Ableton Forum

Hello Ableton world! I am trying to take my dj set out of the bedroom and into the club scene in a small town. I want to buy some powered speakers to A) reinforce or monitor the sound in a club. B) use as a PA for private/ house parties. My question is: what function does an external mixer serve that my Focusrite pro 24 doesn't? Would I need to buy a mixer or could the audio interface send a mixed signal to the powered speakers? I am considering getting either: a pair of Mackie HD 1521s with a EV ZXA1 for monitoring, or 3 EV ZXA1's and a ZXA1 sub. I also am using the Akai APC 40 and a Novation ReMOTE 25 SL COMPACT.
Thank you in advance,
Jon Stafford

Only you can decide whether you need or want an external mixer - others don't know what type of DJ you are, or how you plan to use Live....er, live.

For example, an external mixer will give you hardware to play with, so it'll look (to your audience) more like you're DJing as opposed to checking emails.

It could also give you the ability to have audio routed to separate mixer channels, so you could send a bass line to one channel, and drums to another for example.

Depends what you want to do.

If you're DJ'ing in clubs, you're pretty much stuck with using headphones as there'll be little to no space to set up your own monitoring set up. No idea why you'd ever need to reinforce a club system.

For house parties, decent monitors and a sub should be enough.


Either way, no you don't need a mixer.