How to connect laptop to mixer?

[Jaytee]

Hey all

My friend's bar has two CDJ1000 MK2's and a 4 channel mixer. They usually they have two channel's hooked up to the CDJ's and one channel to this old desktop.

They usually use the desktop and put shuffle on iTunes to play music.

What cable is needed to connect the mixer to the desktop? Their place has a tangle of cords so I cannot find out which cords go where.

I was thinking of using my laptop to do some mixing at their place but I couldn't get it working...

I thought it was just the green speaker jack and removed that from the desktop and plugged it into my laptop and tried playing but it still didn't work.

I thought you also needed a USB cable but I couldn't find that? What does it look like?

What else is needed? Do I also need a soundcard? The desktop didn't have a sound card.

I also played around with the audio settings and tried a variety of different combinations and that didn't work, but it works at home with the normal green audio speaker jack.

[eggssell]

oh shyte i thought i saw yer name. long time no see.

what mixer?

as you say no usb on the mixer then what you need is a jack to rca cable (i.e 1 side 3.5mm jack to a red & white rca). the jack goes into your laptops spdif connection (where you would plug in your headphones or external speakers) and the rca's into the mixers channel input, i assume the line input.

note however depending on your laptops sound card it may be low quality sound.

you could buy a cheapish sound card?

oh yeah when you say the desktop didnt have a sound card it must have if it could play sound to external speakers (or the mixer), it is probably just one that is built into the motherboard.

[eggssell]

other thing to consider:

if the cable from the laptop is plugged into the line input on the mixer, make sure you select line on the mixer

also by adding a laptop with a grounding pin you will probably introduce a ground loop hum which you can fix with various ground loop isolators.

let us know how you go. mixer name and laptop model may help if you cant get it to go.

[Skank]

you can use like an rca to jack cable (like the end of your headphones) that will work fine

[eggssell]

oh yeah it just came to me this morn, do you want to mix using your laptop as an input or do you want to use the cdj's to control your mp3's.

if the former as above, if the latter you will need traktor scratch or serato and some time coded cd's.

[SourceRaver]

Ok...

I suspect the mixer is connected to the mixer via a rca to jack cord (as described above). The jack would be plugged into the PC via the green speaker/headphone jack and the The rca's are most likely connected to the line input on one of the mixer channels. Now the club may be using a dedicated channel for the PC and two others for the CDj's. Some mixers also allow you to 'share' a channel between two devices (ie turntable and CD or sometimes even two line level devices like a CD and a PC). So...

Get the PC up and running and take note of what channel is being used. If its using the same channel as a CD player then there will be a switch/toggle on the mixer to swap between the CD and PC.

If the PC is using its own dedicated channel, pull out the speaker/headphone jack and see whatt happens. If the music stops then you know a RCA to jack cable is being used. If it continues to play, then audio is being transfered to the mixer by something else like an external USB sound card.

[SourceRaver]

Best thing to do is buy your own RCA to jack cable and connect your computer directly to the mixer via a spare channel. As a Dj you should have one of these cords as part of your kit as they can be a life saver sometimes.

[FabDJ]

Regarding grounding for the PC I found you can connect a two pin 240 volt plug into a 3 pin P.C transformer socket by just sanding deeper the small channel in the middle of the plug both sides

Saves any other work to remove the earth and looks better too.