Where do I place the speakers during the dinner and dance?

Often times, playing music during dinner isn't as easy as simply pressing play. There may be tables right next to where your speakers are, it could be a huge venue and the sound isn't carrying all the way to the tables in the back or there are walls preventing the sound from getting where it needs to be.

The one thing every DJ should do is raise their speakers up during dinner. This allows the speaker to play over people's heads during dinner rather than hit them right in the ears. This is beneficial for two reasons: 1. The people who are sitting near the speakers won't have a wall of sound being blasted into their ears because the sound is going over their heads. 2. The sound will not be absorbed by the bodies towards the front, meaning it will carry easier to the tables in the back.

If the venue has a house system during dinner in which you can plug an iPod or laptop into the system and use that, I would encourage it. The house system is specifically designed to spread throughout the entire venue. This allows the background music to not be particularly loud for people near the speakers and quiet for people away from the speakers. Same thing applies for the house microphone.

The dance is a different story all together. Our goal during the dance is not to project music throughout the entire venue. Our goal is to project music into that rectangle area in front of our speakers that we call the dance floor. This means lowering the speakers. Lowering the speakers makes the noise louder for those on the dance floor, but quieter for those outside of the dance floor. Again, the benefits are twofold. Aiming the speakers slightly in to project them towards the middle of the dance floor is not a bad idea either.