Hi Kieran, Thanks for participating in this Q & A!
I'm wondering your thoughts on getting satisfactory sound quality during your live shows, and what might be some of the biggest challenges you have to deal with ? Especially in getting the right balance, but also getting the right impact needed for techno ! How is it sounding in the clubs, without all the compression and mastering that usual DJ set tracks go through? Any thoughts on mono vs stereo for live ? Thanks for your perspective ! Joseph

This was a massive war for me for a long time, DJ before and DJ after both would be so much louder, some times there would be a good sound engineer who would balance it out but was very rare. I used a TC electronics finalizer on my master for some time and this worked great but was too much to take with the rest of my gear. now I take my kick samples and master them in the box so they can compete with the DJ, then route my modular through the Akai force and eq all the unwanted stuff and add a little sidechain also, works great and very clean and loud

regarding the mono v stereo, I have a lot of samples using stereo space and even add a spreader on the modular, creates a lot of space in the mono region for the kick and also makes it sound massive, I dunno why people always associate mono with clubs, I have played in 1000's and always appreciate some crazy stereo ****.

Great question!

Kieran, could you elaborate a bit on how you go about monitoring in a live situation.
This is my own biggest struggle, and I have tried everything from inears, over ears, relying on stage monitors, combining all of the above with good earplugs etc.

I am still really struggleing with both hearing what I am doing, and even worse, getting the mix right.

Any tips?

Thanks!

I had this issue for a long time, try to mix everything inside the boxes so its sounding great as is, then when you go into the mixer all the gains are the same and u just slam the faders up and its a spot on the level, clubs are super tricky and most of them have **** monitors so make it so you don't have to do much mixing once u get there. distortion is also great on the modular as it can act as a limiter so you don't get any super loud sounds coming out, fewer dynamics but easier to manage

hey kieran thanks for your insights !
that totally makes sense having everything as close to perfect as possible and mastering level loud in the box !
im actually planning a similar setup, where lots of loops are setup in ableton for drums bass etc
than a eurorack fx chain for processing some loops and a korg micro sampler keyboard

as for mono vs stereo, cool so you find that it's actually helping the club sound to have some elements in stereo vs all mono !
going to contemplate this one more as it's a big decision in the live set im putting together
my mix engineer was also pushing for stereo...