My setup explained

It all started back in the cassette tape days - recording songs from the radio and stitching them together, trying to end up with 60 minutes worth of a mix.
There was a show every night where the DJ would let the music play with minimal intervention, no voice-overs, no taunts, no advertising, just the whole single. That was the perfect time to record. I had to be there on time, with the tape deck ready, a handful of tapes and a lot of patience.

Time moved on and reality kicked in - I had to study, work and there was no time for this, but time also brought a revolutionary, life-changing novelty: the internet. When MP3s became a thing, even though it would take a few hours to download a single song through the dial-up, it was totally worth it - free music and access to worldwide file sharing. The collection began modestly but grew exponentially when my town finally was served by a DSL service.

DJing became a serious hobby when I imported one of the very first produced units of the Behringer BCD3000. This wasn’t the equipment I dreamed of, but it was incredibly cheap and capable. It could do the same - if not more - than a CDJ setup back in 2007. It was a fantastic change that allowed someone on a budget to be able to do everything the pros could. I began playing at weddings and house parties using a full-sized desktop, including a CRT monitor that weighed half a ton, then moved to a laptop when I could finally afford one.

I was very happy with this combination - Traktor and BCD3000. There was no party too big for this. But well, one day, my precious external hard drive with all the music in it fell down and I lost the entire collection… It was about 700GiB of MP3s. This was one of the saddest days of my life, in 2010.

In 2011 I went to London for a business trip and decided to visit some record stores, searching for some rare jungle single to bring back as a memento from the trip. To my surprise, I found some records that I’ve never heard of from artists I thought I once had all of their catalogue. I didn’t knew that many releases were never issued digitally and some of the records no one had ever ripped and made public! Another interesting thing is that the vinyls seemed to be much more “permanent” than MP3s; a big chunk of plastic versus a little platter spinning at 7200 RPMs was a lost battle to the digital. I never had enough money to have a proper backup, 700GiB in 2010 was a big number - a DVD could only hold a little less than 5GiB for reference.

So it all started, with Love and Tears from Aquarian Dreams, a little song that was part of a Café Del Mar Chillhouse compilation that I fell in love for, but couldn’t ever find that single aside from the mixed version that didn’t contain the intro and outro. That was it, my mind was made out.

With the vinyl collection slowly growing, my goal was to have a true, 100% analogue setup to preserve as much as possible the dynamics and naturality of vinyls.

This is the current form of the setup, that keeps getting improved here and there whenever I can:

The centrepiece: Xone:4D mixer

Allen & Heath is the pinnacle of the early 2000’s mixers and the 4D was a very special one. It was one of the first truly hybrid mixers, having MIDI controls combined with a true analogue 4-channel mixer. I wasn’t yet ready to completely ditch the digital - and probably never will - so this was the perfect compromise.

The wheels of steel: SL1200-M3D turntables

A very lucky auctioned item from eBay that came in their original packages. The day these showed up at my door will never be forgotten, I felt like when I got my first computer, felt like a kid on Christmas eve opening that much longed present.

The shoes: M44-Gs and Nagaokas

The styluses are so important to the colouration of the music that it’s impossible to settle on a fixed pair. The M44s are popular for a good reason - powerful and clear output at a relatively low cost. The Nagaokas were a later addition and I use it only when recording. I’m still trying to get a pair of Grado DJ200i, but they are harder and harder to find.

The rack: Compressor

The signal leaves the mixer in a balanced XLR pair into a DBX 1066 compressor. I didn’t want to have an output compressor but vinyl proved to be too hard to “tame” especially when live mixing, causing some of my early mixes to have an enormous variation of average volume. The compressor keeps the peaks under tight control allowing me to focus on the mix instead.

The rack: Distribution Amplifier

This distribution amplifier splits my sole balanced output from the compressor into 4 distinct balanced outputs, each one with its own gain control. This is used to route the compressed signal to the recording system and speaker systems without the use of a frequency crossover.

The rack: Effects

A Lexicon MX400 was added for a little more creativity in the effects. Though these are digital, they go out and back into the mixer through analogue connections. The Xone:4D has two stereo sends per channel and this effect processor has two independent stereo effect processors with individual gains and settings - a perfect match. I’m also using a MIDI cable to synchronise the mixer’s built-in BPM counter to the effects, so some of the multi-tap reverbs can be in perfect alignment with the beat.

The rack: Digital Recording

My least favourite yet fundamental piece is this ProSonus Audiobox 1818VSL. Fully digital, this thing is responsible for ultimately converting the compressed and balanced output from the distribution amplifier into digital. It integrates perfectly with OBS, Traktor and whatever else needed as it operates in USB class-compliant mode. This is yet to be replaced by a TASCAM 42-NB reel-to-reel recorder whenever I can find a decent one for sale.

The rack: Power

Lastly, there’s a 1U power distribution unit. No secrets here, just a bunch of switches.

So this is it, a lot of effort was put in this setup to keep the signal completely analogue until the very last moment. I hope you can feel the warmth of this system through the recordings, they come from the heart.

Thanks for stopping by!