through how or what you are hearing in your ears as you're mixing, i.e., all the master or 50-50Q uh and master, or you're constantly changing. Thank you for any help. Great job on the show. Thanks, Ryan. Um, good question. I'm not wearing in ear monitors, Ryan, like an artist wears them. I never have, if you look at any picture of me or any video of me, you'll always see it in my left ear. I'm always uh listening to the next song out of my right ear naked, like it is. Um, so I'm hearing what the audience is hearing. Uh I can hear requests, I can hear audience reactions. I cannot wear two of them. If I did wear two of them, you got to make sure you have a stereo pair and you you would basically be splitting the mix in the headphone out to 50-50, I would think, or maybe you know, whichever you need to lean more on to get a good mix out of them. And then I think you would honestly have to have some sort of a microphone on another channel, I guess, coming into the board to be able to either hear requests or hear the the crowd reaction. I I don't I don't think I don't see a lot of DJs wearing in-air monitors in both ears.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I guess I was just gonna say, are you getting that many requests where you have to keep it out?
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm not, man. But I mean, every once in a while we'll hit a string of requests where I, you know, especially if somebody comes around this side, where and and again, I have the custom molded ones, but all I have to do is grab that loop and then it basically unlocks out of my ear, and I go, what is it? And they go, okay. And then I just pop it right back in. It's not like it's some big procedure to get this thing back in my ear. If I have to pop it out, especially if it's the bride or the mother of the bride, and I really do want to hear it. Yeah, sometimes I'll just leave it in if I'm just like, I'm not gonna take this request anyway. Like, who is this guy? You know, he's not a VIP. I don't know, it's not his wedding. Like, yeah, I I don't want to hear golden. You know what I mean? Like, speaking of, you played it last night. Last night, first time in the entire year. Not only did we have to play it once, we had to play it twice.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. The OG version?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, it was two different edits, chorus first. Yeah. Two different versions you gave me, I think. Wow. And it was, you know, a college event.
SPEAKER_01:Did it go over?
SPEAKER_02:It wasn't a dance thing, but it was specifically requested. Yeah. And then literally, like, I played it, and then 30 minutes later, it was like, my friend wasn't here. Oh my god, can you do it again? And I waited, you know, 30 minutes or whatever and played it again. Wow. Yep. Have not played it once. And me and Saquon looked at each other and we'd be like, damn, we almost made it out of the year. Dude, that's so bad. So bad. They were they wouldn't hold on. I wouldn't be shocked. And I know people are gonna be like, I saw them performing on the at the parade. I did. That's what I was gonna say. I wouldn't be surprised if that comes out that that song is AI. It's a song. I mean, I've got to be able to do that. Going back to the last episode, I would not be shocked if it comes out that that whole thing is that I wouldn't be surprised.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It would be like a very Millie Vanilli 2025 version.
SPEAKER_01:It is not an easy song to say the range from where it goes is all over the place.
SPEAKER_02:I don't like that key, man. It hurts my ear. I don't know what that key is, but it's nasty.
SPEAKER_01:I hate that song. So this this question for me, you know, I use it with headphones the same way. Right. You know, I'm using the cans, but only on your left ear. Only on the left ear. Yeah, right. Uh, I did learn at one point I played at a bar for a while where they um I didn't they couldn't afford a monitor, man. This was like a cheap beach bar.
SPEAKER_02:Do you play with a monitor, by the way?
SPEAKER_01:I do. Always. Always at your foot or by your head? Oh, on the floor. Yeah. Pointing it up. That's new in like the last two years. Interesting. It's just like my ear better. I play better, way better. And I'll make a requirement. Like it goes with me everywhere. Little Everse 8. Yeah. You don't need more than that. No, right. Battery powered. Yeah. Right. Blast the whole show. Yeah. And you're just controlling it from your booth. From the booth. And I don't have it on 24-7, just like certain mix points, you know. I'll turn it on. Yeah. Um, I just feel like I'm it the mixes just are more clean. And I'm finding rooms aren't the standard ways. Yeah. Like they're the speakers are. I'm doing it for the room. Let's do that this year.
SPEAKER_02:You know, let's yeah, let's just grab the one from Cocktail Hour or Ceremony and just bring it inside and just have the XLR drop right there and just I literally don't even have to plug it in. Just boom, put it right by my feet.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, like let's it's been it's been a big deal. I've noticed a difference. I'm sure I will. My mixes are cleaner. Yeah. Uh also it just helps me not have to bring up the master much. Right. Because I've got to do that.
SPEAKER_02:And you're not catching like that slap back off those boomy kind of rooms and stuff. You're hearing it here.
SPEAKER_01:The only thing you have to be careful of is if you're running your mic through your system. Uh yeah. Make sure it's off. Sure. Because that will ring like nobody's business if it's a hot one. Sure. You know what I mean? So you gotta make sure that.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's why I think you got to run it through the booth out and just reach up there. Right. Pop it. Hey, what's up? Right, right. Come back up. I mean, and again, I do, and the whole point of getting in ear monitors for me were twofold. One, I I don't like the way headphones look. Right. I went through a million pairs, especially when the can't, the, the, the, the foamy part starts to disintegrate, and then it gets on your shirt, your ear, your suit. I just got tired of them. I thought they looked big. I think they look stupid in pictures. I think it looks dated. Like it, I mean, think about it. When I was DJ in the 80s, I was wearing the same shit. I just I got tired of it. Secondly, was my hearing. I wanted to start protecting my hearing. And I can tell you, I do not have to turn up an in-air monitor nearly as loud as I did eight. Well, it's literally in the colour. It's in your canal. It's in your hole. Yeah. It's in the hole.
SPEAKER_01:It's in the hole.
SPEAKER_02:Hey.
SPEAKER_01:But you know, it's funny. I was I was reading the IE part about All Master 15. When I was at the bar. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I interrupted. That's where I learned how to mix in my headphones. I'd never done it before because it was far enough away I couldn't really hear. Yeah. And I started to figure out how to mix in my ears with both of them on. You're not talking on the mic hardly at all. Yeah, yeah. In the club environment, you're not carrying as much of a like request and stuff. But I got good at it. Yeah. And now if worse came to worse, I couldn't. You could probably wear both energy. Yeah. You could probably wear both the energy it is, it is, uh, but to your point, like for private events, I think that would be tough because you're, you know, in a nightclub, the the volume's set. Like I could own, there's a threshold I couldn't go above, you know, like the room had its own, they had their own amp rack. I'm not messing with any of that stuff. So I couldn't blow out the speakers, I guess is my point. In a private event, you can. And you know, I have you ever had it happen where I mean this has been a long, long time, but where you know you're playing something and you forgot to turn up like the slide, the fader is not in the movie. And it's on the other side, and you're hearing it in your ears, and you're like, oh, you're jamming, but everyone's looking at you like something's crazy, and you're like, Oh, I forgot to turn the fader out. Yeah, yeah, you know, or whatever. So I think having one out is critical.
SPEAKER_02:I dude, for me, it's just that reaction, oh, or like just I'm like, I I need that to keep going. Yeah, you know what happens to me every once in a while. Do you ever hit the fader with your the the cuff or your jacket? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't now I didn't bled through a little bit last night. I was like, what is that? And then I'm like, oh shit, I had hit it with my my it's so you use the cross fader. I do.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, see I don't.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, you're up and down only?
SPEAKER_01:I'm up and down only.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, I never was a scratch.
SPEAKER_01:I I turn it off. I disable it. Oh. So it's off. I don't even use it. Up and
SPEAKER_02:Down on it.
SPEAKER_01:Because I don't want to like do what you're just saying. I would. That would totally be me. Yeah. Multiple times a night, too. It would just be the uh it would happen to me. So I just disabled it because I don't even use that. I didn't even know you could do that. I never really watched you play.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I've heard you play a million times, but I guess I've never really watched you do that. I've never done the fade over. So when the when the blend is coming through, you're going up one brown. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's the same thing. Yeah, no, it's I mean it's the same thing. It's just a manual.
SPEAKER_01:And then I'll use the you know, the EQ to kind of EQ it out or whatever the case may be.
SPEAKER_00:But the Crossfader is kind of more for like scratchy. It definitely is.
SPEAKER_02:It definitely was that's the original intent of it. Right. Interesting. Okay. Learn something every day.
SPEAKER_01:I try this this year. Well, let's wrap this one. I know something was shorty, but it's a good one.
SPEAKER_02:It's short but sweet. Yeah. Thank you guys, as always, for listening. Seriously, check out the Patreon. Uh, we would love your support, and I promise you that there is gold in there. I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole right now, but there's gold in there, and we want to say, as always, actually, and we want to say, as always, thank you to our sponsor, DJ Event Planner, DJEventplanner.com. It is the CRM that Brian and myself, Jason Janine, millions of DJs across the world use to keep track of their leads. Thank you again. See y'all back next week. New episodes every single Wednesday on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Thanks, y'all. Later. Later.
